Your WordPress website is running slowly, so the obvious choice is a performance plugin right? I hate to break it to you, but most performance plugins are actually making things worse.
Before you reach for that shiny new caching plugin promising “lightning-fast speeds,” let me share some hard truths about WordPress performance that most people get completely wrong.
The performance plugin problem nobody talks about
Here’s something that lots of people using and working with WordPress community don’t want to admit: most performance plugins create more problems than they solve.
I’ve been managing WordPress websites for years, and I can’t count how many times I’ve seen business owners install five different “performance” plugins, only to watch their site crawl to a halt. Each plugin adds overhead, creates conflicts, and often duplicates functionality that’s already built into modern hosting environments.
Performance plugins are often the plugins that cause issues on WordPress websites. A big part of why this is comes down to overlapping features. Take something simple like image optimisation. This could be handled by a dedicated image specific plugin, a general performance plugin, your theme, your hosting set up, your CDN… When there are multiple performance plugins doubling up on functionality it can be a recipe for disaster, and it can actually start slowing down your site instead of speeding it up.
The other big issue with performance plugins is you really have to have a deep understanding of how each individual feature works in a way that is specific to your website and your hosting. A setting that dramatically reduces load times could work amazingly for one site and host, and then cause massive resource issues on another site with a different host.
The brutal reality: There’s no magic WordPress optimisation “set and forget” plugin that works for every website. Every site is different – it’s a complex combination of your website, hosting environment, content, and how everything works together. WordPress performance optimisation isn’t just about installing a plugin, or toggling a setting – it’s about understanding what actually makes WordPress websites fast.
Start with the foundation: Your hosting matters more than any plugin
Before you even think about plugins, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: your hosting. When we moved a recent small business website from budget shared hosting to a quality provider, their Time to First Byte (TTFB) dropped from a sluggish 700ms to a snappy 50ms — which significantly increases load time before even thinking about any other optimisations.
Your hosting is like the foundation of your house. You can install all the fancy performance plugins you want, but there is no architecture or host that exists that will magically fix bad code. However, quality hosting gives you a solid foundation to build upon.
What to look for in WordPress hosting
Managed WordPress hosting: These providers know WordPress inside and out. They offer features dedicated to WordPress, such as automatic WordPress updates, security configurations, and much more. More importantly, they often include server-level caching that makes most caching plugins unnecessary.
Modern server technology: Look for hosts offering HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 support, SSD storage, and recent PHP versions. HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 support fundamentally changes how your browser and server communicate, allowing simultaneous downloads through a single connection.
Server-level caching: If your host supports it, I’ve almost always found server-level caching to be superior to plugin based caching. Most good quality hosts have their own caching set up. It’s one less plugin you have to install, and in general you should see better performance, and less issues.
The smart approach to WordPress caching
Caching is crucial, but here’s where most people go wrong: they don’t understand what caching actually is, and they install a caching plugin when their host already provides superior caching at the server level.
Caching is like having a helpful assistant who remembers everything your visitors have asked for before. Instead of your website cooking a fresh meal (processing PHP and making database queries) every time someone visits, caching lets you serve a pre-prepared dish that’s ready to go. It creates static HTML versions of your dynamic WordPress pages so they load instantly.
Many quality hosting providers now handle caching at the server level, which is far more efficient than plugin-based solutions. Compare that to the headaches of configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting caching plugins that might conflict with your host’s existing systems.
When you actually need a caching plugin
If your hosting doesn’t provide server-level caching, here are the genuinely good options:
FlyingPress: One of my go to plugins for both caching and general optimisation. It has minimal configuration, and I’ve found it to make a big difference in performance. The development team are active and helpful.
WP Super Cache: Developed by Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) and provides excellent performance benefits with minimal configuration headaches. It’s reliable and is unlikely break your site.
LiteSpeed Cache: If your host uses LiteSpeed servers, this is a no-brainer. It’s fully functional without the need for a premium upgrade and integrates perfectly with LiteSpeed hosting. I’ve almost always found LightSpeed Cache to work really well and get great performance without having to adjust many (if any) settings from one of the pre-made configurations.
Image optimisation: The low-hanging fruit
While everyone argues about caching plugins, images are probably killing your site speed. Large, unoptimised images are like trying to stuff a watermelon through a straw.
Here’s the simple approach that actually works:
Compress before uploading: Use tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh to compress images before uploading them to WordPress. This prevents the problem rather than trying to fix it later.
Use the right format:
- JPEGs or WebP for photographs
- PNGs for images with transparency or simple graphics
- SVGs for simple vector images like logos & icons
Size appropriately: Don’t upload 4000×3000 pixel images to display at 400×300. WordPress will still load the full-size image, then scale it down, wasting bandwidth and processing power.
Enable lazy loading: Lazy loading ensures that images are loaded only when they come into view (or technically just before), dramatically reducing initial page load times.
Database cleanup: The maintenance nobody talks about
Your WordPress database accumulates junk like a teenager’s bedroom. Some plugins are notorious for creating a huge amount of database bloat. Allowing a high number of post revisions set can impact the speed of your WordPress site by slowing down your database (especially over time).
Regular database maintenance includes:
- Removing spam comments and old revisions
- Cleaning up unused plugins and themes
- Keeping an eye on overall database size, and individual tables to look for issues
The plugin audit: Quality over quantity
The ideal number of plugins depends on the quality of the plugins: Well-coded plugins have minimal impact. Poorly made ones can slow down your site even if you only have a few.
The best practice for a fast site is to have the smallest number of plugins that are actually required for your site.
How to audit your plugins
- Use Query Monitor: The free Query Monitor plugin is fantastic and will show you your page generation time, how many MySQL queries ran to generate this page and how much time that took. Slow queries can identified so you can know what plugin is responsible.
- Test systematically: Install one plugin at a time on your live site to see how it affects your page loading times. Installing multiple plugins at once makes it difficult to determine which plugin is compromising performance.
- Regular reviews: Regularly review the plugins installed on the site and remove the ones that are no longer necessary.
Theme & page builder choice: The overlooked speed factor
Your theme and what page builder (if any) you are using has massive impact on performance. The theme you choose for your WordPress site has a significant impact on its speed. A bloated theme with unnecessary features can slow your site more than a dozen well-coded plugins.
The page builder reality check: Popular page builders like Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder can create beautiful websites, but they often come with a performance cost. They generate additional CSS and JavaScript, create complex HTML structures, and can bloat your database.
If you’re using a page builder, choose one known for good performance and avoid loading unnecessary modules. Better yet, consider whether you actually need all those drag-and-drop features, or if a well-coded theme with customisation options might serve you better.
Look for themes that:
- Load quickly out of the box
- Don’t include features you won’t use
- Are regularly updated and well-coded
- Have good performance reviews
Content Delivery Networks: Geography matters
If your audience is primarily in Europe but your server is in Texas, every page request is making a transatlantic journey. A CDN solves this by serving your content from servers closer to your visitors.
Most quality hosting providers now include CDN services, or there are paid options to explore from providers like Cloudflare or Fastly.
If you serve visitors in a single country, sometimes a CDN isn’t going to make much of a difference – it’s much more important to choose a hosting provider who is using data centres that are in your region.
The testing trap: Don’t obsess over scores
Here’s another unpopular truth: perfect Google PageSpeed scores don’t automatically mean better user experience. I’ve seen sites with mediocre scores that feel faster than sites with perfect scores.
Focus on real-world metrics:
- How long does it actually take to load?
- How does it feel to use?
- Are visitors staying and converting?
My recommended checklist to speed up a WordPress website
- Start with quality hosting – This is 70% of your performance right here
- Choose a lightweight, well-coded theme
- Optimise images before uploading
- Use server-level caching if available, or a good caching plugin it not
- Audit and remove unnecessary plugins
- Check and clean up your database regularly
- Implement a CDN
- Monitor with tools like Query Monitor
The bottom line
Most WordPress speed problems aren’t solved by adding more plugins – they’re solved by removing the things slowing you down and building on solid foundations.
Instead of looking for magic bullets in plugin repositories, start with quality hosting, choose your plugins carefully, and optimise systematically. Your visitors (and your sanity) will thank you.
Ready to speed up your WordPress website the right way? Let’s have a conversation about your website goals and see if we can help you build something that’s genuinely reliable and fast, without the headaches.
