Our Essential Craft CMS Plugins: Blitz

If you've ever watched your server melt during a traffic spike, or cringed at your monthly hosting bill, you need to hear about Blitz. This Craft CMS plugin has quietly become the secret weapon for over 11,000 sites, and there's a good reason why every single review gives it 5 stars.

Here's the simple version: Blitz turns your database-driven Craft site into static HTML files. Instead of your server frantically assembling pages from scratch every time someone visits, it just serves up pre-made files. It's like the difference between cooking a meal from scratch for every customer versus having it ready to serve.

But, unlike dumb static site generators, Blitz knows when your content changes and automatically updates just the pages that need it. Your editors keep working normally in Craft's control panel, and visitors get blazing fast pages. Everyone wins.

1. Full Page Caching for Lightning-Fast Performance

• Blitz stores rendered pages as static HTML files and serves them instantly, bypassing Craft’s template rendering.
• This reduces server load and response time dramatically, which is especially important for high-traffic sites.

2. Smart Cache Invalidation

• Unlike basic static caching, Blitz automatically clears or updates cached pages when related content is updated in Craft
• You can configure fine-grained cache invalidation rules: e.g., clearing only entries tied to a specific section instead of the entire cache.

3. Seamless Integration with CDNs

• Blitz can automatically purge CDN caches when content changes.
• Ensures visitors always see the latest version, while still benefiting from global edge delivery.

4. Support for Dynamic Content

• Even though pages are cached statically, Blitz allows for dynamic placeholders and ESI (Edge Side Includes) to keep user-specific or frequently changing content fresh.
• Example: Personalized greetings, shopping cart totals, or CSRF tokens can be rendered dynamically.

5. Improved SEO and Core Web Vitals

• Faster page loads mean better Core Web Vitals scores (LCP, FID, CLS).
• Improves rankings in Google and reduces bounce rates.

At $99 upfront plus $49/year for renewals, Blitz is priced competitively. But the real savings come from what it does to your hosting needs.

Because Blitz serves static pages instead of processing PHP and database queries for every visitor, your server does way less work. The plugin description specifically mentions you can deliver high-performance sites using "much more inexpensive servers." Your existing server can handle significantly more traffic without breaking a sweat, which means you might not need that expensive hosting upgrade after all.

Even better, you can push your entire site to a CDN like Cloudflare or Netlify and serve it from there. Your actual server basically becomes a backstage area where content updates happen, while the CDN handles all your visitor traffic. This setup is particularly cost-effective since many CDNs offer generous free tiers or low-cost plans for static content delivery.

With nearly 12,000 active installations, it's clear that plenty of Craft CMS sites are already using this approach to keep their hosting costs down while maintaining excellent performance.

Here's something that'll help you sleep better: when you're updating Craft or doing maintenance, your site stays online. Visitors keep seeing your pages because they're being served as static files. No maintenance mode, no downtime, no angry emails from clients at 2 AM.

I've personally seen this save bacon during difficult deployments. While the backend was having a moment, visitors had no idea anything was wrong. The site just kept humming along.

PutYourLightsOn, the company behind Blitz, runs their entire site on it. Go ahead, click around their site; notice how every page loads instantly? No spinner, no wait, just boom. Content. That's not because they have some monster server. It's Blitz doing its thing.

The plugin works great whether you're running a local business site getting hundreds of visits or a major publication getting slammed with traffic. It handles Craft 3, 4, and 5, and it's been tested on Craft Cloud.

We, at Brilliance use Blitz for all of our Craft CMS web development projects, such as Bob's Red Mill and Friends of the Children.

If your site is already fast enough and you're happy with your hosting bills, maybe skip it. But if you've ever:

• Watched your server struggle during a traffic spike
• Paid more for hosting than you wanted
• Lost visitors because pages took too long to load
• Worried about your site going down during updates

Then yeah, Blitz is probably worth the hundred bucks.

Blitz does one thing extremely well: it makes Craft sites fast as hell while cutting your server costs. No buzzwords, no revolution. Just a really solid tool that solves real problems. And with that perfect 5-star rating from actual users, it clearly works.

Brilliance is a 5 star rated Craft CMS Agency in Portland, Oregon and a Craft CMS Verified Partner. We have bright and talented people developing websites dating back to the 90's when the internet first became a thing.

No project is too complex. We love to tackle new challenges and equally we love making our clients happy and want to believe that in one way or another we have increased the quality of their business and their professional lives. We work with clients locally, nationally and worldwide. Check out some of our featured Craft CMS work.