On This Page: [hide]
How Many Plugins Are Too Many for WordPress
Too many plugins installed on your WordPress site can cause many potential problems, one of which is delaying your site.
Every WordPress website owner strives for maximum success. Undoubtedly, plugins are the right elements to achieve your goal. But quite often we get into the questions- How many WordPress plugins should you install? or How many plugins are too many for my website? Not all users would trust all of the 54,000 plugins in the WordPress repository.
Too many plugins installed on your WordPress site can cause many potential problems, one of which is delaying your site.
Therefore, consumers should be cautious and careful about their choices. For your convenience and assistance, today we will answer the most frequently asked questions about the number of plugins on your website.
Before we start with the main part, let`s explain the meaning of the plugins and how they work…
The plugin is a software module or extension written with the PHP programming language. By installing an extension – we are adding new functionality to WordPress. WordPress itself is a great CMS with great functionality, but as the saying goes, a person is always missing something, and very much plugins are designed to meet this need.
There are plugins available for everything you could want to include in your site. From providing a security to adding eCommerce, blog or website hosting and many others. Even if you are using more than 20 WordPress plugins, and they are all well-coded, you won`t have any problems with the quality of their actions.
Choosing the right plugins can play a large role in the success of your website functionality without needing technical skills. Without them, the progress of your website will be really hard for achieving. Now let`s move to all of the problems, bound up with too many plugins…
Also Read 10 Most Common Mistakes While Building a Website
1. “Problematic” Plugins
Everything begins with the plugins, which you have installed and their coding, activity, quality and more factors. One of the biggest problems is that if you have installed too many plugins, they are very likely to slow down the functionality of the website and this could cause a huge drop in the number of your visitors.
As we’ve mentioned in previous articles, slow site functions can undoubtedly lead to low usage. Slow loading is one of the worst functions of the websites and can lead to bad reputation. Watching the number of plugins, you install is main factor to your website’s success. The problem is not in the number of the plugins, it is in their quality.
Plugins are definitely great and can provide a lot of features, but the more plugins you add to your site, the greater the risk is of running into problems. Now we will see the main problems, which can impact to your website performance.
2. Problem №1- HTTP Requests
HTTP works as a request-response protocol between a client and server. Some part of the plugins, especially the front-end ones need scripts and custom styling and they can add CSS files or extra JavaScripts on your website. The problem with this process is that it can potentially take a long time to retrieve the reader’s request from the main database and that can slow down the speed of your website. If you have a large website and the loading speed is important for you, you should solve the problem with the HTTP Requests.
There are some methods which can help you to optimize them. Note that the result can save only milliseconds in terms of page speed and you need coding skills to solve the problem. If saving these milliseconds is not relevant to your website, you can skip it. But if you have a huge number of plugins, which are adding them, you can save a few seconds if you fix the problem.
The first method is to just to load the plugin scripts or styles only on the pages that you want. The second method is a little bit more difficult. You should unregister the scripts and styles, which are coming with the plugin. When you are done, you can mix the plugin styles into your theme’s style.css file and also mix the plugin scripts into your theme’s main JavaScript file.
Also Read How to Fix Most Common WordPress Issues
3. Problem №2- A large number of Database Queries
Except the HTTP requests, too many database queries can also be bad for your website. A huge part of your WordPress website is stored in your database. If you use a plugin that stores database information, additional database queries will be sent to retrieve and store this information. The more requests are sent to your database, the greater the strain on your database and the performance of your site gradually slows down. The situation is quite similar to that of the previous problem. Most well-coded plugins will have little effect on the load on your database server, so again you should pay attention to the quality of the plugin. Also, if you invest in a good hosting service, it can help you with the removal of the problems.
4. Problem №3 Compatibility
By instaling more and more plugins, the risk of creating compatibility problems is getting bigger. This occurs when the code in two or more plugins does not work well together and causes mutual destruction. However, plugins are not all written by the same developers and it is definitely quite difficult to make sure that each plugin works well with the rest.
As mentioned in the WordPress repository there are over 54,000 plugins. It is impossible to test one plugin against all others to troubleshoot compatibility issues. If you think you may have a plugin compatibility issue on your website, don’t panic. In most cases, it’s easy to diagnose and deal with these errors. You can simply perform a WordPress plugin check, to see whether one of your plugins is actually causing the issue you’re seeing. This is the best solution for this type of problems.
5. Problem №4 Overloaded Database
Every plugin which you install is automatically going in your WordPress website`s database. It has a limit of the storage space and if you install too much plugins, you can simply full-up it. This can also be a problem with the functionality and the speed of loading of your website. Enabled plugins are a significant problem, but even disabled plugins still store data in your database. Even plugins you’ve deleted can still store data. You should try to download only the most important plugins, the rest will just overload your database storage.
6. Problem №6 Reliability
Another major consumer mistake is their desire for multiple plugins. Typical issues include poor code quality, slow update schedules, poor support levels, and a few more.
If all these problems are combined, they are more likely to do more harm than good. We can undoubtedly include them in the most common consumer problems.
Discontinued plugins have the potential to be an issue at one point or another. However, if you are using a high quality, popular plugin, chances are it won’t be discontinued any time soon, nor will it lack updates.
7. Proven solutions to the most common plugin problems
Solution 1
Solution 2
Solution 3
Solution 4
Solution 5
Solution 6
Solution 7
Solution 8
Solution 9
Solution 10
8. How many plugins is too many?
After we have listed the main problems and their solutions, it’s time to move on to the main question – How many plugins is too many?
There is still no proven number of plugins to install without unnecessary problems on your website after they have been implemented. Every website owner can add as many plugins as he needs to expand the features of his website and create maximum convenience for his visitors.
The average number of plugins in an ordinary business website can start from 20 plugins and can go as high as 40-50. If you use appropriate cloud hosting, VPS hosting or dedicated server, you can run 5 and 20 plugins on your site without any problems.
For example, the number of the active plugins in our website Howtohosting.guide is 22-25 and all of them are working without any problems.
Of course, it all depends on the quality of the plugins which you use. If it’s high enough, you can safely use a large number of plugins. If you don’t know how to choose the best plugins for your website, we naturally have information about that as well. We’ll show you how to choose the best plugins for your website that won’t bring you unnecessary problems.