How Many WordPress Plugins Is Too Many?

With more than 54,000 free plugins available on WordPress (WP), it is common to go overboard. A question that often arises is - what is the maximum number that will not have a negative impact on speed and performance. Using too many plugins can clutter your website and hamper its speed as well as security. 

Read on to find out the ways to determine the right number of plugins your website needs based on various factors, including the hosting plan you use. 

The Endless Benefits Of Plugins 

WordPress hosting is powerful but it does come with its limits. Too many plugins can cause various issues, even though these are the very elements that can skyrocket your business to success. 

Using plugins, you can improve search engine rankings, efficiency, and the appearance of your website - not to mention enjoy crucial additions such as payment gateways and other integrations. Take a closer look at the five must-have plugins for WP sites: 

• Akismet is an excellent plugin that removes spam comments and submissions on contact forms automatically. 
• WordFence is exclusively built for WP with firewall and malware protection to prevent suspicious codes, traffic, and IPs. 
• Yoast SEO is the most-downloaded SEO plugin for optimizing your content for SEO and readability that includes content insights, previews, and alerts on outdated content. 
• WooCommerce is an open-source tool built for eCommerce that helps business owners set up an online store.  
• Google Analytics is a tracking tool that can integrate with multiple apps to generate unique and all-inclusive reports.

The Issues With Having Too Many

Developers often shift the blame to ‘too many plugins’ when troubleshooting problematic websites. Take a look at the three problems below that demonstrate why experts disapprove of an excessive number of plugins.  

Security Risks 

It is important to avoid poorly-designed plugins or those without regular updates for ideal WordPress hosting security. For example, three outdated WP plugins, RevSlider, TimThumb and GravityForms, were responsible for 25% of site hacks in 2016. Downloading too many may indicate that you aren’t vetting plugins well enough.

Poor Performance And Speed

When you add a new plugin, the data load of the website increases; thus, the loading time of the website also spikes. To decrease loading speed, reduce the total number of installed and enabled plugins. Having just the right amount will give you the functionality you need without overloading your website. Remember, website speed is a key factor to keep bounce rates low and conversion rates high.

How To Keep The Number Down

Keeping the number of plugins down is the very best thing you can do to keep your website performance optimal. Find out the best three ways to do so below. 

Only Use What You Need 

Small websites can work with a fraction of the plugins used by large websites. Take a look at the tips to identify the unnecessary plug-ins on your site.

• Identify unnecessary plugins that can be removed
• Delete plug-ins that you don’t use anymore
• Remove buggy plugins and test every new plugin

Clear Out Inactives Regularly 

You can check the total number of inactive plug-ins under the ‘plugin section’. Making sure that you don’t have an inactive plugin laying around will help you keep the hackers away and maintain website protection.

Use Reputable Ones Only 

Take a look at ways to detect reputable plug-ins. 

• Recently Updated: stay away from plugins that haven’t been updated in more than a year.
• Reviews: choose plugins with a rating above 4 stars and over 100,000 downloads.
• Help: assess if the support tab for the plugin takes you to a customer service page or forum. 
• Code: check whether the programming language of the plugin is short and neat and that it is compatible and tested with your version of WP.

So, How Many Should I Have? 

The ideal number of WordPress plugins ranges from 5 to 20 based on your hosting plan, website data, and functionality. However, each website should be assessed individually. 

If you are using a shared cheap WordPress hosting service, it is best to limit the total to five plugins. Stick to the same number for budget cloud hosting. 

On the contrary, for VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting plans, you can use 5 to 20 plugins seamlessly due to the larger amount of space at your disposal. 

Bottom Line

If you already have a high number of plugins installed on your WP site, remove the outdated, inactive, and unnecessary ones right away. Make sure you evaluate each plugin you download and update them regularly. Aim to keep the total number of plugins as low as possible, and not cross 20 in any case, especially if your site is hosted via a cheap web hosting service with limited space.