Popular but Bloated WordPress Plugins and Their Alternatives

By Mitali Purkait Ghosh on February 26, 2024

Beginners often make the mistake of installing too many plugins and slowing their site down. Even if you firmly believe that less is more, you end up installing popular WordPress plugins full of overlapping features that slow down your website.

Slow websites are a nightmare since they make you lose traffic and you’re stuck with the popular yet bloated plugins for essential features of your website. Fortunately, there are several alternatives and a dedicated WordPress developer from Digital Concepts can help you integrate them seamlessly. Our skilled development team can get rid of those resource-hogging WordPress plugins without breaking your website and help you switch over to optimized alternatives without losing your data.

Popular and slow WordPress plugins with appropriate replacements:

1. Elementor

Elementor is a page builder and like most page builders it is extremely slow. This popular page builder along with some others like Beaver Builder and Divi Builder acts like CMS (Content Management System) inside a larger CMS like WordPress. Unfortunately, these page builders are highly popular and support integrations for thousands of third-party services. Switching over to something better is possible, but a challenging task. That’s why a lot of businesses and website owners choose to outsource WordPress development. Instead of Elementor, you’re better off sticking to Gutenberg, the default page builder from WordPress, or even snappier builders like Oxygen, and Breakdance.

2. Jetpack

Jetpack is owned by the same company that owns WordPress, Automatic. That’s why it is vertically integrated with WordPress and may appear as snappy to a casual user. Unfortunately, JetPack is a jack of all trades. It is a multifunction plugin that comes with all kinds of features and can be quite overkill for your needs. While WordPress itself may seem a bit bloated, it still manages to dominate the market since it’s one of the best platforms for SEO.    However, despite being a plugin, Jetpack takes half the file size of WordPress. With a naked theme and lightweight plugins that your site needs, website owners can bring down their site loading speed by a full second or more. For instance, as an offshore web development company in India, our team prefers to use a free and lightweight theme with WPForms, MonsterInsights, and other relevant plugins that a site needs.

3. Ultimately Social

This social media plugin is renowned for the social media share icons it allows you to add to your website. It also has the count feature for likes, lets you add animations to the icons on clicks, and even supports popups to prompt the user to follow your social media handles. It entices beginners who like gimmicky and flashy things for their website.

When you get a WordPress developer for hire, most of them would recommend you against installing this plugin since it adds a lot of bloat along with excessive vanity. Instead, stick to the social media features offered by your theme or get plugins like Social Plug that have minimal impact on your page loading speed.

If you’re looking for affordable WordPress development services in India, choose Digital Concepts. We perform a site audit to check your page loading speed, domain authority, plugins that slow your site down, and other metrics. We use that data to recommend and implement appropriate plugins and other necessary changes. Write to us at sales@digitalconcepts.in or click here to fill in your requirements.

Mitali Purkait Ghosh

Mitali Purkait Ghosh, the Co-Founder of Digital Concepts, brings a wealth of knowledge and innovation to the marketing sphere. Mitali and her dedicated team offer unparalleled expertise in digital marketing and content writing, among other key online strategies.