My updated review of the NitroPack service.
- What’s changed?
- Do I still feel the same way I did before?
- Who do I recommend it for?
So that you understand the context, please read my original: NitroPack – cloud caching and CDN service review
What is NitroPack?
A caching plugin that integrates with their cloud-caching service. What is cloud-caching (aka “edge-caching”)? For those who don’t know…traditional cache plugins store the cache on the web server. Cloud-caching takes it a step further by storing your cache pages at the edge. There’s a few reasons why this might be considered “better”.
- Because the cached pages are now mirrored across multiple CDN servers and can be delivered more quickly to users from a local mirror. (This is especially helpful when the origin web server is far away.)
- Because the cache plugin developer can now charge more money for a “service” instead of just a “plugin”. Also charge money based on usage tier….whereas traditional cache plugins weren’t able to do that.
- Because the cache plugin developer can more easily integrate with other cloud-based optimization features….such as static CDN for images, CSS, JS, etc.
So is cloud-caching really better than traditional page-caching?
As with everything, it really depends. Depends on the caching configuration…how well it’s matched to the site, its needs and its traffic. Not all caching is created equal. And even with the same caching, not all configurations produce equal results. Even though tools are getting easier to use and almost becoming “automated”…it still requires skill.
Last but not least…COST FUCKEN MATTERS. And this part alone is why I always felt NitroPack was silly. The cost of NitroPack could easily get you a better server where you wouldn’t even need it.
So why is NitroPack so popular?
To be honest…it’s because it does a good job. It very easily speeds up sites with very minimal effort (or technical skill required), and produces better page scores on GTmetrix, Core Web Vitals, etc.
It’s really one-click touch and go. You don’t have to read instructions or Google search for guides online for “best cache configurations” and read dozens of arguing comments back and forth about which optimizations methods are necessary or not.
You could be a bonehead monkey, click one button, and immediately show off to your client how much faster you made their site.
Things NitroPack has changed/updated:
This is really the whole point of this quick update review anyway:
- New dashboard – I’m not a fan. Maybe I’m forgetting but I feel like the old one was better. Cleaner, clearer, easier to understand and find things. This new one feels more modern and flashy but I hate the ambiguous icon menu at the top-middle.
- Revamped optimization algorithm – maybe they changed something. Before…I felt like you had to choose the highest optimization option to get the best scores. Now I feel the middle optimization setting gets you better page scores.
- Manual mode – this is cool. I don’t remember seeing this before. You can granularly decide which optimizations to enable or not. I’m definitely liking this. Although I feel anybody who knows what options to pick would probably be better off saving their money and just using a server-based cache plugin.
- Fixed FOUC – I felt they used to have more FOUC issues before and that part seems much smoother now. Cheers to them improving this. This was one of my big complaints before.
- Preload pricing – I felt like they didn’t use to charge for this before. Like before, the preload was more aggressive and free. And then their preload got much less aggressive and slow (like the service got a little worse). But now it seems their preload is back to being aggressive BUT they charge for it.
Overall, I do feel NitroPack has improved.
So does WPJohnny like NitroPack now?
NO! I still don’t like it for the same reasons listed in my (original) Nitropack review:
- too expensive (better server/hosting costs less than NitroPack)
- too automated (doesn’t fit all sites)
- too much focus on page scores (which I never care for…but admittedly many clients do)
- still really ugly FOUC, and my god is it horrible on mobile
What about my clients? How do they like NitroPack? I’d say only my most unskilled and busy clients love NitroPack. Everyone else complains it’s too expensive and unrealistically-priced once they want/need to optimize more sites. And I’d say that’s about fair. NitroPack is for busy newbies. They’re not for the guys/gals that like to learn DIY and tinker under the hood.
Which users is NitroPack best for?
- Anyone on a crap server, only a few bloated sites (instead of many), with zero knowledge of speed optimization, care (too much) about page scores, and don’t mind paying the premium.
Obviously, none of those attributes reflect me. I prefer to build a site with clean-code from the start, placed on a well-configured server, finely tuned with customized cache settings, and value human user experience over page scores. Knowing how to tune sites makes me 100 times more effective across many sites…saving lots of money.
So basically…you’re either learning how speed-optimize your WordPress site and replicating those efforts cost-efficiently across many sites…or you’re better off with something like NitroPack which can save you a ton of time and let you focus on other tasks (that hopefully make more money than what you would save on not using NitroPack).
Curious to try NitroPack?
- NitroPack.io – see the hype for yourself!
What about the comments made in this article…
https://www.webwhim.co.uk/nitropack-black-hat-seo-speed-optimization/
…regarding the usage of NitroPack negatively impact organic rankings?
I don’t have proof of either way since I don’t like to use NitroPack personally. But they’ve gotten popular enough that if they really did affect rankings negatively, I think we’d hear of it by now.
Hi Johnny,
Svilena from NitroPack here!
A big thank you for taking the time to write an update to your original article.
You’ve given a thorough review of our product and provided some much-appreciated feedback. Just wanted to make a few points about what you refer to as preload pricing – this is actually our cache warmup feature.
The Cache Warmup (CW) system is instrumental in keeping our clients’ sites optimised when cache purges occur. The system simulates visits to pages with purged cache files that in turn trigger optimisations and creation of a new cache version. This means that clients don’t have to wait for an organic visit to a page to get an optimised version – great news for UX and site visitors! I wanted to mention that the CW system is not responsible for running optimisations and it does not determine how fast the new cache versions are created.
Please note that we offer cache warmup on all our plans.
If a client purges a specific URL (through their NitroPack dashboard or automated plugin event), the CW system will simulate a visit to the page. This is the case for both Free and paid plan users.
In the event of a full purge, the CW system will simulate visits only to the pages linked to the homepage for sites on the free plan. For sites on one of our premium plans, after a full purge the CW system will simulate visits to all pages listed in the linked sitemap.xml.
Please let me know if you have any questions, as we’d love to have an open discussion.
Best regards!
I do not understand you. Nobody is talking about your case and you do not take his words about slower result via NitroPack Caching.
Its still one of the most terrible caching plugins after cheating a long time.
Only one simple examples why its still an overpriced service:
In General:
the results are okay and having a caching plugin is better as not having a caching plugin.
But now step into the massive problems if we use nitro-pack:
1. We using most agressive mode and site is broken and not fast. Why?
2. At the same time we using wp-rocket caching pluginin mode: much faster and page is not broken.
3. How to prefetch needed DNS lookups by nitro-pack? We have year 2024 and we still stuck in this basics because its not possible via native option . Confirmed by nitro-pack:
https://nitropack.io/blog/post/reduce-dns-lookups
“Here’s the deal: Switching to a faster DNS provider, deciding on which resource you should locally host, and implementing DNS caching are strategies you should do on your own or with the help of your hosting provider. For everything else, you can use NitroPack.”
So now we Need to change the Header file to add custom pretech Because nitro can Not handle this.
Why not say in clear words: We still can not do this at 2024.
And now the most funny part from this guide:
“Also, being an all-in-one solution means you can easily replace all your speed optimization plugins that increase your site’s DNS lookups (and decrease invoices).” So in other words: We can not do this, but you know what: with us you can save money now. Who cares about DNS prefetch for needed DNS lookup?!
4. The crawler is so slow. Running many projects on nitropack caching service.
Every project running very slow by crawler. Why putting it on dedicated server/saas if its slower like caching plugin with crawler? Example: page with 7.000 pages need 1 hour on wp-rocket. On nitropack we only crawled 46% of all pages After one hours.
5. Next massive problem:
We are in 2024 and caching basics like craler with priority per posttype is still not possible by using nitropack.
Example:
Lets say you have 5.000 blog posts, 5.000 custom posttype posts and 100 pages and 5.000 products. Which you shoud run first with crawler in your ecommerce project? Correct, the product type. But after using nitro pack we still have no option to setup custom priority like in other caching plugins.
6. All our detailed benchmarks on many cloned projects show very similar results like this example:
wp-rocket result:
Website is not broken.
Setup after 5 minutes is done.
Google pagespeed mobile viewport result: 93. Passed core vital.
Grade A on gtmetrix.
nitropack results:
Mobile Score is 66.
Grade B on gtmetrix.
7. Service is overpriced. You pay per project and per visits.
While other services and plugins have much better results: they are also much cheaper and some of them do not charge per domain / views. For example wp-rocket charge per year and you have unlimited domains for a very low price. (flatrate).
Support was not able to help after many hours of chats.
So finally we wasted our time in a lot of nitro-pack projects. The product have great marketing, but the value and the price is wrong and does not match. Most terrible product ever, sorry for that words.
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for the comment and for sharing your opinion. I am Mihail and I am the CEO. I will go point by point and will leave my email in the comments below so we can continue the conversation.
1 and 2. First, would be happy if you share your details in private. We serve 400k websites, so I want to make sure I have the information in front of me so everything is accurate. In general using the modes is customer’s favorite, people prefer to use predefined settings, just like drive modes and if there is any fine tuning needed we have 40+ feature settings where you can perfect everything. Did you play with ours or did you change any of the modes?
3. This is an entirely automated process in NitroPack, with the difference that we use preconnect instead of prefetch. If you take a look at a page optimized by NitroPack you will be able to spot the DNS preconnect entries there. What experience would you rather have?
4 NitroPack typically crawls and optimizes all pages for both mobile and desktop, so you can count everything as 2x the load of WP-Rocket. 🙂
NitroPack also supports variation cookies in the cache warmup crawler which can bump the number of pages even higher. So since the pages we optimize are twice as many it makes sense that it takes twice as long. The end result is that at the page coverage is a lot better this way, which is what the customers are paying for at the end of the day. We also have faster craws for higher plans and larger stores.
5. Next massive problem:
Thats not entirely correct. NitroPack’s paid plans (Growth and up) have an automated system which prioritizes pages based on traffic. So the most visited page always get optimized first. Regardless of the post type. If you would like to get a demo I’d be happy to get you a free trial.
6. Please hit me up with the websites, I’d love to compare them 1 to 1, can 100% guarantee we will outperform WP Rocket. One hundred percent. Thats also quite visible from the Core Web Vitals public report by Google
7. if we’re talking about cheaper, there will always be cheaper options, at the end of the day competition is great as companies serve a better product to the end user, which is all that we’re after, but id say that we would compete on different factors than price, oh and dont forget that we also have a forever free plan which is like $0 for smaller websites and folks just getting started
As far as support goes, please follow up with the exact issue you have been having and who you have been dealing with. If we didnt serve you well enough Id love to investigate and take care of this, as this is definitely not the way we would like to represent our product and company. We proudly offer 24/7/365 live chat support on all plans and I’d say we’re pretty well on that side.
Once again thank you for you opinion and please mail me at mihail /.-at-./ nitropack.com would be glad to continue the convo there.