Slow WordPress plugins.

We all love WordPress plugins and make use of them all the time. They ease our work considerably. But not all plugins are efficient. Some can cause delays, or even damage. We’re talking about slow WordPress plugins of course.

That’s why you should be really careful when installing a new plugin on your WordPress site. Sometimes, as much as they can help your site, they can also harm 🔪 your site.

In this post we’re going to show you 😎 how to test your WordPress site for slow plugins, then we’ll review how to look for better alternatives.

Let’s get started!

📚 Table of contents:

How to test for slow WordPress plugins

One of the easiest ways to test the performance of your WordPress plugins and identify which ones are slowing your site down is to use a free plugin called Code Profiler:

Code Profiler is a powerful WordPress plugin designed to assess the performance of plugins and themes on your WordPress site at the PHP level. Its primary function is to identify any potential issues that might be slowing down your site, which of course includes plugins.

By utilizing Code Profiler, you can gain a deeper understanding of both the frontend and backend of your WordPress site. The plugin will not only tell you which slow WordPress plugins are affecting your site’s performance, but it’ll also analyze custom URLs or even specific processes like checkout procedures, or AJAX actions.

The plugin is free, but does offer a premium version starting at $59 per year, which allows you to use it on up to ten websites.

How to use Code Profiler

To utilize Code Profiler, begin by installing and activating the plugin on your WordPress site. Once activated, you can easily access the Code Profiler dashboard via the WordPress admin panel, allowing you to initiate the analysis.

As mentioned, the dashboard offers various options for analyzing your site, including analyzing plugins and themes, evaluating custom URLs, and assessing custom payloads.

The reports generated by Code Profiler are comprehensive and furnish in-depth insights into your site’s performance. These reports encompass crucial metrics such as execution time, memory usage, and database queries.

By thoroughly analyzing the generated reports, you can effortlessly identify the slow WordPress plugins that are harming your site’s performance. Armed with this information, you can take the necessary steps to replace them and get your site back on track.

We’ll talk about that next… 💬

When a WordPress plugin is slow, look for alternatives

If you’ve discovered that a certain plugin weighs a lot more than you’d wish, you can remove it and start looking for a faster alternative.

The first place to go is WordPress.org plugin repository. There, you can look for various plugin categories and purposes.

For instance, I typed in “contact form plugins,” and a long list of plugins popped up:

search plugins.

By the way, you can do the same thing without leaving your WordPress dashboard. Click on Plugins in your dashboard menu, then Add New, and then write what type of plugin you are looking for. The same page from WordPress.org will appear right in your admin interface:

plugins dashboard.

As you can see, a lot of alternatives are available when it comes to contact form plugins (or any other type of plugin, for that matter).

Test and compare

I’m going to do some tests to show you a concrete example of how the whole process can be done.

The tests were performed on WordPress version 6.4.1 running the Neve FSE theme.

📝 Since we talked about contact form plugins, let’s compare:

To minimize interference from outside variables, I deactivated all of my other plugins and kept only these three.

Based on the results, it seems that WPForms is the slowest WordPress plugin of the bunch. Contact Form 7 and Otter Blocks loaded way faster.

For the next round, I repeated the process, but this time with some SEO plugins…

📈 I typed in “SEO plugin” in the search form, and selected three plugins for my tests. The ones I chose were:

And here are the results:

Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack seemed to be equally slow, as opposed to SEO by Squirrly which was fairly fast.

Final thoughts on checking slow WordPress plugins

In conclusion, testing your WordPress site to identify slow plugins is a crucial step in optimizing its performance. By using a tool like Code Profiler, you can gain valuable insights into the impact that each of your plugins has on your site’s speed.

🎁 This can benefit you in several ways.

First, you can pinpoint specific plugins that are causing slowdowns, allowing you to make informed decisions about whether to keep, replace, or optimize those plugins.

This optimization process can result in significantly faster load times and a smoother user experience for your visitors.

Additionally, understanding which plugins are affecting your site’s performance empowers you to prioritize your optimization efforts. You can focus on the plugins that have the most significant impact, addressing the critical issues first and efficiently allocating your resources.

👉 To recap:

  1. Install and activate the Code Profiler plugin 🔌
  2. Run the analysis to identify your slow WordPress plugins 🐢
  3. Use the WordPress repository to search for suitable alternatives 🔄

By following the guidance above, you can proactively optimize your WordPress site, leading to improved page load times, enhanced user experience, better search engine rankings, and ultimately, better overall success for your website or online business.

Be honest … do you keep your plugins in check and test their load times regularly?

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12 Comments
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Neal M. Brown
March 7, 2018 8:54 pm

As others have mentioned, it’s not compatible with the latest PHP version. It also shows a false positive (for want of a better term) for Toast.

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:12 am
Reply to  Neal M. Brown

It used to work, now it’s abandoned I think. It wasn’t updated in three years. 🙁

kevanboone
February 2, 2018 1:30 am

This tool doesn’t work. comment image

These are the only results it gave me.

Any other tools out there?

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:09 am
Reply to  kevanboone

Yeah, it wasn’t updated in three years, which is sad because it was just great. I think you can test your site’s speed with Pingdom or GTmetrix. Install the plugins and test the speed before and after to see if there is any change in the loading times. There are not other similar plugins available at the moment, unfortunately. 🙁

MrKoyote
September 28, 2017 6:35 pm

P3 does not work in PHP 7.1

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:06 am
Reply to  MrKoyote

Yeah, it looks like it wasn’t updated in three years. 🙁

wordpressguy
August 11, 2017 5:11 am

Yep, P3 is dead.

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:11 am
Reply to  wordpressguy

Yeah, I think so, no one updated it in three years. 🙁

Paul Olyslager
March 25, 2017 5:14 pm

Comparing alternatives for plugins is very necessary, but you should also compare its features. For example, comparing WP Rocket and W3C Total Cache, the latter will win. The reason is that it has less features available. So in order to really swap the plugin with a better alternative, you will probably have to install several additional plugins to get the same features.

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:15 am
Reply to  Paul Olyslager

Yeah, that’s a good point. When it has great features, you will care less about its weight.

Simon Browning
March 19, 2017 1:37 am

P3 is abandoned I think.

Adelina Tuca
April 12, 2018 11:06 am
Reply to  Simon Browning

Yeah, so sad, it was just great, I loved it.

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