The age old question ~ Do inactive plugins slow down WordPress?
Ok here’s the short answer, NO inactive plugins don’t slow down WordPress.
Now here’s the beginning of the long answer – but sometimes they do!
Conundrum I know – yes and no! How is it possible to have two answers to the same simple question.
Well first off – if I just said no then there would be nothing for me to write about and nothing for you to read!
I did a search on Google for 'Do inactive plugins slow down WordPress' - here's the results
As you can see the guy at the top of the search results says ‘yes and no’ also!
Everyone else says ‘no’.
So what is the correct and FULL answer? Do those inactive plugins slow WordPress or not?
Inactive WordPress plugins
The way that the WordPress architecture is structured – only the code from ACTIVE plugins and active themes are moved into play.
If a plugin or theme is inactive, WordPress will not bring it or any of its code into play no matter what.
I have heard in the past that sometimes badly coded plugins can still have code loaded when they are inactive. This is most likely a myth.
If it’s active it’s active – if inactive – inactive – simple yes?
So how is it possible that inactive plugins can slow down WordPress
The WordPress architecture does not automatically clean up the database after a plugin is deactivated or even deleted!
Some may think this is a design flaw but of course it’s not.
Some plugin authors have an option in their plugin settings to remove the database entries on deactivation or deletion, but most do not.
This means that a very large percentage of plugins after they have been deleted leave entries in the database.
This in itself is not an issue.
The issue is that over time your database can get cluttered with old entries.
This can and does slow your WordPress site down, but usually not by much – UNLESS – you have had plugins on your site that created hundreds of thousands of entries like 404 error tracking plugins, log creating plugins and e-commerce plugins.
Database ‘bloat’ can be an issue on cheap shared hosting because your disk space is more limited. And seeing your database takes up disk space, you could run into space issues.
There are quite a few ways of how to check if your WordPress database is bloated, but unless your site is more than 5 years old, I would not personally bother checking – unless you are running into server disk space issues of course.
Fixing bloated databases and cleaning out old data is not an easy task, and if done by the wrong person can corrupt your database.
If you are running into disk space issues than maybe it’s time to review your hosting and look at better hosts like Kinsta and Cloudways (both recommended).
If you check out my shop page you can see I offer a number of WordPress speed optimisation products and services should you need any help.
