Jetpack Boost

Supercharge your WordPress site’s performance and improve web vital scores for better SEO with the Jetpack Boost plugin.

Get started for free, or upgrade to take advantage of paid features like Jetpack Boost’s Automated Critical CSS, image quality control, and image size analyzer. You can learn more on our plans page.

Install Jetpack Boost

To use Jetpack Boost, make sure you have:

• A web host that meets the WordPress host requirements.
• The latest version of WordPress. If your version of WordPress is out of date, you’ll see a prompt to automatically upgrade with a single click, or you can upgrade manually.
• A publicly accessible WordPress site: no password protection or Coming Soon / Maintenance Mode plugin in use.
• A publicly accessible XML-RPC file.

You do not need the Jetpack plugin for Jetpack Boost to work. Jetpack Boost is an independent plugin.

To get Jetpack Boost:

1. Start at your WP Admin dashboard.
2. Go to Plugins → Add New.
3. Search for Jetpack Boost. The latest version will be in the search results and will be named Jetpack Boost – Website Speed, Performance and Critical CSS
4. When you find the plugin, click Install Now.
5. Once installed, click Activate. 
6. After activating, you will be taken to a page where you can choose between the paid and free tiers.
7. After selecting the plan, you will be redirected to the Jetpack Boost dashboard and your current scores for Mobile and Desktop will be calculated.

8. You can turn on and off the different Jetpack Boost optimization options. Each time you turn an option on or off, click Refresh located in the top right corner of the screen.

If you’re having trouble getting Jetpack Boost to connect to your site, please follow the steps in our documentation on Jetpack connection issues.

Get the most out of Jetpack Boost

Jetpack Boost has a few different optimization options. It’s a good idea to experiment with different combinations to see what has the best effect on your site. Website speed is not an exact science, and many different factors can influence your site’s loading time.

If you have other optimization plugins installed, we don’t recommend having the same types of optimization enabled in both plugins, as it is unlikely to benefit your site and may cause unexpected issues.

Optimize CSS Loading

To move important CSS styles (or “critical CSS“) to the start of the page’s code and help display your content faster, please:

1. Turn on this setting
2. Stay on this page until the CSS optimization is complete. If you don’t, the process will pause, and you will need to come back and complete it.

If you check your site’s health via Tools > Site Health in your site’s WP Admin, you may see the following message:

Jetpack Boost detected the following performance issues with your site:
- Outdated Critical CSS

With Jetpack Boost Free, you will need to follow these steps to resolve that error:

1. Click the link below the message to visit the Boost settings page.
2. Click the Regenerate button to regenerate your site’s critical CSS.

With Jetpack Boost Paid, Critical CSS is automatically regenerated for you. Set it and forget it. This feature automatically regenerates your critical CSS after site changes, recalculates performance scores after each change, and you will receive dedicated email support.

Learn more about how to make the most of the optimize CSS feature.

Cache Site Pages

Enhance your site’s speed by caching frequently accessed content. This improves page load times and user experience, positively impacting SEO. Activation is simple: once Jetpack Boost is installed, toggle the Cache Site Pages option within the Jetpack section of your WordPress dashboard. The feature automatically updates the cache when content changes, ensuring your site always presents the latest information.

For added flexibility, Jetpack Boost allows you to exclude specific pages from caching, perfect for content that updates frequently.

Defer Non‑Essential JavaScript

Delay loading JavaScript that isn’t essential to the page’s function until everything else has loaded.

If you experience unwanted behavior when you defer JS with Boost, the affected functionality could rely on the JavaScript files being in a certain order or being made available to the page as soon as possible.

Concatenate JS

To consolidate multiple JavaScript files into one comprehensive script and shrink it for optimal use:

1. Toggle the Concatenate JS option in Jetpack Boost to ON.
2. If you wish to exclude specific JavaScript strings from concatenation, enter them in the provided field.
3. Click Save.

The Concatenate JS feature works only with JavaScript files that are added via the WordPress Enqueue API and will not affect inline scripts or scripts embedded directly into pages or posts.

Concatenate CSS

To combine multiple CSS files into a single, minified file:

1. Toggle the Concatenate CSS option in Jetpack Boost to ON.
2. If you wish to exclude specific CSS strings from concatenation, enter them in the provided field.
3. Click Save.

The Concatenate CSS feature is specifically designed for files added through the WordPress Enqueue API and does not apply to inline styles.

Image CDN

Use Jetpack’s extensive Content Delivery Network to ensure rapid and reliable delivery of your images. This feature not only optimizes the size of your images, but also transforms them into the highly efficient WebP format, and leverages a global server network for their distribution.

Jetpack Boost free: Your images will be copied and served by our global content delivery network (CDN).

Jetpack Boost Paid: n addition to having your images served from our CDN, with the paid plan, you gain the ability to control the quality of your images. This means you can choose the level of detail you prefer, contributing to further improving your site speed.

In the paid plan, you can also access the Auto-Resize Lazy Images feature. This automatically adjusts the size of images that are lazily loaded to perfectly fit the dimensions they occupy on the page. This feature becomes available when Image CDN is enabled. To activate the feature, use the toggle

Image Performance Guide

Get details about image size on your site, so you can make adjustments to increase the site speed. Learn more about how to use the Image Performance Guide

Image Size Analyzer ^BETA

Detect images that are not appropriately sized on your website and get guidance on how to fix them, thereby enhancing loading times and increasing both user satisfaction and search engine rankings. The Image Size Analyzer is a paid feature and with Jetpack Boost’s paid version or included in the Jetpack Complete plan.

Measure the speed boost from WP Super Cache

If you use the WP Super Cache plugin on your site, you can check the speed improvement from WP Super Cache right from the Boost dashboard and see how much difference it makes for your users:

Use Jetpack Boost locally or on multisite

Local or private installations

Test Jetpack Boost on local environments with “Offline Mode.”

Privacy Information

We are fully committed to the privacy and security of our customers and their personal data. For a better understanding of how Jetpack Boost uses your data, please refer to the Automattic Privacy Notice (Automattic owns and operates the Jetpack Boost plugin), the Automattic Privacy Policy, and the following section.

Jetpack Boost uses Jetpack libraries to connect to WordPress.com and calculate the page speed score (making use of the tk_ai cookie). There is more information about cookies within Jetpack here.

Data Used
Site Owners / Users In order to calculate Page speed scores, generate Critical CSS blocks, etc, the following information is used: WordPress.com-connected site ID, local site ID, and site URL. Additionally, for activity tracking (detailed below): IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID and URL, Jetpack version, user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code, Critical CSS generation URL, block counts, block sizes, error details, generation time, provider keys, Boost version, and active Boost features. We monitor the types of errors encountered during the Boost Cache setup process to pinpoint user challenges and direct our enhancement efforts.	Site Visitors None.
Activity Tracked
Site Owners / Users We track when, by which user, and which website is connected to WordPress.com and when the plugin is deactivated. We also track activities such as the Critical CSS generation process, when, and which, configuration settings are modified. For Jetpack Boost Premium subscribers, we also track site performance over time. We use this data to populate the Historical Performance section of the Jetpack Boost dashboard. We track activities such as enabling the Cache feature and altering its settings. We use this data to identify common usage patterns to better target our future improvements.	Site Visitors None.
Data Synced (Read More)
Site Owners / Users We sync options that identify whether or not optimization features are enabled, latest speed score measurements, and options that contain the state of last critical CSS generation.	Site Visitors None.