A caching plugin serves a static HTML file instead of running PHP and database queries on every page load. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. It’s one of the oldest, simplest performance tricks in web development, and somehow it became one of the most expensive products in the entire WordPress ecosystem.
I used WP Rocket for years, on my own sites and every client site I manage. It was genuinely good, and at the time, the price was fair. Then the renewals kept creeping up. I didn’t notice at first, the way you don’t notice a frog in slowly heating water. Then one day I went to renew and the price for an unlimited sites license had hit $600/year.
I haven’t been able to update in two years.
That’s not a minor inconvenience. Security patches, WordPress compatibility updates, bug fixes: all locked behind a renewal I couldn’t justify. For something that serves a static file.
The GPL Problem Nobody Talks About
Here’s something most WordPress users don’t know: if you purchase a plugin released under the GPL license, you already have the legal right to use it on unlimited sites. You don’t need a special license tier for that. The “1 site, 5 sites, 10 sites” pricing structure that most premium plugin companies use is, at best, a legal gray area, and at worst, a deliberate misrepresentation of your rights as a customer.
The trick is that the fine print usually clarifies the site limit only applies to updates and support, not the software itself. Technically GPL-compliant, practically misleading. Some companies go further and actually cripple the plugin from functioning on sites beyond the license limit, which crosses the line from misleading into an actual GPL violation.
WP Rocket isn’t the only company doing this. It’s an industry-wide pattern. But at $600/year, they’re the most expensive example of it.
So I Built an Alternative
I never would have built Snappy if the price had stayed reasonable. I had no plans to enter the caching plugin market. But after two years of skipped updates and mounting frustration, I didn’t have much choice.
Snappy does everything I actually need: file-based page caching, HTML/CSS/JS minification, GZIP compression, lazy loading, deferred JavaScript, critical CSS, CDN integration, cache preloading from sitemap, database cleanup, browser caching headers, security headers, etc. The free version is fully functional with the core page-caching feature. The advanced version is only $1 right now during launch, but will never cost more than a small one-time fee for a lifetime unlimited license.
One price. One time. Unlimited sites. Forever.
That’s what the GPL always promised you anyway. I’m just making it obvious.