10 Plugins That Might Be Slowing Your WordPress Blog

This article was updated on August 6th, 2020 at 05:57 am

I recently came across an article  on Plugins And Fast WordPress Sites – It’s Not The Number of Plugins, It’s the Quality by WP Engine. I have long been stating that “having too many plugins will slow your site down.” In fact, experienced bloggers will recommend WordPress users to install only a limited number of plugins to optimize their site’s performance.

However, it is not the number of plugins but their quality that actually impacts the speed of a WordPress site. So, here’s a list of 10 plugins that are likely to slow down your site. If you must use them, think of other means to speed up load times.

10 Plugins That Might Slow Down Your WP Site

Here we go..

1. Yet Another Related Post Plugin

A plugin known to display pages, posts and custom post types related to the current entry, introducing readers to other relevant content on a WordPress site, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) is a great plugin. However, there is evidence that this plugin can severely beat up databases, slow down servers and even crash a site under heavy load. WP Engine, one of the premier WordPress hosting sites, which allows sites to run almost any plugin, has even blocked YARPP, along with other plugins that also prove to slow down sites.

2. S2 Member

This is a membership plugin that has gained immense popularity amongst WordPress users. What adds to its desirability is its features, such as custom capabilities, in which the “Buy Now” option can be created at any membership level. It even enables businesses to sell specific posts/pages or packages, completely separately from membership.

Unfortunately, even this amazing plugin has its limitations. With quite a large codebase with a lot of powerful features and flexibility, S2 member has so much to maintain, needing a large number of files to be uploaded to WordPress, and ultimately slowing the WordPress website.

3. WPML

If you are trying to build a multilingual site, WPML ought to be the first name you think of. However, string translation has been known to slow down sites and WPML has two features “Auto register strings for translation” and “Track where string appear on the site,” which are great for translating, but slow down the website for the developer (Thankfully, not for visitors), since they require many calls to the database.

You can locate them at the bottom of the page and disable them (switch them off).

4. Slider Revolution

Which developer doesn’t want their content to be displayed in the most beautiful way? This is what has been driving the popularity of an innovative, responsive WordPress slider plugin, Slider Revolution.

The company’s website says, “It is not just a slider, but a new way of delivering ideas.” However, this is one plugin, I will specifically ask you to stay away from. Being a slider plugin, it is overloaded with code, which can severely hamper your WordPress site’s performance.

5. SumoMe

Offering a bundle of free tools, such as list builders, heat maps, share, scroll box, smart bar and more, with which developers can optimize their WordPress site such that people will not only find their blog but read the content, subscribe, enter their e-mail address and share it on social media platforms. SumoMe is a popular plugin that helps businesses build a contact list of potential customers. However, all these tools come at a cost of reduced speed.

6. Essential Grid

ThemePunch, known to develop some incredibly well-coded and configurable plugins, has also created Essential Grid, a premium plugin. This responsive plugin allows you to display various content formats, such as blogs, portfolios, galleries, WooCommerce shops, price tables, services, testimonials, etc., in a highly customizable grid.

The only drawback is that its default settings will not provide you any options to help speed up the code of this highly robust plugin. If you can take care of the speed part on your own, then opt for Essential Grid, else it is wise to look for something else.

7. Disqus Comment System

Possibly the most popular commenting system on the World Wide Web, trusted by millions of publishers, Disqus Comment System, is a replacement to WordPress’s default comment system. This WP plugin allows developers and site owners to easily add Disqus to their site, which helps them engage directly with their audience to build loyalty and retain readers. It also increases reader engagement and grows traffic, which ultimately leads to sales and revenues. But, there is a downside. The plugin takes a toll on the speed of the WP site. Although there is an option of adding conditional loading, but that too impacts the site negatively in other ways.

8. Vaultpress

This subscription-based protection, security and backup service for WordPress blogs and sites has a great reputation amongst developers and businesses. It was built by Automatic, the same company that operates sites on WordPress.com.

You might be surprised to see what Vaultpress is doing in this list. The reason is that now the plugin is powered by Jetpack. If you want to install and use Vaultpress, you need to install and activate Jetpack first. This only puts a burden of additional scripts and style sheets on the site.

9. Contact Form 7

If you want to receive messages from customers right to your email address, a contact form plugin is what you need. Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular free contact form plugins available. However, the feature of this plugin that impacts site performance is that by default, the plugin installs and runs all of its scripts and style sheets on every page of the site, even if it doesn’t have a contact form option.

10. Broken Link Checker

What if the visitor comes to your WordPress site, clicks on a link, but the link fails to work? This can become a matter of embarrassment for anyone seriously trying to build their reputation. This is where Broken Link Checker comes to the rescue. However, the process of checking each link is not only time consuming, but can severely burden the server, hence slowing the WordPress site.

The above mentioned 10 plugins are highly useful in their own way. However, now you know that they come at a cost, check out other options to gain the functionalities that you require.

Also read: How to speed up your WordPress blog.