6 Negative effects of using too many WordPress plugins for your website

6 negative effects of too many plugins

Before you go installing plugins on your website for added functionality, you need to question whether it is really necessary as more often than not, installing a plugin will impact your website in many ways - from performance, to security to user experience and your bottom line.

1. Impacting the performance

Every plugin is not created equal and more often than not, WordPress plugins cause an impact on the performance of your website.

More plugins means more code being read on the server, and more code being sent to the users browser, meaning a slower load times, layout shifts, unresponsive interfaces and much more.

This results in poorer user experience. A poor user experience will cause you to lose out on sales, conversions and leads, as well as hindering your search engine rankings.

2. Security risks

When you have a custom website designed and developed, as long as the company is following best practices, your website will be much more secure than a WordPress website with numerous plugins. You also have peace of mind if you go to an established company with a track record of building high performing websites and applications.

For every plugin you install, you are putting your website data and sensitive information at risk - how do you know the plugin developers have optimised the plugin properly? Also, if you're not on the ball with plugin updates, your site will have a large target on it by malicious actors - You need to ensure your plugins are always up to date to mitigate any security vulnerabilities.

3. Compatibility issues and bugs

A common problem with installing too many plugins on a WordPress website is having compatibility issues, which leads to buggy behaviour and sometimes completely breaking your website.

You may be thinking that you're in the clear if you don't currently have any bugs due to plugins, but this could well likely not be the case once a new update for one comes out.

If a bug does pop up after installing updates, it can become problematic to find a fix to the issue.

4. Maintenance issues

As mentioned above, installing plugin updates is a necessary step to keep your site secure. However the more you have, the more of a pain these updates become.

You could set them to update automatically, but then you run the risk of a bug in an update breaking your entire site without you knowing.

5. Complexity

More plugins than necessary will bloat the admin dashboard, with settings and configurations for each one all over the place, which can be a headache to manage.

Another issue with complexity is similar to the compatibility issues - if one plugin doesn't do what it is meant to due to being overridden by the settings of a different plugin, finding a workaround can be a complex task.

6. Increased hosting costs

As mentioned above in performance, installing more plugins will mean more code is read on the server. This will increase the load and server usage on your account, leading to higher costs.

Another issue can arise if you have a traffic spike - your server may not be configured to scale well and if there's a plugin which is underperforming, it could completely crash your website.

What you can do to avoid having too many plugins?

The best response to this is to; invest in your business' website by having a completely bespoke solution designed and developed for your requirements.

Not sure how to do this? Get in touch using the form below to discuss your requirements 👇