WP Rocket on a host that already caches pages means two layers deciding what is stale. The fix is not removing the plugin — it is deciding which layer serves the page.
The plugin does far more than page caching, and that is the part worth keeping.
Page caching moves to the platform, where it runs in front of PHP rather than inside it. Two caches in front of one site means two things deciding what is stale, and whichever purged last wins.
Lazy loading, script delay, CSS handling and font preloading are the parts of WP Rocket no server cache replaces. Switching the whole plugin off to avoid a conflict throws those away too.
Clearing the cache from wp-admin clears the platform cache as well, so a purge does what the button says rather than appearing to work.
Its database cleanup runs on WP-Cron, which on a quiet site does not fire when it believes it does. That moves to the platform scheduler.
WP Rocket's preloader can hit a site harder than its visitors do. It is rate-limited so a cache warm never competes with the people the cache is for.
The confusing part of running a caching plugin on a caching host is not knowing which one served the page you are looking at. That should not be guesswork.
A page cached by a plugin is still a PHP process starting up to hand you a file. Cached at the edge, WordPress is not involved at all.
These differ from a standard WordPress site on the same plan, and each follows from a caching plugin running on a caching platform.
| Setting | What we do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| WP Rocket page caching | Switched off, with the platform cache serving pages instead | Two page caches in front of one site means two things deciding what is stale, and the one that wins is whichever purged most recently. |
| Optimisation features | Left enabled — lazy load, script delay, CSS and font handling | These are the parts of the plugin no server-side cache replaces, and disabling the whole plugin to resolve a conflict quietly loses them. |
| Cache purging | Wired so a purge from wp-admin clears the platform cache too | Otherwise clearing the cache appears to succeed and changes nothing a visitor actually sees. |
| Database cleanup | Moved from WP-Cron to the platform scheduler | Its cleanup schedule depends on traffic to fire, so on a quiet site it runs late or not at all. |
| Preload crawler | Rate-limited against the site's own capacity | The preloader can generate more requests than the site's visitors do, and on a small plan it competes with them for workers. |
Every plan includes free migration, daily backups, SSL and 24/7 support.
Free migration, one cache serving responses, and every optimisation feature still doing its job.