It could be tempting to neglect page caching if you have a small site, but there are very compelling reasons to use page caching, even in its simplest form.
Be ready for success
When you create a new site, chances are that things will start slow. At that time, performance might not be a big issue as your site looks fast enough but keep in mind that you might be the only person visiting it at that moment.
Hopefully, some pages will go viral, and the last thing you want is for new users to experience a sluggish site, or worse, a down site. Page caching is a much better use of server resources, and you can serve a much greater number of visitors on the same server.
Gain an SEO edge on your competitors
Many website owners face full panic as site performance counts more and more towards search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO).
Page caching makes your site faster at several crucial Google metrics, including First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), two of the six Core Web Vitals metrics that matter more than ever.
Having better search rankings can save you a considerable amount of money if you compare them with paid clicks visits.
Don’t get your hosting account suspended
Over the years, I’ve heard many stories of people getting their hosting accounts suspended because they used too many resources. Sometimes it is at no fault to them as they might have been victims of bot activity as automated page crawlers kept visiting their site.
Page caching would mitigate such circumstances and help kept resource utilization under the threshold at which a hosting company would strike.
You can typically get a hosting account reinstated, but the stress and trouble are surely not worth the risk.
It’s easy
Basic page caching is very easy to set up, and for most sites, it’s just a matter of installing a plugin and turning it on. There’s always room for additional tuning, but just having page caching ON gets you quite far.
Save money
If you care about nothing else, think about the money you could save by spending less money on server costs. With page caching, you can serve the same amount of users on potentially a cheaper server!
When success strikes, page caching can delay the moment when you have to move to a more expensive server. In fact, there are strategies to serve nearly “infinite traffic” in case you hit the homepage of Reddit!