There are bunches of reasons why WordPress plugins are essential for a WordPress website. They provide plenty of features and functionality to your website. Using plugins, you can customize the website you have already created according to your requirements and aid your visitors.

However, you have likely heard that keeping too many WordPress plugins on your website is harmful. There are more than 50,000 WordPress plugins to choose from, so it may be easy to add a few too many of them to your website.

The biggest question is: Is it possible to install too many plugins? And if Yes, then how many is too many? What sort of detriment, in case you use an excessive plugin to your website? How should you go about selecting the suitable types of plugins for your website? In this article, we are going to answer those crucial questions. Let’s dig in!

(A) The Issues With Too Many WordPress Plugins

It depends on which plugins you have installed and how many plugins are active on your website? If there is a problem, then different potential issues may occur on your website. Here are some problems you could encounter from poor and too many plugins includes on your website:
 

1. Poor Performance and Slow Web Page Speed

It is true that the page speed really matters to keep your visitors engaged on your website. However, the WordPress plugin overload on your website may slow down the performance. You can use tools like Pingdom or GTmetrix to analyze the website page speed and performance.

2. Security Vulnerabilities

Website security is always a major concern. You have to secure your visitor’s data that is stored on your website database. If your website is not secure, then maybe the hacker will badly destroy your website. One study found that approximately 39% of WordPress vulnerabilities are because of cross-site scripting (XSS). And, around 52% of WordPress vulnerabilities are related to WordPress plugins.

Furthermore, the hacked website can destroy the brand’s reputation on the World Wide Web. The important thing is that there is a risk involved whenever you install any plugin or software on your website.
 

3. Website Crashes

As WordPress is an open-source platform, individuals are free to create, operate, modify, and share all the WordPress plugins or themes. With an endless supply of free WordPress plugins, most people worry about the performance, security, and reliability of their website.

Poorly coded plugins sometimes turn a great plugin into a harmful one, and that may cause website crashes. Professional developers can easily handle problems that occur with WordPress plugins.

4. Cross-Plugin Incompatibilities

Ever installed a new WordPress plugin and had it break one of your existing plugins on your website? There are a few chances. But, whenever you add a new plugin, you are increasing the possibility of your website. That is why you have to be very careful when you add a new plugin to your website.

Always install a plugin from reputed websites and check the code quality before adding it to your website.
 

(B) How Many Plugins are Too Many?

There is not a fixed number of plugins that you can set on your website. Generally, it depends on the web host you are using for your website. For shared and budget cloud hosting, you may use approximately 0 to 5 WordPress plugins for your website.

Furthermore, if you are using cloud hosting like a dedicated server and VPS hosting, then you can install around 5 to 10 plugins on your website without any hurdle. Always remember there are no specific rules for how many plugins you can and can not have on your website. Having too many plugins installed and active on your website adds to making your website potentially unusable and unstable is not a new one. So, let’s take a look at some tips to avoid trouble with too many plugins.
 

(C) How To Avoid Problems With Too Many Plugins?

Some actual questions might occur when people are free to install as many plugins as they want on their website. These problems do not automatically come with installing tons of WordPress plugins, but they may be associated with inexperienced users who install several plugins. Look at some tips to avoid problems using too many plugins on the website.
 

1. Check for Functionality Duplication

When thinking about installing a new plugin on your website is to check your existing plugins. Find the feature that you want to include on your website is already present in an existing plugin or not.

It is important to know the full features of an existing plugin before installing a new plugin with the same functionality. With this, you can easily prevent installing a duplicate plugin on your website. It is a great way to avoid installing too many plugins on your website.
 

2. Deal with Slowdown Website

You may be asking yourself why you need to be concerned about website speed in the prior place. Right! Case studies involving Google, Amazon, and others demonstrate that a single second delay in page load can lead to significant losses. Mainly, approximately 7% loss in conversions, around 11% fewer page views, and a 16% reduction in customer satisfaction.

If a culprit plugin is slowing your website down, then replace it with another powerful plugin. Generally, all well-coded plugins are developed to keep files load to a minimum. However, not all web developers are careful. When it comes to plugins, you need to consider quality rather than quantity. Some WordPress plugins will load data on each single web page loading instance even when those files are not needed.

It is a great idea to maintain a spreadsheet with data on your plugins and the functions they execute. Moreover, a Google Sheet is a wonderful way to manage and keep an overview of your WordPress plugins.

Related Read: How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website?

3. Merely Use the WordPress Plugins You Require

A good practice is to install the plugins that you actually need. For instance, if a plugin is not essential to use a service, then don’t install it on your website. Firstly, test out plugins before you install them on your website. Apart from that, you can also uninstall plugins that are no longer required on the website. If a selected plugin is not essential to your website’s functionality, go ahead and uninstall it.

You can install the User Activity Log Pro WordPress plugin to monitor and keep track of user activity on the admin panel.
 

4. Examine Plugin Performance on Your Website

Another immediate solution is to test your web page loading time before and after installing the desired plugin on your website. A suitable tool to use is Google PageSpeed Insights. Simply enter your page URL into the PageSpeed website, and you will get a list of suggestions covering how you can enhance your website speed. Calculating a before and after speed will provide you insight into how a plugin impacts your website’s overall performance.

For compatibility problems amongst the plugins installed on your website, it is unrealistic to expect every combination to work well together. Conflicts will arise and not always because of faulty plugins. With all the available plugins out there, it is predicted that some will conflict with the functionality of another at a specific point.
 

5. Update Existing WordPress Plugins to Patch Vulnerabilities

In general, the update of the WordPress plugin is released quite often. True! These updates include patches that fix plugin security on the website. Sometimes, the problem occurs when a bug is found that enables hackers to manage the entire website.

That is the main reason you should update the plugin as the updates are released. In case the update of a plugin is available, it will appear in the update section on your website dashboard.
 

6. Remove Inactive Plugins From Your Website

Generally, inactive plugins may be used by the hacker to gain access to your website. So, it is important to remove inactive plugins on your website. For that, log in to your website and check out the plugin section on your website admin panel. You have to uninstall any plugins listed in the Inactive tab in the dashboard.

Now, press the OK button to delete a particular plugin and its data completely on your website.

Once you finish this process, you can successfully remove inactive plugins from your website.
 

7. Install Reputed Plugins

The best way to know whether a plugin is reliable or not is to check how many people are actively using it. You should also check the latest plugin updated date. It will indicate that the developers are doing their best to support and maintain the plugin. If you find the plugin is not updated in a year, then never install it.

Furthermore, you should also check out the plugin rating. You will get some useful information by looking at customer reviews.

Make sure that the plugin you download comes from a reputed website developer. You can also check the support tab when you need resources to resolve any plugin related problem.

Related Read: Top Rated WordPress Plugins On Codecanyon

8. Contact a WordPress Expert for Proper Guidance

If you are new to WordPress and need help to find the right plugin for your website, then contact WordPress experts for proper guidance. They can provide you professional help to save you from a costly mistake.

Professional WordPress experts help you to suggest powerful WordPress plugins according to your business requirements.
 

(D) Pick Your WordPress Plugins Wisely

Here we have explained the list of tips you should consider when you install and activate a new plugin on your website. By following this advice we hope it will help you to determine whether the plugin is the best fit for your website or not.

• Looking for the developer of the plugin comes from a reputed community to avoid unnecessary problems.
• Always remember that not too many plugins cause a problem on your website, but the poorly coded one may cause it.
• The WordPress star ratings, reviews, and support forms are all great places to get insight information regarding plugins.
• You can also look at the number of installations, the latest update date because the well-known plugins will be regularly updated and have a high download ratio.
• Keep eye on plugins you are using or no longer use on your website. It is important to remove plugins you do not require, including inactive plugins on your WordPress website.
• You can also visit the documentation and check the description, tutorials as well as screenshots of the plugins.

(E) Final Verdicts!

That is the end! How many plugins are too many? It is more about quality rather than quantity. Use the plugins that you require and remain updated regularly to fix gaps in their security. Importantly, remove inactive plugins from your website and merely install the ones from respectable developers and companies.

Now, we want to know how many plugins do you have installed on your WordPress website? Don’t be shy! Let us know in the comment section below.

Read Next: How To Prevent WordPress Plugins From Breaking Your Website (Best Practices)