Perfmatters Review, Pricing, Features, Alternatives & More

Perfmatters Review: Perfmatters is a performance optimization plugin for WordPress websites. It’s designed to improve website speed and performance by disabling unnecessary features and reducing HTTP requests. The plugin offers a range of performance optimization options such as disabling emojis, removing query strings, disabling embeds, removing jQuery migration, and more. These features can help reduce the size of your website’s code and improve its load time.

Perfmatters Review: Background & History

Perfmatters is a WordPress performance optimization plugin founded by two brothers, Brian and Brett. They have over 19 years of combined experience with WordPress and work on their plugins full-time. They were frustrated with the limitations of existing free plugins and decided to build their own, based on the performance optimizations they use across all their sites.

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Brian, a co-founder of forge media LLC and former CMO at Kinsta, has worked extensively in the WordPress hosting and CDN industry. He has optimized thousands of sites and published numerous articles on WordPress optimization and ways to speed up websites. WordPress is his passion; he blogs about it, along with SEO optimization, marketing, and productivity, on his blog workup.

Brett, a co-founder of forge-media LLC, is a web developer who loves building web applications and anything WordPress. He has previously worked at an agency, where he was responsible for building, maintaining, and optimizing clients’ sites. Brett is constantly figuring out new performance optimizations for WordPress and is nitpicky about UI, spending a lot of time ensuring plugins result in a good user experience.

Debugging code, listening to customer feedback, and responding to support tickets is something they enjoy and take seriously. They are dedicated to continuously improving Perfmatters and providing a high-quality performance optimization solution for WordPress users.

Perfmatters Review: Key Benefits

• Improved website performance: Optimizes website loading speed and reduces server requests for faster page load times.
• Reduced page size: Minifies CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to reduce page size, leading to faster loading times.
• Easy optimization: Provides a user-friendly interface to enable or disable optimizations with just a few clicks, even for non-technical users.
• Customizable optimizations: Allows for selective optimization, enabling users to choose specific optimizations based on their website’s requirements.
• Complementary functionality: Works well with other caching and performance plugins, providing additional optimization benefits.
• Developer-friendly: Offers hooks and filters for developers to customize and extend the plugin’s functionality as needed.
• Regular updates: Provides regular updates with bug fixes and performance improvements to keep the plugin optimized and secure.
• Dedicated support: Offers dedicated support from the plugin developers to assist with any issues or questions.
• Privacy-focused: Prioritizes user privacy and does not collect any personal data.
• Value for money: Offers a one-time payment for a lifetime license, providing long-term value and cost savings.

Perfmatters Review: Key Features

Database Optimization Techniques

Optimizing your website database is crucial to ensure that your site performs well and remains healthy in the long run. As time passes, your database can accumulate a lot of unnecessary data, which can result in a slower website. Just like your car requires regular oiling and maintenance, your database also requires regular maintenance to function smoothly.

Perfmatters provides a simple and efficient way to clean up your database and remove old and unused data. You can use the plugin to delete revisions of posts, pages, and custom post types. Additionally, you can remove old auto-drafts that are saved while editing content, delete WordPress spam comments, and clean up the trash from comments and posts. You can also delete expired transients and optimize your database tables to reclaim unused space.

• Delete revisions (posts, pages, and custom post types).
• Delete old auto-drafts that are saved when you’re editing content.
• Delete WordPress spam comments in one fell swoop.
• Clean up your trash from comments and posts.
• Delete expired transients and keep your wp_options table clean.
• Optimize your database tables to reclaim unused space.

Quick-Toggle Features

Perfmatters offers a range of performance optimization options that can be easily applied by toggling them on. The Perfmatters team recommends utilizing the following options to improve your site’s performance:

• Disable emojis, embeds, and dashicons: Disabling unnecessary scripts and assets that you may not be using on your site, such as emojis, embeds, dashicons, etc., can help reduce the size of your site’s code and improve its load time.
• Disable or limit post revisions: Limiting the number of post revisions that WordPress stores or disabling post revisions can help keep your database from growing out of control.
• Change autosave interval: Changing your autosave interval can help reduce the number of auto-drafts that WordPress keeps and decrease the “there is a more recent version” warning.
• Disable and tweak Heartbeat API: Heartbeat can cause high CPU usage and a large number of AJAX calls. Disabling or changing the frequency of Heartbeat can help improve your site’s performance.
• Disable comments and URLs: Disabling comments sitewide or removing author comment links can help reduce spam and stop people from trying to get backlinks.
• Disable Google Maps: Google Maps can negatively impact your site’s performance. Disabling it selectively and only loading it where it’s needed can help improve your site’s speed.
• Disable WooCommerce cart fragments (AJAX): The wc-ajax=get_refreshed_fragments request can cause delays on WooCommerce sites. Disabling cart fragments on your site can help improve your site’s performance.

Perfmatters Review: Lazy loading Add-ons

Lazy loading is a feature that delays the loading of images, videos, or iframes until the user scrolls down the page and they enter the viewport. This is important to reduce the number of requests happening right off the bat, especially for posts and pages with a lot of images or videos. Perfmatters plugin offers lazy loading features that provide an average of 33% decrease in load times compared to the default native lazy loading in WordPress.

Here are some of the lazy load features that the Perfmatters plugin provides:

• Lazy load images, iframes, and videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps, etc.).
• Lazy load CSS background images.
• Swap out iframes with a preview thumbnail and SVG play icon, which loads the video on click. This is the fastest way to load YouTube videos.
• WebP and AVIF support.
• Change the threshold of the viewport to be more or less aggressive.
• Automatically exclude leading images from lazy loading to help improve LCP.
• DOM monitoring for better infinite scroll compatibility on dynamic sites.
• Adding missing width and height attributes to images to fix Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
• Add a fade-in effect when images are loaded in.

Built-In Script Management

• The Perfmatters plugin includes a Script Manager that allows users to disable scripts on a per post/page basis or across their entire site with a single click.
• Scripts are grouped by their respective plugin or theme to make it easy to identify which scripts are being used by what.
• Scripts can also be disabled by the device (desktop or mobile) and logged in or logged out state.
• The Script Manager can be used to increase the speed of WordPress sites, especially the homepage.
• Examples of how the Script Manager can be used include disabling the Contact Form 7 plugin on all pages and posts except for the contact page and loading social media sharing plugins only on post types or custom post types.
• The Script Manager includes advanced features such as the ability to disable any combination of scripts using Regex.
• MU mode allows users to control every aspect of a plugin, from its front-end scripts to inline code and MySQL queries.
• Testing Mode allows users to safely preview their configuration before applying changes to their public site.
• The Perfmatters team utilizes the Script Manager on all of their sites to optimize page speed.

CDN Rewriting Optimization

The Perfmatters plugin’s CDN rewrite feature helps you connect your WordPress site with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up your website. Here are some of the key features of the Perfmatters CDN rewrite:

• You can input your CDN URL and the plugin will rewrite all of your assets, images, and other files to point to your CDN.
• You can select which WordPress directories you want to include in the CDN rewrite.
• You can also exclude certain file types or assets with specific strings from being rewritten, giving you more control over the CDN integration.

Using a CDN can help reduce your website’s load times and improve your users’ experience, especially for visitors who are located far away from your server. By leveraging the Perfmatters CDN rewrite feature, you can easily take advantage of this technology without having to manually edit your website’s code.

WordPress login URL Optimization

The Perfmatters plugin offers a feature to change the default WordPress login URL (https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/) to something more obscure. This is a simple but effective way to combat bots, hackers, and other malicious attacks on your site, as they typically scan for these common login URLs. By changing the login URL, you can significantly decrease the number of failed login attempts and improve the performance of your site by reducing bot traffic. The process of changing the login URL can be done quickly and easily using the Perfmatters plugin.

Perfmatters Review: Easy Code Editor

The Perfmatters plugin’s “Add code to header, body, footer” feature allows users to easily add custom code to their WordPress site’s header, body, or footer sections. Some key points about this feature are:

• Custom code can be printed directly on the front end using inline CSS or JS tags.
• Users can also load a JS or CSS file.
• The code added to the header section will print between the <head> </head> tags on the site.
• The code added to the body section will print below the opening <body> tag on the site.
• The code added to the footer section will print above the closing </body> tag on the site.

Google Analytics Easy Hosting

The Perfmatters plugin’s Host Google Analytics locally feature is a great tool to help speed up your WordPress site. By hosting Google Analytics locally, you can reduce extra DNS lookups and resolve the “leverage browser caching” issue from their script.

Hosting Google Analytics locally can help reduce load times and improve site speed, and with the Perfmatters plugin, you have full control over the caching of the script. The feature includes six script types to choose from, including analytics.js (17 KB), gtag.js, gtag.js v4, minimal (only 1.5 KB), minimal inline, and minimal v4.

You can also change the tracking code position between the header or footer of your site and anonymize your IP for data privacy and GDPR purposes. The feature also allows you to choose whether or not to track logged-in admins, and it has a dual tracking option to transition to Google Analytics 4. You can disable display features to get rid of a second HTTP request and adjust your site’s bounce rate to better evaluate the quality of your traffic.

JavaScript Problem Solving

The Perfmatters plugin offers a solution to the common issue of JavaScript slowing down the first painting of a WordPress site’s page by allowing users to defer or delay JavaScript. By adding defer tags to all of your JavaScript files, scripts will load after the rest of the page has loaded. The plugin also allows users to defer inline JavaScript and jQuery core if desired.

Additionally, the Perfmatters plugin lets users add JavaScript deferral exclusions with file names, paths, or strings, as well as per individual page/post in the WordPress editor. Users can also delay JavaScript until user interaction such as scrolling or moving the mouse, which is especially useful for heavy third-party scripts like Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Google Adsense, and more, as well as for WooCommerce cart fragments.

Perfmatters Review: Google Fonts Hosting

Perfmatters plugin’s Host Google Fonts locally feature allows users to host Google Fonts on their own WordPress site or CDN, instead of relying on external servers, which can cause slow loading times due to HTTP cache partitioning. Here are some of the key points about this feature:

• Perfmatters automatically copies Google Fonts to your WordPress site, allowing you to take advantage of your own caching expiry headers and eliminating the need for third-party DNS lookups to Google.
• By hosting Google Fonts locally, you can improve your site’s privacy and reduce the impact of third-party code, while also speeding up font loading and preventing render-blocking.
• The feature also includes an option to enable display swap, which can further improve font loading times and reduce the impact of third-party code on your site.
• Additionally, users have the option to load Google Fonts from their own CDN, providing even more flexibility and control over their site’s performance.

Perfmatters Review: Preloading Add-ons

The Perfmatters plugin’s Preloading resources feature provides a range of tools to help speed up the loading of scripts and resources on your WordPress site. By using real attributes, you can easily add these attributes across your entire site or on specific pages or devices.

Here are some of the features included in the Perfmatters plugin’s Preloading resources:

• Instant Page: This feature lets you automatically prefetch URLs in the background after a user hovers over a link. This results in almost instantaneous load times and helps improve the user experience.
• Preload: This feature allows you to specify resources like fonts or CSS that are needed right away during a page load. This helps fix render-blocking resource warnings and speeds up the loading of your site.
• Automatic critical image preloading: This feature automatically preloads critical images to help decrease the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which is a key factor in improving your site’s speed and user experience.
• DNS prefetch: This feature allows you to resolve domain names (perform a DNS lookup in the background) before a user clicks on a link, which in turn can help improve performance by reducing DNS lookup times.
• Preconnect: This feature allows the browser to set up early connections before an HTTP request, eliminating round-trip latency and saving time for users.

Unused CSS Remover #New

Perfmatters plugin’s “Remove unused CSS” feature is designed to help speed up your WordPress site by removing unused CSS. Often, plugins and themes include stylesheets that are not needed or used on a particular page, resulting in a lot of unused CSS. This slows down your website and can even trigger render-blocking warnings. With Perfmatters, you can automatically remove unused CSS with two methods: file and inline.

Here are some of the features of the “Remove unused CSS” feature in Perfmatters:

• Two remove unused CSS methods: file and inline. The file method scans your stylesheet files, while the inline method scans the page’s inline styles.
• Three original stylesheet behaviors: Delay, async, and remove. The Delay option loads the original stylesheet after the rest of the page has loaded, while the async option loads it in the background. The remove option simply removes the stylesheet.
• Add CSS stylesheet exclusions with file names, paths, or strings. You can specify which stylesheets to exclude from the unused CSS removal process.
• Add CSS selector exclusions with the element ID or class name. You can also specify which selectors to exclude from the unused CSS removal process.
• Add unused CSS exclusions per individual page/post in the WordPress editor. You can specify which pages or posts to exclude from the unused CSS removal process.
• Options to clear used CSS globally and per individual page/post. You can also clear the used CSS cache to ensure that your website is using the latest styles.
• Decrease Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Time to Interactive (TTI). By removing unused CSS, your website will load faster, leading to a better user experience and higher search engine rankings.

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Perfmatters Review: Multiple site support

Perfmatters offers multisite support, which means that if you have multiple WordPress sites, you can use the plugin on all of them. The unlimited license of Perfmatters includes multisite support, so you can easily manage and optimize all of your WordPress sites from one place. To use Perfmatters on a multisite setup, you simply need to network activate the plugin and activate your license from the network admin. Then, you can assign different types of network access to your subsites, such as Site Admins or Super Admins only.

The most convenient feature of Perfmatters multisite support is the ability to quickly push your configured settings from your default network site to your other subsites. This means you don’t have to manually configure the plugin on each individual subsite, saving you a lot of time and effort.

Ongoing Development Support

The Perfmatters plugin offers top-notch support and ongoing development to ensure the best user experience possible. Here are some key points to consider:

• Perfmatters offers direct support from the plugin developers to ensure that users receive prompt and helpful assistance with any questions or issues.
• With over 19 years of experience working with WordPress, the Perfmatters team has a deep understanding of the platform and is always up-to-date with the latest developments.
• The plugin is continually updated with new features and bug fixes, ensuring that it remains a valuable tool for optimizing WordPress sites.
• Perfmatters provides detailed documentation with over 100 step-by-step guides on how to best use and configure the plugin.
• The team welcomes feedback from users and encourages suggestions for new features. Users can view current feature requests and the changelog for Perfmatters to stay up-to-date with the latest updates and improvements.

Why Perfmatters plugin is different from other competitors?

When it comes to optimizing your WordPress website for lightning-fast performance, not all plugins are created equal. While there are several options available in the market, Perfmatters stands out from the competition with its unique and comprehensive features that take performance optimization to the next level. Here are the reasons why Perfmatters is different and better than other similar competitors:

• WordPress Performance Checklist: Built-in checklist for comprehensive performance optimizations.
• Invest in Managed WordPress Hosting: Seamless integration with popular hosting providers.
• Caching is Key: Easy page caching, browser caching, and preload settings.
• Fast WordPress Theme: Ability to disable unnecessary theme features, scripts, and styles.
• Image Optimization: Advanced features like image compression, WebP support, and lazy loading.
• Database and Disk Space Optimization: Disable unnecessary database-heavy features for improved performance.
• Use Web Fonts Sparingly: Encourages limited use of web fonts to reduce HTTP requests.
• Only Use Needed Font Icons: Control and optimize font icons to minimize unnecessary code.
• CSS and JS Optimization: Combine, minify, and remove unnecessary CSS and JS files.
• Host Google Analytics Locally: Ability to host Google Analytics locally for improved privacy and performance.
• Defer and Delay JavaScript: Options to defer and delay JavaScript execution for faster loading times.
• Remove Unused CSS: Ability to remove unused CSS for streamlined performance.
• Load Custom CSS/JS Only Where Needed: Optimize custom CSS/JS loading for specific pages.
• Recommended Plugins and Tips: Suggestions for additional performance-boosting plugins and tips.
• Site Conversion or Performance Audit: Option to convert the site or get a performance audit for further optimizations.

Live Success With Perfmatters: 

Perfmatters is a popular WordPress plugin for performance optimization. It’s used by many websites to speed up their WordPress site and improve their Core Web Vitals score. Here are some examples of fast WordPress sites that are using the Perfmatters plugin.

• woorkup.com – woorkup is a popular marketing blog that gets over 100,000 unique visitors per month. Using the Perfmatters plugin, along with other optimizations from the Perfmatters performance checklist, it loads in under 400 ms and achieves a 100 score with Core Web Vitals.
• perfmatters.io – The Perfmatters website itself uses the Perfmatters plugin and achieves a load time of under 400 ms and a 100 score with Core Web Vitals. They utilize the Script Manager feature a lot on their site to manage and optimize their scripts.

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Perfmatters Review: How To Install Perfmatters Plugin?

Here are the steps to install the Perfmatters plugin:

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Click on the “Plugins” option on the left-hand menu.
3. Click on “Add New” at the top of the page.
4. In the search bar on the right, type “Perfmatters” and hit enter.
5. The Perfmatters plugin should appear at the top of the search results. Click on “Install Now”.
6. Wait for the plugin to download and install. Once it’s done, click on “Activate” to enable the plugin on your website.
7. You will need to enter your Perfmatters license key to activate the plugin fully.

That’s it! The Perfmatters plugin is now installed and ready to use on your WordPress website.

Perfmatters Review: FAQs

What is a plugin?

A plugin, also known as an add-on, extension, or module, is a piece of software that enhances the functionality of an existing software application. Plugins are designed to extend the capabilities of a software program and can be added or installed to provide additional features or services that are not present in the core software.

Plugins are commonly used in web browsers, content management systems (CMS), media players, graphics software, and other types of software. They are typically created by third-party developers and can be downloaded and installed separately from the main software. Once installed, plugins integrate with the host software and can be used to customize or extend its functionality according to the user’s needs.

What are the ways to boost the speed of any website?

• Caching: Implement caching mechanisms for browser, server-side, and CDN.
• Image optimization: Compress, resize, and use modern formats for images.
• Minification: Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use a CDN for content distribution.
• Website hosting: Choose a reliable and fast hosting provider.
• Code optimization: Write efficient and optimized code, using lazy or asynchronous loading.
• Browser caching: Set up appropriate caching headers.
• Content optimization: Keep content lightweight and minimize unnecessary plugins.
• Website design: Follow responsive design best practices, and optimize CSS and JavaScript.
• Network optimization: Optimize server-side settings, use gzip compression, reduce redirects, and leverage HTTP/2 or HTTP/3.
• Monitoring and optimization: Continuously monitor performance, identify and resolve bottlenecks, and optimize components.

How does any plugin work?

1. Integration: A plugin is created by a third-party developer and designed to integrate with a specific software application or platform, which serves as the host software. The plugin is typically written in a programming language that is compatible with the host software.
2. Installation: The plugin is installed separately from the host software and is typically obtained from a reputable source, such as an official plugin repository or a trusted developer’s website. Installation methods may vary depending on the host software but typically involve uploading the plugin files to the appropriate directory or using a plugin management interface provided by the host software.
3. Activation: Once the plugin is installed, it needs to be activated within the host software. Activation typically involves selecting the plugin from a list of installed plugins and clicking a button to enable it. Some plugins may require additional configuration settings or permissions to be set up after activation.
4. Functionality: Once activated, the plugin becomes part of the host software and extends its functionality. This can include adding new features, modifying existing features, or enhancing the performance of the host software. The specific functionality provided by the plugin depends on its purpose and design.

Can a plugin be considered a type of script?

Yes, a plugin can be considered a type of script. A plugin is a piece of software that extends the functionality of an existing software application or platform. It is typically written in a programming language, such as JavaScript, PHP, Python, or Ruby, depending on the platform it is designed to integrate with. Plugins are often used to add new features, modify existing features, or enhance performance within the host software.