What is the maximum number of WordPress plugins which is still safe?

One of the many reasons WordPress is so useful, so safe, so convenient, and so powerful is the availability of countless plugins for doing almost anything you wish your WordPress site to be able to do.

Plugins are like genies of the WordPress world; your wish is their command. Do you wish to turn your blog into an eCommerce store? Use WooCommerce. Do you wish to turn your website into a forum? Use “bbpress”.

Personally I’ve never come across a functionality that I needed and couldn’t find a proper plugin for it. Plugins come in various sizes and shapes. What I mean by this that some plugins are absolutely free to use, some are to be purchased, some are in between the two, i.e. some functions are free to use, and for more functionality, you will need to buy a pro or paid version.

From making your site appear beautiful to make it more secure, you can find a myriad of plugins listed on the “Add Plugins” page of your site or on private plugin sites, even on marketplaces like Theme Forest.

How do these plugins work?

A plugin in WordPress adds new functionality to a WordPress site. It is a complex code that gets inserted into the WordPress core to allow certain functionality that you need. For instance, speed optimization and caching plugins minify Javascript. What does minification mean? Well, most of the WordPress users don’t have the technical knowledge to understand minification, but they do know it works wonders when it comes to reducing page load time. Page load time is an extremely vital factor in improving both user experience and search engine rankings.

So, without forcing its users to learn technical coding languages and the steps required to minify each JS line, WordPress has caching plugins to take care of this process.

All you need to do is to add the caching plugin, activate it, click minify, and that’s it. Head over to PageSpeed Insights by Google, GTMetrix, or Pingdom, and see the difference yourself.

How many plugins are too many?

The answer to this question isn’t very straightforward. It is possible to run a WordPress blog without using a single plugin. However, you will need good programming knowledge, like an understanding of HTML, HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.

That doesn’t sound like the WordPress we know and love. We choose WordPress because we can make beautiful and functional websites with little to no programming knowledge, and how do we do that? We use Plugins.

There is a limit to how many plugins you can use in a single WordPress site. This limit is imposed by the hardware your hosting provider is using or the resources they are allowing you to use. If you are on a budget hosting plan, you won’t have unlimited resources available, and you need to keep most of those resources reserved to serve your site as fast as possible to your site visitors.

Stick to the least number of plugins required to run your site as desired.

Do not overload your site with unnecessary plugins.

For instance, if you are not allowing visitors to post comments on your site, you do not need to use the default “Akismet” plugin. Go ahead, deactivate, then delete it. Similarly, if you are using Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic, you do not need to have a GA plugin installed on your site. If you are not allowing any subscription services, you probably do not need a “Social Login” plugin.

But if you are running an eCommerce store, you definitely are going to use WooCommerce and a payment processor plugin. Keep a balance when using plugins, too many similar plugins will not only be redundant but may also break your site.

As we mentioned earlier, minification is one way to increase your site’s speed but even if you use two caching plugins on your site, you can get ready for a disaster. Some visitors will see blank pages, and others will see only text on your site.

If you need a page builder to build your site, choose a theme that offers the same page design that you desire without the need for a page builder or use the one that requires only one plugin to do that. Avada, Divi and Flatsome are perfect examples of themes that do not require additional plugins for creating beautiful layouts and designs.