I am often asked how my module, Page Cache Ultimate
is different from the competition, especially with the module"ETS Page Cache Pro" sold on PrestaHero. So we can't be judge and jury but I can still list the differences that I have noticed. If you are the developer of "ETS Page Cache Pro" I would be happy to add your right of reply in this article!
The experience
I don't have the exact release date of the ETS module but I know that Page Cache Ultimate is the 1st full HTML page cache module to be released (in March 2013). At the time it competed with "Cache Manager" which allowed you to cache a list of modules, i.e. parts of the page.
The module has been installed on more than 5000 stores and I have improved it year after year thanks to the after sales service I provide to my customers to support them. The PrestaHero module must have been released a few years later.
The browser side cache
Yes there is an option to enable browser side caching but it only concerns static files like CSS, Javascript, fonts and images. With Page Cache Ultimate you also get browser side caching for HTML pages!
Concretely, this means that when a visitor comes back to a page that he has already visited a few minutes before, this page will not be requested from the server again, it will be displayed instantly because it is in the browser's cache.
The automatic refresh of the cache
"ETS Page Cache Pro does not use the links between pages to know which pages should be updated when a product changes price or is no longer available. It will simply refresh the cache of the product page as well as its categories, suppliers and manufacturers pages and the best sellers page.
So, if the product appears on the home page, it will not be updated and will display the old price or the old stock.
Page Cache Ultimate is smarter, it remembers the pages where the products are displayed thanks to the internet links and can refresh all the pages concerned by the last modifications.
The auto-configuration
The HTML caches modules display some module hooks dynamically, it is sometimes necessary to add some Javascript to restore the behavior of these modules after the refresh. This is very complicated to do and that's why Page Cache Ultimate uses a server to automatically configure all known modules. This answers 90% of the cases!
Without it you will spend a lot of time to find the right configuration which is sometimes technical if Javascript is needed. " ETS Page Cache Pro does not offer this feature.
The big stores
From what I could see the table that memorizes all the cached pages is not optimized (a lot of varchar), I am afraid that with a store that has a lot of products it consumes a lot of data.
Page Cache Ultimate also consumes a lot of disk space on very large stores but it is optimized and already tested on stores with more than 100000 products! In addition, version 8 is coming and will consume much less space while being even faster!
Conclusion
Both modules offer HTML caching but Page Cache Ultimate is still ahead of its main competitor. Despite this I continue to work hard to always provide you with the best module on the market, I can't wait to present you v8!
Don't hesitate to give your opinion in the comments if you have tested one or the other solution!
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