How To Use FastPixel Plugin To Speed Up Your Website
I’m a big fan of WordPress plugins that boost website speed.
Love to see the 90+ PageSpeed insights in Google.
I’ve been using Breeze plugin and WPRocket plugin on my WordPress websites for a long time. Breeze is a free plugin that works great. WPRocket is a paid plugin that also works great.
Recently, the ShortPixel team reached out to me on Twitter to check out a speed optimization plugin they launched called as FastPixel.
FastPixel is a paid plugin, but they gave me a 3-month coupon. So, I thought I’ll try it out and let you guys know how it works.
What is FastPixel?
FastPixel is a website optimization plugin or, as they call it, a website accelerator plugin.
This means it has features that will speed up website pages. It does this with page optimization, image optimization, and using a CDN.
How much speed difference will FastPixel make?
The improvement you see on your website pages depends on how much optimization was missing.
One good thing is they have provided a tool where we can check this difference between the unoptimized and optimized version.
Just enter the webpage URL and hit Test. It will come to a page similar to below showing links to the Google speed test for both versions.
How much does FastPixel cost?
FastPixel costs $30 if you take the annual plan. This is for 1 website that gets a maximum 50K pageviews per month. There are higher plans for higher pageviews as you see below.
How to set up FastPixel on your website?
You need to register first to use FastPixel. Go to the website and click the User Area button on the top right.
Create an account and login to the Dashboard. In my case, I got a coupon that I claimed here. You would need to claim a coupon you got after a purchase.
Add your domain under the Associate your domain option.
Go back to the FastPixel website and download the WordPress plugin by using the Download button on the top right. You can install this plugin in your WordPress plugin options.
The plugin has very few options of Cache Status and Settings. It surprised me because of the lack of settings and thought I had some wrong version.
But I realized that they have to keep everything under the hood, so less tinkering for newbies. The only setting I found was a few things like Page Exlusions and JavaScript Exclusion.
What I like about FastPixel?
Price: The price is good when you take the annual plan.
Easy to set up: I only needed to register and install the plugin to get it working.
Performance: I think it will give you a good performance if you don’t have an optimized website.
What I dislike about FastPixel?
Monthly pageviews: I don’t like that the license is based on monthly pageviews. I guess that’s because of the CDN they provide. But other tools like WPRocket and Breeze don’t have this limitation.
Lack of settings: I understand this is supposed to be an easy to install tool. But this also means you don’t get options if you want to tweak the performance. Or find an issue that needs a change in some settings. I’ve done this with WPRocket when there were some issues on my website.
Conclusion
If you’re very new to website optimization and afraid of technical changes, FastPixel may be a tool for you. Really easy to set up and use.
But if you already know about website speed optimization and need to customize settings, then tools like Breeze and WPRocket are better options.
