WP Media, the owner of the popular WP Rocket WordPress caching plugin has purchased online website performance grading tool, GTmetrix
Purchased as part of a growing SaaS (Software as a Service) product portfolio along with joint owners Group One, The acquisition is set to strengthen the range of offerings for the group.
A press release issued by parent company Group One/WP Media earlier in the year said:
“We’re thrilled to announce that our parent company Group One and WP Media have acquired GTmetrix! We’re excited to team up and enhance our shared mission: optimizing your web performance. With their complementary expertise, we are reinforcing our commitment to developing innovative solutions that help you achieve faster loading times, better engagement and increased conversions. Together, we are more than ready to help you unlock your website’s full potential and win online!”
So far, the news has been met with positive response with users commenting how great it is to have two great products together in one place with another commenter saying they hope the company can also offer these under more affordable pricing and subscription models.
In a nutshell, GTmetrix is a website performance testing tool that can tell you how your website is performing and if it is slow, how to optimize it.
WP Rocket has been around since 2013 and is well-received by WordPress experts as being the best ‘All-In-One’ Web Performance Plugin around. A caching plugin – for temporary storage location for copies of files or data – it helps WordPress websites to achieve better speed results, more traffic, better engagement and higher conversions more easily.
The two applications are used in complement with each other and have been used by experienced WordPress developers and website owners for some time.
Benefits
WP Rocket uses GTmetrix to test the performance of websites in a number of ways;
1) Quick diagnosis with Speed Visualisation – this tool helps give users an at-a-glance representation of their page load with markers so that users can see where any major issues occurred during the initial page load.
2) Testing from multiple global locations – with website visitors from around the world, it is important to have a testing tool that allows website owners to see how their page performs from multiple global locations.
3) Analytics reporting – The Waterfall Chart is a key feature for spotting issues with scripts or requests. This is a great way to see which files take a long time to load or if there are any issues.
4) History Graphs – The History tab is a very handy tool to see if there is any improvement after enabling a specific feature on WP Rocket, and can track performance over time.
And many more features available for more enhanced testing of sites.
How Fortifli use it
Here at Fortifli, we have been using WP Rocket to support our clients for many years. We use an unlimited license as our “go-to” for caching due to it being fast, stable and “just works”.
The advanced settings can always be a challenge with any caching plugin, but WP Rocket is still the simplest and fastest we have found throughout our many years of testing.
We also use GTMetrix for pre and post-optimisation reports for our clients. Whilst the subscription model has changed we have continued to use it due to the effectiveness of the product and what it can offer our clients. Another software we have found useful for generating more full bandwidth reports is a tool by SolarWinds Pingdom.
Summary
We look forward to seeing what this continued collaboration continues to offer and the ease in the service we can continue to bring our clients. If you have any questions about the products we use and services we offer feel free to contact us!