WPThumbs
Themes Plugins By purpose By industry Best-of lists Fix it guides
Free Plugin by Automattic v1.5

Batcache

Batcache uses Memcached to store and serve rendered pages.

Batcache

The facts

Rating
4.5★ from 2
Active installs
700+
Price
Free
Last updated
28 Mar 2020
Added
Jun 2008
Requires WP
3.2
Tested up to
WP 5.3.23
Downloads
114,370

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Batcache is a WordPress plugin that uses Memcached to store and serve rendered pages, making it suitable for sites that run on multiple servers. It helps reduce server load by serving cached pages to new visitors, which can significantly decrease page generation times and improve traffic handling capabilities.

This plugin is particularly useful for high-traffic websites that need to maintain performance without overwhelming their server resources. It is designed for users who may not want file-based caching solutions and need a more centralised caching approach.

Best for: Websites experiencing high traffic or those hosted on multiple servers.

What it does well

  • Uses Memcached for efficient page caching
  • Reduces server load during high traffic
  • Improves page generation times significantly
  • Allows multiple servers to share the same cache

Where it falls short

  • May serve slightly outdated pages to new visitors
  • Development has not been updated since March 2020
  • Limited feature set compared to some other caching solutions

Verdict

Batcache offers a practical caching solution for specific server setups, but potential users should consider its limitations and lack of recent updates.

From the developer

Automattic's own description of Batcache, lightly tidied.

Batcache uses Memcached to store and serve rendered pages. It can also optionally cache redirects. It’s not as fast as Donncha’s WP-Super-Cache but it can be used where file-based caching is not practical or not desired. For instance, any site that is run on more than one server should use Batcache because it allows all servers to use the same storage.

Development testing showed a 40x reduction in page generation times: pages generated in 200ms were served from the cache in 5ms. Traffic simulations with Siege demonstrate that WordPress can handle up to twenty times more traffic with Batcache installed.

Batcache is aimed at preventing a flood of traffic from breaking your site. It does this by serving old pages to new users. This reduces the demand on the web server CPU and the database. It also means some people may see a page that is a few minutes old. However this only applies to people who have not interacted with your web site before. Once they have logged in or left a comment they will always get fresh pages.

Possible future features:

  • Comments, edits, and new posts will trigger cache regeneration
  • Online installation assistance
  • Configuration page
  • Stats

Read the full description on the official page →

Tagged as

Alternatives

Other plugins for making sites fast.

WP-Optimize

Get caching and more with this powerful cache plugin. Cache, optimize images, clean your database and minify f...

Free 1M+ installs 4.8★ (2,606)
LiteSpeed Cache

All-in-one unbeatable acceleration & PageSpeed improvement: caching, image/CSS/JS optimization...

Free 7M+ installs 4.8★ (2,764)
EWWW Image Optimizer

Comprehensive image optimization with WebP, AVIF, Lazy Load, and more. Optimize images automatically for Faste...

Free 1M+ installs 4.8★ (1,838)
Under Construction

Easy to use Under Construction Page & Coming Soon Page. Enable Under Construction Mode in seconds & sh...

Free 600k+ installs 4.8★ (1,285)
Smush

Smush

93

Compress and optimize images, enable lazy load, serve WebP & AVIF, and speed up your site with a global im...

Free 1M+ installs 4.8★ (6,051)
Converter for Media

Speed up your website by using our WebP & AVIF Converter. Optimize images and serve WebP and AVIF images i...

Free 500k+ installs 4.9★ (1,097)