"The site is slow" can mean several very different things. Narrow it down first, and the cause usually names itself.
Step one: who is it slow for?
Slow for everyone, including first-time visitors. Your pages are probably not being cached. Check whether a plugin or a setting is preventing page caching.
Fast for visitors, slow when you are logged in. That is normal to a degree, because logged-in pages are built fresh. If it is very slow, the cause is nearly always plugin count or an expensive plugin.
Slow only in the WordPress admin. Usually a plugin doing work on every admin page load, such as a dashboard widget or a security scanner.
Slow only at certain times. You may be running out of memory or CPU at your busiest hour, or a scheduled job is running at that time.
Slow only from far away. The CDN handles your assets, but the initial page still comes from us. This is normal and small.
Step two: check the obvious
- Test in a private browsing window. Rule out your own browser cache.
- Look at your page weight. A page with 12 MB of uncompressed images is slow no matter how good the hosting is.
- Count your plugins. If it is over 30, that is the first place to look.
- Check your usage in the panel. If you are constantly at your plan's memory or CPU ceiling, the plan is the constraint.
Step three: find the culprit
Use staging (Pro and above). Deactivate plugins one at a time on the staging copy, and time a page load after each. This finds the guilty plugin in fifteen minutes and it does not touch your live site.
The usual suspects
- Too many plugins
- Huge, uncompressed images
- A page builder loading everything on every page
- An external service the site waits on, such as a slow third-party script or a social feed
- A plan too small for the site, especially a shop on Starter
- A caching plugin fighting our own page cache
Ask the assistant
The AI assistant in your panel can see your account's actual resource usage. Ask it whether you are hitting your plan's limits. That answers the "do I need a bigger plan" question honestly.
Still stuck
Email [email protected] with the exact address of a slow page and who it is slow for. Broken but up is answered within one business day.
The assistant in your control panel can see your actual account and answer about your sites, your plan and your usage. For anything else, email [email protected] and a person will answer.