NitroPack Review: PROS & CONS With Real Statistics

With Google’s latest updates, website speed has become an important ranking factor. It was already well known that website speed was a significant factor in improving conversion rates and bounce rates. As of Google’s recent announcement, Core Web Vital metrics now determine the technical quality of your website. Nitropack is one optimization plugin that can assist with these issues.

As a WordPress website owner, you might be able to handle many of these issues through plugins. However, each caching plugin offers different benefits and drawbacks. Here I will discuss the benefits and use of Nitropack, one of my favorite caching plugins.

Let’s look at this tool in more detail to understand it better.

Nitropack Overview

Nitropack provides a comprehensive solution for multiple CMS and PHP-based websites. Additionally, Nitropack offers its services across these platforms.

• WordPress
• Magento
• Opencart
• WooCommerce
• PHP SDK

For this review, I will concentrate on WordPress websites.

An all-in-one solution for compressing JS, CSS, and HTML scripts. It also provides CDN and image optimization services. If we compare it with a tool like WP Rocket, it does a remarkable job of script compression; however, it requires the CDN and Image optimizer plugins separately.

In general, this plugin will assist you in passing the Google Core Web Vital test to improve FCP, LCP, and CLS. It also uses auto caching to provide your users with faster loading of web elements.

The most attractive feature of this tool is that it is cloud-based. Thus, the plugin will do all the optimization automatically without affecting your hosting bandwidth. Therefore, even if you are not a technical person, setting up and using this plugin should only take you five minutes.

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Nitropack Pros & Cons

Let’s briefly review the advantages and disadvantages of Nitropack, so you can decide whether it is worth your money or not.

Pros

• Good CDN
• Automatic optimization for HTML, CSS, and JS
• Comprehensive image optimization toolset
• Tons of minor tweaks to improve site speed and pass CWV.
• More page speed equates to more conversions.
• Less cost for high-speed hosting/CDN
• Support eCommerce plugins such as WooCommerce or Magneto
• It helps in passing CWV and better ranking

Cons

• Some settings are too aggressive and may conflict with other plugins
• Customer Support is not impressive
• Audit tools show issues, but you can tweak them to adjust
• Bandwidth outrage for larger sites

Features of Nitropack

Nitropack offers a wide array of features to make your website faster and optimized for Google. Most are automatic, so you do not have to do anything more than setting up the plugin. Instead, you can only select an optimization method and some basic settings from your WordPress dashboard.

It will be necessary for you to perform the manual adjustments from the Nitropack Cloud dashboard.

Auto Optimization

Nitropack will automatically optimize your website after installation. While it has 5 levels of optimization, it automatically switches to Ludicrous. I believe this is the best auto setting in Nitropack; however, you might wish to switch between “Strong” and “Ludicrous.” For a better understanding of auto-optimization, you can follow this guide.

If your website utilizes a lot of JS, it may conflict with the Ludicrous setting. For instance, JS script is used to design an automated “Mobile Menu.” Keeping the optimization on Ludicrous is risky as it can break the code and make your mobile menu look odd.

However, if you create the menu using CSS, this will resolve your problem. Also, you have the option of tweaking your settings to find what works best for your website.

Advanced Caching System

Nitropack provides an advanced caching system that can reduce bandwidth usage and enhance the user experience on your site. On the caching department, it does the job best. It caches the page when a user clicks on it and keeps it on the CDN.

From both the WordPress and Nitropack dashboards, you can check how much caching and CDN are being used. Additionally, you may purge all the cache when updating your content if you so desire.

• The Smart Cache feature is a very useful tool if your users are returning more frequently than they are new. However, updating content should be done at the same speed as before and without losing cache data.
• Smart Cache automates the process for you. It will update the cache even if you update year-old content without compromising performance or user experience.
• Cache Warmup is a great feature if you have low traffic on your site and are not expanding rapidly. Normally, it is disabled by default, but if you want your users to have a faster browsing experience, you can enable it.

By enabling this, your visitors can view the cache even if they do not click on the page. In addition, if the visitor has a slower internet connection, the page will load much more quickly.

Image Optimization

Images play a crucial role in developing a website; however, they consume a significant amount of space. If the images take a long time to load, it affects the overall user experience. Nitropack automatically compresses images and adjusts their size as needed.

• Adaptive Image Sizing: Reduce load times by loading images according to the device.
• Compress the image: Keeps the image in lossy or lossless format to consume less bandwidth and make the website load faster.
• Slow loading: Defers the display of images until the visitor is ready to see them.
• WEBP formatting: Automatically convert old and new uploaded images into WEBP format so the browser can display them more quickly.

Nitropack handles all of these behind the scenes on its cloud platform, which means there is no additional load on your website.

HTML Optimization

Nitropack automatically optimizes your website’s HTML script. Many plugins provide this feature. However, it may breaks the website’s coding and makes it look ugly. Besides doing well with HTML, you can also optimize JSON code on your website.

If you experience any issues related to JSON code on your website, you can use this tool to resolve them. For example, if you use an opt-in form, you may experience a loading delay due to the JSON code. Nitropack automatically handles this for you.

I recommend using OptinMonster as your opt-in form. Then, you can easily integrate both of them to attain the best results for lead generation.

Additionally, you can include the HTML comment as a DOM resource. However, I do not recommend doing this since it will increase the loading time significantly.

CSS Optimization

Nitropack automatically optimizes CSS in an excellent manner. It compresses and minifies the CSS code to make pages load faster. The automation includes these features.

• Combine CSS: Combine all the CSS files into 1 file to reduce the HTTP requests.
• Above the Fold CSS First: First, it loads the CSS above the fold to improve the user experience and only makes requests for the content visitors need to see.
• Minification: Minify the code for better optimization.
• Compression: Compress for both hosting and server to deliver content quickly.

Moreover, you will also get some advanced features such as custom CSS implementation, reduced unused CSS, and critical CSS. Also, manual optimization will be required to implement these settings.

However, if you look at the price, you will only have to pay $10 per month for services such as criticalcss.

Javascript Optimization

When it comes to slow loading speed, JS scripts are the number one culprit. As with HTML and CSS, Nitropack automates and perfects the JS optimization process.

• JS Combining: Combine all the JS code into 1 pack for lesser HTTP requests.
• JS Compression: Compress all the scripts for faster delivery to the server.
• JS Minification: Minify the codes without breaking the site.

It is recommended that you do not manually combine JS unless you have expertise in doing this. A single error may result in the complete destruction of your website, even after removing the add-ons.

Integration and Tools

While Nitropack is sufficient to optimize your website’s speed and performance on its own, the developer offers an enhanced solution through integration.

If your hosting provider uses Varnish or NGINX as the reverse proxy server instead of gZip, you should adjust the reverse proxy for optimal performance. For example, you can adjust the reverse proxy for a specific URL or the entire website.

Additionally, if you use services under Cloudflare or Sucuri, you can integrate those with the API keys to improve your CDN performance.

Another feature I liked about Nitropack is the Ads code optimization. It is particularly useful for bloggers who utilize advertising platforms for monetization.

If you run advertisements on your website, Google Page Speed Insight will experience this speed decrease issue. You can resolve this issue with one click.

Top Class CDN

There is not much to say about Nitropack CDN because it uses Amazon CloudFront. According to G2, it is the 2nd top alternative to IBM CDN. Aside from its reputation as a white label CDN, it is highly reliable.

Over 70+ servers in more than 70 countries ensure visitors receive files from the closest server on their browser.

NitroPack on Action

So far, you have only learned about features and benefits. If you do not consider real-world experience, it appears incomplete. I have therefore conducted a test on a dummy website using a cheap hosting provider to see the raw potential of Nitropack.

All the tests were run in “Guest Mode” on a Chrome browser. As a result, there will be no cache to affect the results.

The tools I used are GT Metrix and Google Page Speed Insight. Both of these web performance checkers are reputable and extremely powerful.

I would also like to remind you that I used Kadence Theme and Kadence Block editor to create the demo website. Therefore, before beginning the test, all other plugins were disabled.

Before Adding Nitropack

Google PSI Mobile Report:

The results from Google Page Speed Insight indicate that the performance of the mobile version of my website is only 77. The load time is 8.9 seconds. It is extremely high for a mobile device to display the page. While the blocking time was good, the other metrics were poor.

Google PSI Desktop Report:

Even though I was using X10hosting’s free plan, desktop performance remained high. One of the reasons is the lightweight SEO-optimized Kadence theme. However, my internet speed is quite fast, reaching up to 25 Mbps, so 2.9 seconds is quite noticeable.

GT Metrix report:

While the screenshot appears to be a decent website result, the First Byte to Interact time is 1.7 seconds. Therefore, it would take far too long for only the items above the fold to load. Furthermore, the page size is 1.13 MB, which will take a considerable amount of time to load on a slower connection, making 49 HTTP requests.

After Adding Nitropack

Now, let’s see what NitroPack can do, based on similar settings on my website. Still, I have not activated any other plugins to maintain fair play.

Google PSI Mobile Report:

Look at the performance increase on the tool. It increased by 95 percent from 77 percent. In addition, load time decreased to 2.8 seconds, which is 3.18 times faster, and FCP and TTI (Time to Interactive) improved significantly in real-time.

Google PSI Desktop Report:

Compared with the previous result without Nitropack, this is quite impressive. Performance improved to 99 points, and the speed index decreased to 1 second. The time to load both FCP and TTI was 0.7 seconds. In summary, everything has improved significantly.

GT Metrix Report:

GT Metrix’s report explains this better since the figures have changed significantly. Performance score of 100% with loading time of 0.7 seconds. That is impressive. The size of the page has decreased to 361 kb, which is 3.53x smaller than the previous result. It only sent 16 HTTP requests to load the page.

The statistics speak for themselves. Nitropack improves your website’s speed significantly. It takes it to the next level because it does not pressure your hosting server.

How to Connect Nitropack with WordPress Website?

If you are convinced that you want this tool, you should also know how to connect it.

The first step is to create an account on Nitropack’s official website. Next, install the Nitropack plugin on your website. If your website and Nitropack account are in the same browser, clicking the “Connect to Nitropack” button will connect the plugin to your account.

Otherwise, click on enter details manually, and you can enter your “Site ID” and “Site Secret” manually. Copy and paste them from your Nitropack account and click “Connect to Nitropack.” This is all you need to do.

Nitropack Pricing Plans

The Nitropack offers 3 premium packages and the option to start for free. Each of these packages is available in both monthly and annual billing.

If you pay monthly:

1. The Business pack will cost $18.90/month.
2. The Growth pack will cost $45.90/month
3. The Scale will cost $158.40/month

On the other hand, if you choose the yearly package, the average monthly cost is significantly reduced thanks to the free two-month trial period. The monthly fee for the yearly package is $15.75 per month with a maximum of $132 per month.

No matter your plans, you may only use this on one website. However, you can get the premium packages under the same Nitropack account if you have more than one website.

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Is NitroPack better than WP Rocket?

When it comes to similar features like CSS and HTML compression, Nitropack is not better than WP Rocket. However, Nitropack offers a CDN and an automatic optimization feature that gives it the upper hand.

Despite this, WP Rocket is more affordable when considering its features. Therefore, when it comes to Nitropack, it is the best option if you can afford to pay for the services.

Final Verdict of NitroPack Review

Nitropack would be the best option if you have exhausted all other optimization tools and failed to achieve the Google Core Web Vital results. In addition, you should keep in mind that your website can only be optimized for 1 million page views.

If you have a large website with more than one million visitors per month, Nitropack will not be able to provide you with the same level of performance. Additionally, it is a little more expensive than the other optimization plugins but offers more features.

Nitropack is a great option for anyone who can afford the premium plans. In addition, medium-sized sites with a high ranking on Google should try this tool to keep the site fast and user-friendly.