How to speed up your WordPress website

A caching plugin is the simplest way to speed up your WordPress website. Smaller images, fewer plugins and an up-to-date WordPress help too. When that's not enough, your hosting may be what holds your website back.

Why a fast WordPress site matters

Visitors notice how fast your pages load, whether they're reading your blog or about to pay in your online shop. A page that keeps them waiting can make them leave.

Speed counts in search too. Google measures the loading experience of a page with Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics for loading, interactivity and visual stability. It recommends that site owners aim for good scores on them to do well in Google Search. For speed tips that work on any kind of website, here's how to improve your site speed.

Test your WordPress site speed first

A speed test gives you a starting point, so you can tell later which change helped. You can check the speed of your website with the isitwp tool. Google's PageSpeed Insights is another option. It tests a page on mobile and desktop and can show two kinds of results. Lab data comes from a simulated load, and field data from real users, when enough of them have visited the page. Whichever tool you pick, use the same one every time, so your results before and after a change compare fairly.

The figure to look at first is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), the time it takes for the largest image, video or block of text on the screen to appear. Google calls an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less good. Test the pages your visitors use most, not only your homepage. If you want to know what is slowing your website down before you start, our guide to why your WordPress site is slow goes through the usual causes.

Ways to speed up your WordPress website

WordPress's own documentation names caching as the fix with the biggest benefit for the smallest hassle, so start there. Work through the other fixes one at a time and test your speed after each, so you can see what helped. Make a website backup before you start any WordPress speed optimisation, because some of the fixes below update or delete parts of it. You can make one with a WordPress backup plugin. A backup is a copy of your files and database that you can restore if something goes wrong. With us, restoring a backup yourself is included from our Professional hosting plan up. On a plan with backups only, you can still view your backups, but you upgrade to restore one.

Install a caching plugin

Without a cache, your server reads from the WordPress database for every page a visitor opens. A caching plugin saves a ready-made copy of your posts and pages as static files and sends that copy to your visitors instead. That takes processing load off your server, so your pages reach your visitors sooner.

If your website is with us, try our Performance Cache plugin first. Before you pick another caching plugin, look at its ratings and when it was last updated. A well-rated plugin that gets regular updates is a good place to start. To install a caching plugin from the WordPress plugin directory:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for a caching plugin with the search form.
3. Click a plugin's title or More Details to read about it before you choose.
4. Click Install Now.
5. When the installation is complete, click Activate.

Once the plugin is active, run your speed test again and compare the result with your first one.

WP Rocket is a paid caching plugin that applies its main speed settings for you as soon as you activate it. It's a good fit when you want caching set up without adjusting the settings yourself. You install it another way: you download it from your WP Rocket account and upload it to WordPress as a zip file.

WP Rocket is a paid plugin that caches your pages, removes unused code and optimises your WordPress database, so your website loads faster.

Compress and resize your images

Large photos are often the heaviest part of a page. Resize each image to the width it's shown at on your page before you upload it, for example in a photo editing program. Save your photos in a modern format like WebP, which gives you a smaller file. For images you've already uploaded, an image optimisation plugin does the work inside WordPress. Imagify, made by the team behind WP Rocket, compresses the images in your media library and converts them to formats like WebP and AVIF.

Let WordPress lazy load your images

Lazy loading means the browser only loads an image when a visitor scrolls close to it, instead of loading every image on the page straight away. Visitors see the top of the page sooner, because the browser doesn't spend time on images further down. Since WordPress 5.5, WordPress does this by default for images that have a width and height set, so you don't need a plugin for it. Newer versions don't lazy load the images at the top of the page, so those load straight away.

Remove plugins you don't use

The number of plugins you run and how well they are built have a big effect on WordPress performance. Go through your plugin list once in a while, deactivate the ones you no longer need and then delete them. Don't stop at deactivating, because a plugin can clear out its settings only when you delete it.

To find a slow plugin, switch your plugins off one at a time and test your speed after each one. If a plugin you need turns out to be the culprit, check its documentation or support forum. You can also look for an alternative with similar features in our guide to the best WordPress plugins.

Use a lightweight theme

Your theme also makes a big difference to speed. A lightweight theme runs much more efficiently than a heavy one full of graphics. If your theme lets you switch off features like a gallery or a video section, turn off the ones you don't need. Delete the themes you don't use as well. When you look for a new theme, our guide to the best WordPress themes gives you a shortlist of themes you can try before you decide.

Keep WordPress, plugins and PHP up to date

Updates often fix bugs and make WordPress, your theme and your plugins run faster. The same goes for PHP, the programming language WordPress runs on. Newer versions bring performance improvements, and WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or higher. The Site Health screen, under Tools in your WordPress dashboard, warns you when your website runs an outdated version of PHP. A new PHP version isn't always compatible with older plugins and themes, so back up your website and check that they support it before you switch. If your website is with us, you switch to another PHP version in our control panel.

On our Hosting for WordPress, you run these updates yourself. With Managed Hosting for WordPress, we update WordPress, your theme and your plugins for you and test each update first.

Clean up your database

Over time, your WordPress database collects clutter, such as the revisions WordPress keeps of your posts and pages. You can limit how many revisions WordPress saves of each post. In your wp-config.php file, add the line define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3 ); to keep at most three revisions of each post or page. Put it on the first line under the comment block at the start of the file, because some users found the setting only worked there. To switch revisions off completely, put false in place of the number. A database optimisation plugin can help you clear out the rest.

Keep an eye on autoloaded options too. These are the plugin and theme settings WordPress loads on every page, so too many of them can slow down your website. WordPress advises keeping them under 800 KB. Since WordPress 6.6, the Site Health screen warns you when they go over that size. If it does, start by deleting the plugins you no longer use.

Use a CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of your images, CSS and JavaScript files on servers in different parts of the world. Each visitor then gets those files from a server close to them. The distance between your server and your visitors affects performance. A CDN works best together with a caching plugin. If your website is with us, check what your hosting already gives you before you sign up for a separate service.

Turn on GZIP compression

Compression makes your files smaller before the server sends them, and the visitor's browser unpacks them again. Smaller files reach the browser sooner, so your pages load faster. GZIP is one of these compression methods, and web servers and modern browsers support it. Some caching plugins can switch compression on for you, so check your plugin's settings first.

Cut external scripts and host videos elsewhere

Ads, tracking codes and other tools from another website add scripts your visitors' browsers have to load, and those scripts can slow your pages down. Remove the ones you no longer use. Video files are large, so put your videos on a video platform such as YouTube and embed them, rather than uploading the files to your own website.

Adjust your comment and notification settings

If your posts collect long comment threads, you can break comments into pages in the WordPress discussion settings. You set how many top-level comments go on each page. A post then no longer shows the whole thread on one page. In the same settings, WordPress can notify every blog you link to when you publish. On a post with many links, that slows down publishing, because WordPress contacts each site before the post goes live. If you don't need those notifications, switch them off there.

When your hosting is what slows WordPress down

If your pages are still slow after these fixes, or your website slows down when many people visit at once, look at your hosting next. On shared hosting, your website shares a server and its resources with other websites. If it keeps reaching what its plan allows, a plan with higher resource limits may help.

Managed Hosting for WordPress is an add-on to your hosting plan. It comes with a CDN, a performance cache and Varnish cache, and we look after the updates. For most WordPress websites, that's the simplest next step, because you get the extra speed without any server work. If your website needs dedicated resources such as processor, memory and storage, a VPS gives you those. Our VPS is an unmanaged server, so you're responsible for its configuration, security, updates and maintenance. Choose it only if you're comfortable managing a server yourself.

When your website outgrows its plan, compare our Hosting for WordPress plans and choose one with room to grow.