Do plugins slow down Wordpress? The short answer is absolutely, the more complicated answer is it depends. We thought it would be useful to share some of the repeat offenders, monsters, as we've called them,. Now that might seem a little dramatic, but if you rely on a couple of these, they could definitely destroy your site performance!
How to find slow plugins
Before we break out the list, we wanted to just detail something you can do to help spot any poor performing plugins. The first thing we do for clients is install the Query Monitor plugin. It's one of the most popular plugins for Wordpress and rightly so, as it provides us with a good level of detail to see exactly what is hitting you resources and when. It is free to use, so install it and see for yourself.
1- Page builders
More of a list that the others because there are a few to avoid, one of the common offenders we see is the Elementor plugin but here are a few more to keep an eye out for:
- Beaver Builder
- Avada
- Brizy
- Site Origin
- WPBakery
The biggest advantage of page builders is that of being very beginner friendly allowing newbies to construct beautiful pages. The downside is the amount of background processes and bloat that often go into making these complicated processes simpler that the user won't actually see. Getting a custom built theme would definitely add more complexity but would strip away a huge amount of redundant code and features.
2- Wordfence
Back to the single plugin list, Wordfence is a fantastic plugin with so many features built in to help protect your site from malicious actors including geo blocking, login throttling and more. However, all these features can come at a performance price. As the plugins handle alot of critical PHP functions, there is alot of code behing the scenes, running all sorts of scans and checks, all of which can really slow down your site. While it is recommended that you use a security plugin if you manage your own Wordpress instance, you should stay away from this if you don't have a beefy server to handle it. Managed platforms such as Kinsta also have there own built in securities as part of there offering so you won't be able to install these types of plugins if you are a customer of there platform.
3- Jetpack
Another example of a plugin that tries to do it all in one place. Jetpack offers security and performance features, many of which are very option rich and bloated. Although it is installed on millions of Wordpress sites, the number one critique from reviews on Google is that of its poor performance. There are plenty of lightweight alternatives that offer less features but have the basics covered which perform much better.
4- Yoast
Arguably the one we would still recommend even with its performance limitations, just because it is so good at what it does, for your SEO, it is a good tradeoff. Especially if you splash out for one of there premium plans, the features it comes with are pretty good at helping you optimise your site. That being said, if it really is slowing down your site, which many do see judging by it's reviews, then there are less feature rich alternatives that can help you achieve the same goals.
5- Backup plugins
Another list for you to finish up, as we have had some pretty poor experiences with all of these:
- JetBackup
- Backup Buddy
- WPVivid
Backup plugins do what the name suggests, helping you create an all in one backup of your Wordpress instance. The issues with performance tend to arise because a lot of there scheduled tasks such as daily backups are quite file and database intensive, copying and recording all the files of your site, it can mean that when you site is large, that more and more resources are taken up by these kinds of services at which time general site performance will definitely be impacted.
Summary
There we go then, a little run down on some of the troublemakers. The ones listed here are the plugins we have observed to most likely not play well with most sites that have multiple plugins and more complex setups. Although, given enough resource, you may be able tor run most of these with little to no issues for moderate levels of traffic. This is the problem with using a platform such as Wordpress over competitors like Shopify which are more locked down, there are little to no checks by Wordpress to check on quality and security of plugins that get offered to there audience, leading to all sorts of issues and risks.
Bye for now :)