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If you've been around WordPress for any length of time you may be one of "those" that shout the woah! No wonder your site doesn't work; you have 30 plugins. If you aren't one of those people, you'll most probably in the camp of "Why does it matter how many plugins I have?".

There are tens of thousands of plugins available for free in the WordPress.org plugins repository and even more available from an army of developers and companies offering premium plugins through their own websites and sites like CodeCanyon.

Before you can understand why having too many plugins is a myth, first you need to understand more about why the argument exists in the first place.

Plugins are easy to install

One of the main issues with people having too many plugins is that they are simply too easy to install. All you have to do is go into your WordPress, hop on over to plugins click on add new, search one, click and all of a sudden you have a shiny new piece of functionality. Like a kid in a toy shop that wants everything and they want it now. Many site owners are the same way with plugins; they want a new piece of functionality, can often find it through a quick and simple search and it gives that instant gratification of seeing the website improve.

Now you will get people saying you shouldn't just install any plugin you fancy, you can have too many plugins. While you can't have too many plugins what you can have is a poorly optimized site. I've seen sites running 90+ plugins that are quicker than sites running five plugins its a matter of configurations rather than having too little or too many.

Plugins are a security risk

This is one of the main factors any developer will point to anyone with a lot of plugins, that having too many plugins is a security risk. There is a hint of truth in this. Though rather than having too many plugins posing a security risk instead each plugin poses a security risk.

You may get hacked through having five poorly coded plugins rather than 100 well-coded plugins. It is that simple.

There have been many high profile cases of security vulnerabilities in plugins over the years causing wide spread cases of hacking, malware, etc. Two of the highest profile cases being with Slider Revolution and Visual Composer. Both developers worked quickly to get new versions out and resolve the issue. If you thought that by just having a plugin such as Slider Revolution on your site would lower the risk, as it's all based on the plugin itself you are still just as likely to get hacked. Of course, the more plugins you have, the higher the probability of one having a security flaw that results in you being hacked.

 

You are more prone to having a security flaw in a plugin just due to pure odds on how many plugins you have installed.

 

Rather, you should focus on the source you get plugins from. All plugins on WordPress.org have to undergo strict checks on coding standards, and CodeCanyon has in the recent years updated it's review policies to ensure that issues are caught before they ever get in the wild. Of course, you can't guarantee that something hasn't been missed. By sticking to well-respected sites, though, you definitely stand a better chance.

Plugins Slow Down My Site

While it's true a plugin may slow down your site, this is very similar to the security issue explored above. If a plugin has been coded to WordPress coding standards the chances are it shouldn't impact on your sites load time and is more of a case of site optimization rather than the plugin itself causing the issue.

If you install a pop-up type plugin on your website and trigger that to show to all site visitors, maybe add an image in it call a custom font, etc. that may be an extra three HTTP requests on the front-end of your site.

Each HTTP request needs to be served by your server to the client (your site visitor) to render the content. While having too many HTTP requests will cause slow-down on your site, you can optimize these either through the use of optimization plugins or use techniques such as lazy loading. You don't need to worry about additional HTTP requests added by plugins overall though, simply because a few extra HTTP requests aren't going to impact your websites load time. You'd be looking at milliseconds difference rather than seconds. On the whole, this is something that can be looked over by most site owners with no real concern needed.

Database Queries

One thing you do need to be aware of is database queries. If you install a bunch of plugins and then load all those plugins functionalities on one page on your site and each plugin makes multiple calls to the database.

 

Your site can only be as quick as the database can process those queries.

 

This is one area where you do need to be slightly more cautious, while plugins developed to WordPress coding standards shouldn't impact on your sites load time too much. Having plugins with poorly coded database queries will cause delays and possible issues with your server crashing due to too many database queries.

Will Too Many Plugins Break My site?

The quick answer is - no, having too many plugins won't break your site. They may cause additional issues beyond what you can see, but as long as you stick to well-respected resources of plugins they won't actually break your site.

What You Can Do To Ensure A Smooth Experience

• Cut down on duplicate functionality

If you have two plugins or more that perform similar functionalities disable one and delete. For example, some people have 2 or 3 different caching plugins. You only need one at most. In fact, you may come across conflicts and issues with your site by having multiple plugins that perform similar functionalities.

• Only Keep Installed What You Need

If you have 50 plugins active, you have 50 active fine. But don't have 50 active and 30 inactive. If you aren't using a plugin delete it. Any plugin can be a potential security risk even a deactivated one. Always ensure you only actually have installed what you are using at the time. Keeping a plugin installed for the sake of it isn't worth it.

• User Reviews

Take note of user reviews and seek out plugins that have consistently high ratings and positive user reviews. While you shouldn't place much on a plugin that has a couple of good reviews, if you see a plugin with hundreds or thousands it's most likely a safe bet and should work pretty well.

• User Experience

Before deciding to add a bunch of plugins to improve the functionality of your website. Always take into account the user experience that comes with it. Just because you like being bombarded with pop-ups, opt-ins and upsells, most users don't. And it'll only annoy your visitors rather than improve your website in any way, shape or form.

• Debug Debug Debug

One issue that you could come across by having too many plugins is your site being harder to debug. If you have 50 plugins each one may need to be deactivated one by one to find out what's causing an issue.

Verdict

Having too many plugins is a myth; there is no such thing. The importance is on only using and installing plugins you need and those plugins being well coded. You're better off with hundreds of well-coded plugins than just one bad one. Always keep this in mind when finding the next plugin to install on your WordPress website.

How many plugins do you have on your site? Have you ever come across a site that hundreds upon hundreds of plugins? Let us know in the comments below.