What are the pros and cons of using plugins in Wordpress?

TheCompWiz · Oct 8, 2016

My friends recommended me not use more than 10 plugins on a Wordpress site and I should not use many Wordpress plugins so cause high load on my site. I am not sure they are some rules when using Wordpress plugins. What are the pros and cons of using plugins in Wordpress? can anyone give me an advice?

LJSHost · Oct 8, 2016

I would try to limit your plugin usage to essential things you need for your site.
Your friend is correct, the more plugins you use the more bulky and slower your site will be. I would use only the plugins I needed and see how the site responds but this will depend on the amount of concurrent users.

GswHosting · Oct 8, 2016

Your friends are right about WP plugins.
Personally I never used more then 5 plugins.
Is there some rules? I don't follow rules, use plugins that you need for your WP.
There are various purpose of plugins, depend what you want with your website you will use that plugins.
Some of themes have built-in plugins like social share, contact page (contact plugin) etc. and you don't need some of plugins.
PROS can help you to speed up webpage, customize look, connect some services (mail subscription, sharing etc.), secure WP etc.
CONS too many plugins make high load to many http request to other pages, too many scripts etc. , some of plugins is hard to integrate with themes and change style.
It is best to use just plugins you need

ZenHosting · Oct 9, 2016

Hi TheCompWiz,

There's a very useful Wordpress plugin you can install called the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler.

It'll help you narrow down what plugins may be causing any slowness.

Gecko · Jan 12, 2017

TheCompWiz said:
My friends recommended me not use more than 10 plugins on a Wordpress site and I should not use many Wordpress plugins so cause high load on my site.

You should always install only the plugins that you need for a particular website. However, the number of plugins that can cause your site to slow down doesn't go by the number of plugins. It's all going to depend on the plugin itself. Some plugins are resource hogs and use a lot of your server resources and some use hardly any at all.

If you do some testing and find a plugin that uses a lot of resources that doesn't mean that you have to uninstall it and lose the function of the plugin. You can uninstall it and replace it with another plugin that has the same basic functions. There can be some big differences in resource usage between different plugins that do the same basic things so you can usually just try a few others out till you find one that is better on resource use.

TheCompWiz said:
What are the pros and cons of using plugins in Wordpress?

Some of the pros of using Wordpress plugins are that they can add functions, looks, capabilities and other things without having to do any coding yourself. These are great for people who don't know anything about writing code.

Some of the cons are that with each plugin that you install on your Wordpress site there is more potential security risks as some can give hackers one more thing to go after. This is why it's important to keep your plugins updated all the time. Another con is that when Wordpress comes out with new versions, especially major version updates, some of the plugins that you are using might not be compatible with the new version.

The bottom line is that you have to decide which plugins you really need try to keep the amount of plugins that you use to as few as possible. As I said above, there is no number in particular that you should try to or not to have as it depends on what the plugins are and how much resources they use.

keenweb · Feb 2, 2017

Hey!!

Many pros and little cons, depending on who you ask. The best thing you can do for yourself is to find a plugin that best meets your needs and requirement from the plugin and the cons is to download and install a plugin that could give effect your website with virus and or make your website vanurable to attackers and etc.

Always read reviews before downloading the plugin and it's always best just to check how many download the plugin has or even how long ago the most recent update was.

Best of luck!!

rad-jason · Jun 23, 2017

Yes, read the reviews for plugins before using any of them. Typically, the more plugins you use, the slower your site becomes. Use only the ones you need and only plugins that are updated regularly.

DeguWeb · Jul 7, 2017

One more thing - if your site is using many plugins then there is more of a security risk as you potentially will need to wait for 10+ developers to release patches if there is a known exploit or bug in some code.

openhosting · Jul 7, 2017

Choose only plugins that you think are essential to your site. Other than that, do not install a lot as it will only slow down your site or become a security risk if left to be outdated.

vinaya · Aug 12, 2017

I don't use too many plugins on my wordpress site. I stick with basic plugins such as seo plugins, security plugin, and Google analytic plugin. You can customize your wordpress site with plugins, but yes of course when you are using too many plugins, you are hindering the performance of your website.

JOED77 · Aug 13, 2017

For me, it's not an exact science, I'll do it just by common sense, for example, I don't make plug-ins load in the same time, say an image plug-in in the same time with a video plug-in, and trying to go for plug-ins with less bells and whistles, just the necessary. you see plug-ins are in the heart of CMSs like WordPress, and I see just pros on using them, no cons.

What are the pros and cons of using plugins in Wordpress?

TheCompWiz

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