Why is my WordPress site so slow? 7 reasons and ways to fix them

A slow website can be the kiss of death for your conversions. No one likes to wait, especially on the Internet. Offering a fast, smooth loading and a hassle-free browsing experience is key to the success of your online project. 

Does your WordPress site feel slow? In this article, we’ll help you understand potential reasons why and provide practical solutions to boost performance. Don’t wait any longer—let’s get to it! 

7 reasons why your WordPress site is slow 

There are several different reasons why your WordPress website is crawling instead of running smoothly. Here are seven of the most common ones, which we’ll analyse in detail:  

1. Excessive or inefficiently optimised plugins 
2. Unoptimised images 
3. Hosting that lacks sufficient power 
4. Lack of caching 
5. A heavy theme or a theme with coding issues 
6. Too many external requests 
7. An overloaded database 

1. Excessive or inefficiently optimised plugins 

One of WordPress’s great advantages is the flexibility it offers to install additional tools and functionalities, known as plugins. There are thousands of plugins available to enhance your site, from SEO tools to live chat features. The downside is that each plugin adds code and features to your site. 

If you have installed many plugins that aren’t optimised or updated, or if any of them have coding issues, your website can become significantly slower. 

Possible solutions: 

• From time to time, review your installed plugins and do a ‘clean-up’. 
• If a plugin is too heavy or you suspect it’s slowing down your site, look for a lighter alternative. 
• Keep your plugins updated to the latest versions, as bugs and code issues may have been fixed. 

2. Unoptimised images 

Large image files slow down your website’s loading time, especially on mobile devices. If your site includes much visual content, you must optimise your images. Ideally, images should be under 300 KB. Some experts even recommend staying under 100 KB. 

Possible solutions: 

• Use an image optimisation plugin like Imagify, which compresses images without compromising quality. 
• Upload images in WebP format, which is lighter than JPG or PNG. 

3. Hosting that lacks sufficient power 

The quality and capacity of your hosting service can significantly affect your website’s speed. If you’re using shared hosting, keep in mind that resources like CPU and RAM are limited and distributed among multiple users, which can directly affect performance. If your site has grown in size or traffic, your current plan might no longer be enough. 

Possible solutions: 

• Upgrade your hosting plan to access more resources. 
• Consider more powerful hosting options, such as a Virtual Private Server (VPS). 

4. Lack of cache 

The cache is a stored version of your website that helps speed everything up by preventing the server from reloading all elements (images, texts, files, scripts, etc.) from scratch on every visit.  

Without a cached copy, loading the site would take much longer. 

If your WordPress site lacks a cache, each visit and page load require server resources. This strains your hosting and can lead to slow performance.  

Possible solutions: 

• Use a caching plugin like WP Rocket that saves a copy of your page and reuses it for every visitor, even first-time users. 

5. Heavy theme or coding issues 

The theme or template you choose shapes your website’s design and aesthetics, and beyond that, it can impact its performance. Some heavy themes include features, scripts, and elements you don’t use on your site, but which are still loaded. These extra features might be slowing down your site. 

Worse yet, if the theme is poorly developed or features outdated code, it can seriously slow down your site’s loading time. 

The theme is likely the issue if you run a speed test and see warnings related to JavaScript, CSS, or initial loading time. 

Possible solutions: 

• Update your theme to the latest version. 
• Review and disable theme features you don’t use. 
• Optimise your site’s code with tools like WP Rocket. 
• Use the latest recommended version of PHP compatible with your theme. 
• Consider changing your theme. If you do, continue carefully to avoid losing key features. 

6. Too many external requests 

In addition to internal resources, WordPress sites often rely on external resources such as Google Fonts, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, embedded YouTube videos, chat widgets, and more. Each element sends external requests, meaning the browser must connect with another server. This increases the time it takes for each page to load. 

When your website must make too many of these requests and you don’t have a powerful hosting service to support it, your site will likely slow down. 

Possible solutions: 

• Only load what’s necessary. For example, if you use Google Fonts, limit the number of font families and styles. 
• Host resources locally instead of relying on external servers. 
• Avoid plugins that depend heavily on external resources. 
• Use third-party scripts with lazy loading to prevent preloading elements that won’t be used immediately. 

7. Overloaded database 

WordPress stores all your website’s information in a database. This includes posts, pages, settings, comments, users, and some plugin and theme data.  

If you don’t check it regularly, the database can become bloated with unnecessary information, slowing down your site’s queries to load content. 

Possible solutions: 

• Review your database and remove unused plugins, spam comments, and excess items. 
• Clear transients—temporary data stored by developers. 
• Delete old sessions. 
• Empty trash content. 

Tools to speed up your WordPress site 

In addition to the solutions we’ve already mentioned, there are tools specifically designed to speed up your WordPress website. Here are the main ones: 

GZIP compression 

GNU ZIP, better known as GZIP, is a free software tool that allows you to compress the files on your WordPress site. Every time a visitor accesses your website, their browser will automatically decompress the files, significantly reducing bandwidth usage. 

Content Delivery Network (CDN) 

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a system of servers distributed across different parts of the world. It stores copies of your website in multiple locations. This allows your data to physically travel the shortest distance possible, speeding up site loading times. 

This tool improves your website’s speed and enhances security and availability. To learn more, check out our guide on what a CDN is and how it works. 

Performance plugins 

Some plugins offer comprehensive speed optimisation solutions for WordPress websites and implement many performance techniques discussed in this article. One of the most complete options is WP Rocket. Some of its key features include: 

• Cache your pages so browsers can load them faster. 
• Optimises website files by organising code, removing unused CSS, and reducing element sizes. 
• Efficiently loads images and multimedia files, ensuring they only appear when needed. 

Let the specialists handle the technical aspects with Managed WordPress 

If you’d rather focus on your business and not spend time dealing with technical issues, a great option is to choose a Managed WordPress hosting service. With this type of hosting plan, you hand over key tasks such as updates, backups, security, and performance optimisation to a team of technical experts.  

With Managed WordPress, you can rest assured that your site is in good hands and dedicate your time to what really matters: growing your project.