Does Jetpack slow down WordPress? Make Jetpack faster, FAQs.

Does Jetpack actually slow down WordPress?

Generally speaking, no. Jetpack does not slow down a WordPress website. It’s a bit of a myth actually.

However, Jetpack can either slow a website down or speed it up and more. It all depends on how you use it.

Jetpack gets a lot of flack. Some of it may be deservedly so. I think it all comes down to expectations. Like anything else. 

Needless to say, there is a lot of controversy around Jetpack. Users either love it or hate it with a passion. 

In this post, I’m going to go over not only why Jetpack may slow down your website as well as what you can do to troubleshoot and correct those issues. 

I am also going to go over the benefits of Jetpack and how it can actually improve your website’s speed, overall performance and save you time. 

Finally, I will go over who should use Jetpack and why they should use it.

Is Jetpack a bloated plugin?

A lot of the controversy about Jetpack comes down to this. 

Jetpack is a huge plugin, no doubt. It’s packed with features. But truth be told, you probably don’t need most of them. 

Therefore, unless you go into the settings screen and turn those features you don’t need off one by one, it’s going to slow down your website, no question. 

It just makes common sense really, (WordPress speaking that is). 

Each plugin adds code to your website’s files which your server has to, well, serve to each user who visits your site.

Like the Beautiful Math feature for example. Do you really need to write complex mathematical equations and formulas? I know I don’t. So turn it off, simple. 

A feature that is turned off in Jetpack doesn’t add any extra code to your site’s files, because the code for it never even loads, so they don’t affect anything.

As with all plugins, any additional code in a plugin will actually “slow down” your site. Therefore, Jetpack is no different than any other plugin.

Can Jetpack increase your site’s speed?

There are a number of features in Jetpack that can dramatically increase the speed of your site, such as it’s Site Accelerator. (formerly known as Photon).

Site Accelerator helps your pages load faster by allowing Jetpack to optimize your images and serve your images and static files (like CSS and JavaScript) from their global network of servers and not yours.

Sometimes Jetpack’s Site Accelerator serves images even faster than your site does.

Most of Jetpack is designed to speed up your site by taking the load off of your server. Like as I mentioned, their Site Accelerator. 

But also other features which are performed from their servers like:

• Stats.
• Subscriptions.
• Related Posts.

All of which are processed on their end, rather than hammering your server’s database as these features traditionally do.

Cases where Jetpack may slow down your WordPress website.

I just want to caveat this by saying I personally have not had these issues with Jetpack, but others have. 

Hosting.

Some claim that Jetpack slows down sites on limited hosting plans. Especially on Shared Hosting. It is true that Jetpack may have issues with certain hosts due to conflicts. 

So always check with your web hosts to see if there are any issues on their end which may cause potential conflicts.

Your Web Host for example may have their own caching and image cache software on their servers that you’re using and not even know it.

Another possible example is when your Web Host may be blocking, limiting or preventing Jetpack from accessing your xmlrpc.php file. 

So this issue can be solved by having them whitelist the Jetpack IP ranges noted on this page Hosting FAQs.

Get their advice on additional preventative measures you can take before installing Jetpack as well. 

You should know however, that not all on Shared Hosting plans have issues. In fact, quite the contrary. 

For example, their CDN tool not only serves up images fast, but also static files like CSS and JS files. The best part of it, it’s part of their free version. 

So for those who can’t afford a CDN, Jetpack is your best option.

So if you’re on a low grade Shared Hosting plan it could actually be fantastic for performance.

Plugin conflicts and other possible compatibility issues.

One of the great things about WordPress is of course the use of plugins. 

Plugins perform just about any type of functionality you can wish for on a WordPress website. 

Plugins allow even the non-coder to add functionality to their WordPress website without having to write a single line of code to make it happen. 

Since WordPress is also open source and non-proprietary, any WordPress developer or anyone with knowledge of PHP for example, can create a plugin. 

There are well over 55,000 WordPress plugins available on WordPress.org alone. 

As a result, plugins can be coded quite differently from one another and perform functions with that coding that can also conflict with other plugins, their functions and coding as well. 

One of the first things you learn about WordPress is that plugins and themes may have conflicts. In fact, it’s inevitable. 

So WordPress 101 basically says to fix a plugin conflict, you either need to contact the plugin developer and have them sort it for you. Good luck with that! 

Or you could take matters into your own hands and disable all the plugins one by one, then reactivate them one by one until you find the conflict. 

Jetpack, as I’ve mentioned above, is just one giant huge bundle of plugins, over 40 in fact. 

So it’s inevitable that Jetpack may have some plugin conflicts. Actually, Jetpack is well aware of this and has even written a guide to “Known Jetpack compatibility issues“. 

However it’s almost impossible to know all possible conflicts, since new plugins and updates are created all the time. 

Therefore, going back to WordPress 101, you’ll need to start turning off your active plugins one by one, until you’ve discovered the conflict yourself. 

Then you’ll have to decide if that plugin is either really worth it and provide you with more value than Jetpack, or contact the developer through their support on WordPress.org or their own website and see if you can resolve the issue that way. 

You can also use this valuable plugin, “Health Check and Troubleshooting”, follow their documentation and check for plugin conflicts yourself. 

You can also use Gtmetrix as well. This is not a WordPress plugin but an outside site that gives your website an overall performance checkup. It can tell you the issues that may be slowing down your WordPress website as well as conflicts within your site.

Is Jetpack good for WordPress?

Jetpack is a collection of well over 40 separate plugins that perform a wide variety of functions that are often useful and good for WordPress. 

If you need these functions, it’s a great way to get them. 

You can also turn off the options you do not need, which most people overlook despite the fact that it’s quite simple to do. 

In addition, almost all themes and other plugins nowadays will be compatible with Jetpack just because it’s so popular, that they have to be.

Jetpack was created by WordPress to be an all in one solution to optimizing WordPress websites. 

But instead of making WordPress users having to scour over 50,000 plugins to choose the ones they may need most, WordPress created Jetpack to make it much easier. 

Having 40 separate plugins would be much more of a hassle, and they’re not wrong on that, would you say?

Jetpack was made, especially for beginners and those who have little time to fuss over the technical aspects of their sites and prefer to focus on creating great content. 

In fact, instead of listing all their features, here’s a link to them, so you can check out and see for yourself: Full List of Features.

How to speed up Jetpack?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, a simple solution which may actually solve up to 90% of all Jetpack’s site speed issues and the main reason why Jetpack may be slowing down your WordPress website is because you simply need to turn off the features you are not going to use. 

These features will not load any code into your WordPress files and bloat your site with unnecessary code.

You’d be surprised at how many people actually overlook this one simple step and then go on forums and complain about how Jetpack slows down their WordPress website. 

When it was usually a simple matter of just turning off a few features in their Jetpack dashboard.

To optimize Jetpack even more and make the most out of Jetpack’s features to speed up your WordPress site, you should then follow Jetpack’s own advice by using the tools they recommend below:

• Serve your images and videos through Jetpack’s high-speed content delivery network.
• Speed up your site static assets, including JavaScript files, with their site accelerator suite of features.
• Reduced load times for your readers by intelligently loading images as they enter the viewport.
• Jetpack’s Search feature helps deliver faster, more relevant results to your visitors.
• Make your visitor’s experience more efficient by loading more content on-the-fly.
• Optimize your site to use less bandwidth from your host.
• Jetpack features are supported on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
• For even more caching options try WP Super Cache, which is fully supported by Jetpack. Or try W3 Total Cache.

Still need a boost? Try Jetpack Boost – WordPress plugin. Jetpack announced the release of Jetpack Boost in April 2021 as a way to improve a WordPress site’s speed and performance. 

Although Jetpack Boost is a part of the Jetpack brand, it is a separate standalone plugin that doesn’t require the Jetpack plugin to run. 

Seems like the folks at Jetpack are listening to users who wished they would make more unbundled, standalone plugins away from their core products.

But wait, that’s not even the best part. The best part is that it’s free!

Is there a Jetpack alternative?

There isn’t a single Jetpack alternative. 

However, there are literally thousands of Jetpack alternatives. 

That’s one of the main reasons why Jetpack was created in the first place. 

Japek was created to save WordPress users the time, trouble and hassle of finding and testing out numerous plugins to not only perform one feature, but perform it well. 

That’s why Jetpack created what it felt were the most valuable bundle of plugins a WordPress website should have.

All in one package, all with expert support from one place.

However, you can go through WordPress.org plugins and find alternatives for yourself.

Does Jetpack slow down WordPress? Final thoughts.

To sum up, use Jetpack for the pieces you want and turn the rest off. You’ll find that not only will Jetpack not slow down your WordPress website, but will actually make it faster and perform much better. 

Jetpack may not necessarily be the best of all the possible plugin solutions for each plugin function, but it’s pretty good at all of them, and way more convenient.

As a general rule for WordPress you should only install a plugin if it fills a need you have already identified. Then see what your site needs, then look for plugins to do them.

Don’t misunderstand, Jetpack does have plenty of detractors who claim:

• Jetpack sends all your data to Automattic, (but what plugin or theme, paid or free doesn’t?). 
• Jetpack is bloated and adds unnecessary functions and code. 
• Jetpack slows down your website, maybe even crashing it. 
• There are other plugins that do the same functions better, etc.

However, if you’re not a developer and you don’t have much experience with optimizing a WordPress website, Jetpack can be a Godsend. 

For a lot of beginners the bundle of all those features is greatly appreciated since they don’t have to find and install a ton of plugins themselves. 

This is actually an excellent plugin solution for the non developer community. Jetpack gives them a one stop solution for their WordPress website. On top of that, they have 24 hour support! How many plugins actually offer that?

Developers hate it because they can optimize and know better themselves which plugins are good and which aren’t. Well, I and many non-coder/developers can’t. 

I know that personally, I would much rather prefer spending my valuable time writing content for my site, not fine tuning it, testing out plugins and constantly having to deal with abandoned or conflicting plugins. (which is what I used to do way too much of before using Jetpack).

In short, Jetpack is a fully featured plugin, but you must use it to see all the benefits. 

When WordPress came out with Jetpack it was for the sole purpose of providing all the main features a WordPress website needs in one plugin! 

When used correctly, Jetpack will not slow down WordPress, but quite the contrary, it’ll actually speed it up!