65 Slow WordPress Plugins To Avoid With Lightweight Alternatives

Avoid these 65 WordPress plugins and your site will load faster.

The most common issue is when people try to run slow loading plugins on shared hosting (especially WooCommerce, WPML, or even Elementor). If you absolutely need to run these plugins, skip the shared hosting (yes, including SiteGround) and go straight to cloud hosting.

Thank you Ivica from the WordPress Speed Up Facebook Group for creating this awesome list on his resources page – I also added quite a few. I would definitely join his group which has over 22,000 members. My WordPress speed guide also has excellent tips for optimizing plugins.

 

Lightweight Plugin Alternatives

• SEO – Rank Math.
• Backups – UpdraftPlus.
• Sliders – Soliloquy or MetaSlider.
• Page Builder – Oxygen or Gutenberg.
• Portfolio – Envira Gallery, FooGallery, or The Grid.
• Analytics – Google Analytics and Google Search Console (no plugins).
• WooCommerce – most important thing is to use fast hosting (e.g. Cloudways).
• Social Sharing – Grow By Mediavine (fastest social sharing plugin in WP Rocket’s test).
• Comments – native comments or wpDiscuz with optimized settings configured with Flying Scripts to create timeouts for comments + Gravatars = no extra GTmetrix requests.

 

Find Your Slowest Plugins

You can use GTmetrix Waterfall, Query Monitor, or New Relic to find your slowest loading plugins. GTmetrix Waterfall is the easiest, but it only measures plugins that create requests. Query Monitor and New Relic give you in-depth insights on your slowest WordPress plugins. Be sure to deactivate these plugins when you’re done, since they can also slow down your site.

GTmetrix Waterfall:

Query Monitor:

New Relic:

 

Disable Unused Plugin Addons, Modules, Settings, Usage Tracking

Deactivate all addons and modules you’re not currently using (Ultimate Elementor Addons, JetPack, or other robust plugins). Also disable usage tracking for plugins that collect statistics.

 

Selectively Disable Plugins

Use a plugin like Asset CleanUp or Perfmatters by Kinsta (recommend) to selectively disable plugins from pages/posts where they don’t need to load. Can significantly improve load times.

Examples:

• Disable slider plugin on pages that don’t use sliders
• Disable rich snippets plugin on pages that don’t use rich snippets
• Disable contact form plugin on pages that don’t have a contact form
• Disable affiliate link management plugin on pages that don’t use aff links
• Disable social sharing plugin on all pages (since it’s usually for blog posts)

 

AWStats Helps Identify Sources Of High CPU/Bandwidth

AWStats is a tool built-in to most hosting cPanels that provides statistics on CPU usage. It tells you whether certain bots, images, downloaded files, and even IP addresses are consuming a lot of CPU. You can also use the WP Server Stats plugin but I think AWStats does an awesome job.

AWStats helps you find:

• High bandwidth crawlers
• High bandwidth IP addresses
• High bandwidth download files
• High bandwidth files (eg. images)
• Total bandwidth usage (for monitoring)

 

Avoid Slow Plugins On Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is very limited on server resources.

If you’re running slow WordPress plugins and are experiencing slow server response times in PageSpeed Insights, 503 errors, or you’re exceeding CPU limits, I highly recommend skipping shared hosting all together and go with someone like Cloudways. This is especially true for WooCommerce sites which require extra scripts, styles, cart fragments, and often more plugins.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

🔌 Do plugins slow down WordPress?

Yes, some more than others. Robust and poorly coded plugins will definitely slow down your site while lightweight plugins with clean code will have minimal impact on load times.

🔌 Which plugins slow down WordPress?

Page builders, social sharing plugins, portfolios, and contact forms are infamous for slowing down WordPress. Three common culprits include WooCommerce, Elementor, and Jetpack.

🔌 How can I find my slowest plugins?

Use Query Monitor, New Relic, or GTmetrix Waterfall to find your slowest plugins.

🔌 How do I make plugins load faster?

Use lightweight plugins, be minimal, and selectively disable plugins from loading on specific pages and posts using a plugin like Asset CleanUp or Perfmatters.

🔌 Do number of plugins matter?

Every plugin adds to your load time, it just depends how much. Using lightweight plugins is more important than reducing the number of plugins, but both are important.

See Also: Hot I Got 100% GTmetrix Scores

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