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PhastPress

By Albert Peschar

Performance & Optimization / Caching Solutions

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

PhastPress Review - In-Depth Analysis

PhastPress optimizes your site for improved performance using advanced techniques.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.9/10

User Rating

4.9/5 (based on 99+ reviews)

Active Installations

10,000+

Update Frequency

Excellent It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

6.1 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

PhastPress uses advanced techniques to manipulate your pages, scripts, stylesheets and images to significantly improve load times. It is designed to conform to Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix recommendations and can improve your site's score dramatically.

PhastPress' motto is no configuration. Install, activate and go!

PhastPress has the Phast web page optimisation engine by Albert Peschar and Milko Kosturkov at its core.

Phast optimizes images using PNG quantization and JPEG recoding. It inlines small images in the page and converts JPEG images into WebP for supporting browsers. Phast enables native lazy loading to speed up page loading and save bandwidth.

Phast loads all scripts on your page asynchronously and in a single request, while maintaining full compatibility with legacy scripts. It proxies external scripts to extend their cache lifetime and inlines critical CSS automatically. Phast loads non-critical CSS asynchronously and in a single request, inlines Google Fonts CSS, and lazily loads IFrames to prioritize the main page load.

Get the full power of Phast for your website by installing PhastPress now.

Comparing to Alternatives

PhastPress stands out in the WordPress optimization space with several capable alternatives available, each offering unique features for performance enhancement.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly effective static asset optimization improving page speed significantly
Simple and user-friendly setup with minimal configuration needed
Responsive developer support addressing issues promptly
Compatible with other optimization plugins and image optimizers
Free version offers robust features with a pro upgrade available

Weaknesses

Known past security vulnerabilities requiring updates to latest versions
Lacks granular control such as excluding specific JavaScript assets
Some initial CSS optimization errors reported by users
Security risk score indicates moderate risk history

User Sentiment Analysis

With a near-perfect 4.9 rating from 99 reviews, users overwhelmingly praise PhastPress for its simplicity and effectiveness in speeding up WordPress sites.

Positive highlights

'Very simple and powerful.' - andrebeltrame
'PhastPress is better than all of them, and it’s free.' - jake79
'Simple to setup but very effective in optimizing the website.' - johns1951
'Really simple and a great plug-in that improves Pagespeed score.' - Toine Rademacher
'Best page speed optimization plugin for static assets if you don’t have a LightSpeed Server.' - iontulburedev

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Past security vulnerabilities fixed only in recent versions
Limited options for excluding specific JavaScript assets
Some users experienced initial CSS optimization errors

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users seeking a straightforward, powerful plugin to optimize static assets and improve page speed without complex configuration.

Not ideal for

Those requiring advanced customization like selective JavaScript exclusion or who prioritize plugins with a spotless security history.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers comprehensive static asset optimization and caching features sufficient for most users.

Pro version

Premium features typically include advanced optimization options, priority support, and additional performance enhancements.

Final Verdict

PhastPress is an excellent choice for WordPress users wanting a simple yet effective optimization plugin that significantly improves site speed. Its high user ratings and responsive support highlight its reliability and ease of use.

However, users should ensure they keep the plugin updated due to past security vulnerabilities and consider alternatives if they need more granular control over asset optimization. Overall, it offers great value, especially with its free version and optional pro upgrade.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free PhastPress plugin.

Optimisation

Optimization

Page Speed

Pagespeed Insights

Speed

FAQ

No. You do not need any other plugins, such as image optimization (e.g., Smush) or file minification (e.g., Autoptimize) after you install PhastPress, because PhastPress includes all necessary optimizations.

I recommend using the simple combination of PhastPress and WP Super Cache only. This reduces the potential for plugin conflicts, and it is really all you need.

Fast Velocity Minify is not compatible with PhastPress, and causes PhastPress not to work. Please use either plugin, but not both.

Should you need to disable PhastPress on certain pages, you can use the following code to do so:

add_filter('phastpress_disable', '__return_true');

Make sure that this code runs during template_redirect or earlier.

Add this code to your theme’s functions.php, or to a new file in wp-content/mu-plugins:

add_filter('phastpress_disable', function ($disable) {     return $disable || is_cart() || is_checkout(); });

By default, PhastPress delays the load of all scripts until after the DOM has finished loading, so that the browser can render the page as quickly as possible. If you wish to load specific scripts as soon as possible, such as Google Analytics, you may add the data-phast-no-defer attribute to the script. It would be preferable to also mark external scripts as async, when possible.

For example:

<script data-phast-no-defer> // my script goes here </script>

Or:

<script async data-phast-no-defer src="http://url.to.my.script/"></script>

If you (or a plugin) are using wp_enqueue_script to add the script to the page, you can use the phast_no_defer data key to stop PhastPress from processing the script:

wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true);

Make sure this is run after registering the script. If you are trying to apply this to a script loaded by a plugin, you could use the wp_print_scripts hook:

add_action('wp_print_scripts', function () {     wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true); });

If you use the HTML source code to find the script name, note that -js and -js-extra are not part of the name. For example, for a script like <script id="jquery-core-js"> in the source code, the script name is jquery-core, and that is what you should pass to wp_script_add_data.

This is applied automatically for these scripts:

Google Analytics script inserted by Monsterinsights since PhastPress 1.29.
Tracking script inserted by Slimstat Analytics since PhastPress 1.30.
Google Analytics script inserted by Google Site Kit since PhastPress 1.75.
Google Analytics script inserted by GA Google Analytics since PhastPress 1.76.

Your theme or a plugin is trying to send HTTP headers after the page has started rendering and bytes have been sent to the browser. This is wrong, but it works when PHP output buffering is enabled.

PhastPress always sends output as soon as possible, to reduce the time to first byte. That means this problem cannot be fixed without slowing down sites without buggy themes/plugins.

To fix the problem on your site, the following code needs to be run in order to enable output buffering:

<?php add_action('template_redirect', function () {     ob_start(); });

You can add this code to your theme’s functions.php, or create a file output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins with the above code. You may have to create this directory first.

Alternatively, download output-buffer.zip and extract the contents into your web folder. You should end up with a file named output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins.

Yes. Add these two lines to your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f RewriteRule ^wp-content/.*[^/]\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$ wp-content/plugins/phastpress/phast.php [L,NC,E=PHAST_SERVICE:images]

Then in PhastPress settings, disable image optimization in tags and CSS.

Now, reload your site and check if images are optimized.

Yes, as long as you use a CSP with a script-src policy containing nonce-*. To enable Phast’s support for CSP implement the phastpress_csp_nonce filter:

<?php add_filter('phastpress_csp_nonce', function () {     return 'my-nonce'; });

Your theme or a plugin is trying to send HTTP headers after the page has started rendering and bytes have been sent to the browser. This is wrong, but it works when PHP output buffering is enabled.

PhastPress always sends output as soon as possible, to reduce the time to first byte. That means this problem cannot be fixed without slowing down sites without buggy themes/plugins.

To fix the problem on your site, the following code needs to be run in order to enable output buffering:

<?php add_action('template_redirect', function () {     ob_start(); });

You can add this code to your theme’s functions.php, or create a file output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins with the above code. You may have to create this directory first.

Alternatively, download output-buffer.zip and extract the contents into your web folder. You should end up with a file named output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins.