Wordpress Plugin Reduces Site Performance

[dawngribble]

I've had to uninstall the Hubspot Wordpress Plug-in from my website as it was responsible for a 20% reduction in performance. 

The forms work, but now I no longer have access to the Cookies notification and Live Chat options. Please see the performance reports here Website Performance

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @dawngribble,

As the plugin is a way to install the HubSpot Tracking Code onto all of your WordPress pages, if you believe it is slowing down your site you can install the Tracking Code manually into your pages using the instructions below:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/reports/install-the-hubspot-tracking-code

Thank you,
Jenny

[Univoip]

So, in case anyone else comes across this post, there is absolutely no difference in terms of performance between the Hubspot plugin ( Contact Form Builder for WordPress – Conversion Tools by HubSpot ) and the manually inserting code. It produces the same results. 

Hubspot Plugin Enabled

Hubspot Code Manually Inserted

And without either of those options (no Hubspot tracking code at all):

Without Hubspot Code

The trouble is that all the resources for Hubspot to work come from multiple domains with each requiring a DNS lookup for the page to render:

• js.hs-analytics.net: 1 component, 73.5K (24.6K GZip)
• js.hsleadflows.net: 1 component, 364.3K (58.2K GZip)
• js.hs-scripts.com: 1 component, 1.0K (0.5K GZip)
• track.hubspot.com: 1 component, 0.04K
• forms.hubspot.com: 1 component, 3.3K (1.2K GZip)

This is really outrageous. Some of us work very hard to create fully optimized websites. Then we want to use Hubspot and we're punished for it. All our hard work goes out the window. Please fix this.

On behalf of everyone who cares about quality coding, please send this up the chain to your CTO and figure out a way to host all your assets on fewer than 5 different domains/subdomains.

[dawngribble]

How do I escalate this issue with Hubspot given that website performance is a key SEO and customer experience factor?

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @dawngribble,

The HubSpot scripts only load when the browser is done loading everything else, so while there may be an increase in total time (which of course will happen with any extra data, not just HubSpot Analytics/ScriptLoader), the time taken for the visual aspect of the site to load should not be affected at all. 

If you are experiencing something different than what I am outlining above, the best next step will be to reach out to HubSpot technical Support as they can investigate this matter specific to your portal. If something is not working as expected within your portal, they can adivse on best next steps.

Thank you,
Jenny

[Univoip]

That's really not very re-assuring. While we're ultimately concerned with user experience (site must load quickly) there is another impact of these multiple DNS lookups and why we test with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GT Metrix: Site speed impacts our Search Engine Ranking.

https://searchengineland.com/google-speed-update-page-speed-will-become-ranking-factor-mobile-search...

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/01/22/google-speed-update

So, while it could be true the end user may not experience any noticable visual delay, search companies factor page load time in their ranking. All those extra DNS lookups are  significant and adversely affecting your customers' search engine ranking. 

There's still no explanation why you must have all your assets distributed accross so many domains. Your explanation is more of a dismissal than an answer. Good try though.

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @Univoip,

I want to break down your concerns and provide further resources for both questions: 

1. In regards to site speed and SEO, I wanted to share this resource by @wspiro which specifically addresses site speed and performance. 

Please know that while these tools and algorithms will change, we are aways working on making meaningful improvements.

2. In regards to why assets are distributed across multiple domains, the scripts are called by different domains because they are used by different parts of the tool.

All other scripts included by the tracking code are also loaded asynchronously and deferred. track.hubspot.com and forms.hubspot.com are called respectively by analytics when something happens on the page that has already been loaded and is interactive, and forms.hubspot.com is called by popup forms to get all configured popup forms for that portal.

Thank you,

Jenny

[cvps]

Jenny,

The problem expressed still needs to be addressed. Our site performance and metrics have all taken a severe hit with load times going from 1.7 to nearly 9s after integrating Wordpress with Hubspot. The lag is due to the Hubspot as expressed by the other uses in this thread. 

The user experience is severely impacted as the calls to hubspot are causing the interactive elements of the site to not load until after finalizing the api calls to hubspot. Hence the user must wait nearly 10 seconds on a fast connection to interact with the site. 

Further, the article you referenced deals more with hosting on hubspot and not wordpress. 

I hope you can see the urgency in getting this resolved and let us know what the steps are for remedy. 

Thanks!

[kiloj]

Until Hubspot can figure this out. Has anyone found a viable alternative? Subscribing to this thread.

Maybe some other form and pop-up plugin that integrates with Zapier?

Thanks in advance for everyone's hard work in figuring this out and detailing amazing responses. 

[dawngribble]

Sadly to date, I've not found a workaround, it's frustrating as the Hubspot Website Grader gives me a score of 84 and points to the issues with the plug-in being the cause of slow loading. 

When will this be fixed Hubspot?

[SDental]

This is terrible! I cannot believe this has not been addressed. #hubspotreviews this as much as I can about this & hope it get's some love.

[dawngribble]

We're coming up on a year since I first highlighted this issue, when will there be a fix?

[davidlykhim]

Hi @dawngribble, @Univoip, @cvps, @kiloj, @SDental,

David here. I'm responsible for the WordPress plugin. To be transparent, we've been aware of this challenge with the tracking code and have been keeping an eye on it while we've been working on more foundational aspects of the plugin (i.e. fixing bugs, making sure it works).

Coming from an SEO background and a WordPress user myself, I understand the importance of page speed and would feel the same frustration you're all feeling.

I'm looking into this and will round up the teams who own those different scripts. We'll figure out a solution to make sure your hard work of optimizing your website wasn't a waste of time. I know this has been a long time coming and appreciate the patience.

[dcha]

Any progress?

[ReneeB]

We have spent a ton of time working on our page speed as well and experiencing frustration with HubSpot and HubSpot chat slowing our page load speed on a WordPress site.  It got worse when we added the chatbot.  Is there an update to this?  Is there an expected date?  I have read through many threads in the community with the same topic and this seems to be the one response that acknowledges the problem and that a fix is coming.   This is killing our SEO.

[Martinebr]

We have just implemented the chatbot from Hubspot and have seen our site speed slow way down. 

Any progress on this? Our site is also significantly affected. How does this get escalated at Hubspot?

[ReneeB]

@davidlykhim Any updates on fixes to the plugin?  Checking in since it's been about 2 months since your update.  

[marksullivan]

We're just getting started with HubSpot and are building out a new website, to which we just added the HS tracking code. Our crazy fast page speed of our staging site took a significant hit after we added the code. I should note that we are not using Wordpress for the new site, rather we decided to go with Webflow--all for speed reasons. 

I'm a bit shocked that the HubSpot code would cause this much of a slow down. I'm now wondering if it makes sense to buy *another* tool or tools to avoid this slowdown, which is crazy because the entire reason we went with HubSpot was because we wanted to reduce the complexity of our martech stack. 

It would be great to know if this is being actively prioritized by the dev teams at HS responsible for the tracking code.

[edsvcs]

Any news on this? We are very concerned about the significant number of scripts that are loaded and executed on every page load, including what appears to be chain reactions of other libraries being loaded and executed from Google and Facebook that are not otherwise required by our site. How do we make the HubSpot plugin smarter and more modular so it only loads what is needed?

[elister]

@davidlykhim I'm also looping into this thread as we've noticed the same issue. Has there been any resolution with the Hubspot plugin for wordpress and speed site?

[davidlykhim]

Hi all, sorry for the ambiguous timeline as we've been digging into this. We've done many small optimizations that wouldn't require rebuilding the entire tracking code (very risky) and have seen small speed improvements, though we aren't where we want to be.

What probably isn't surprising is we found the biggest reason for the perceived website slowdown is the live chat widget.

If you take a look at this report (this takes two empty websites, one with live chat, one without) we see the full page is loaded in the same amount of time in both scenarios, but the page with the live chat widget takes ~3 more seconds to load the chat widget. So the webpage is already loaded, the extra time is just for the chat widget.

Our chat team is currently working through a laundry list of performance improvements for the chat widget.

We're being cautious and chipping away at the challenge before we attempt anything invasive or risky that might affect the other HubSpot tools you're using on your website.

Thanks for your patience and understanding here.

If you'd like to chat about this and provide more feedback, please feel free to reach out to me dkhim[at]hubspot[dot]com

[ReneeB]

Thanks for the response David.  We figured that out sometime ago.  We really don't want to have to implement Drift or similar.  The chatbox was one of the features we were looking for when we purchased HubSpot.  But the page speed loading is an issue.  Is there any hope that a resolution is coming quickly?

[Martinebr]

Same here. The chatbot was one of the feature for which we purchase hubspot. Turning it off is not what we want when we already pay for it. But the impact on our speed is really big.

I want to add my voice to the chorus to emphasize the importance of resolving this quickly and improve the page speed of our website.

Please keep us posted.

[torsteino]

@davidlykhim - Any updates on this? I really cant see any technical reason why you guys need to use so many different domains/subdomains for this.

I am working on optimizing a site right now for a customer, and just by removing the hubspot tracking code the lighthouse score goes up about 20 points. Thats NOT good. I also use hubspot on my own site, and the hubspot scripts really slow things down A LOT, its quite embarassing.

[cruisegear]

I just wanted to share what we are doing with the live chat while testing HubSpot.  We're not yet a paying customer - likely won't be until the speed issue is addressed.  It's the only thing holding us back to be honest.  

What we've done as a work around - is put the chat exclusively on a few pages not throughout the whole site.  So we have a FAQ page, CONTACT page and a button that says "live chat" - but takes you to a page where the chat is active. 

It has helped - but the rest of the integration is still slowing our site down.  We were near perfect (high 90 percent area) for speed - and are down to 80+/- percent pagespeed using hubspot 😞   

Love hubspot and what the potential is - but it's really a deal killer at this point (site speed using the integrations )

Hopefully our workaround will help someone in the meantime.

-Phillip

[philipcron]

Our website went from a 99+/- desktop score and 76+/- mobile score to a 54=/- desktop and 22=/- mobile score after integrating with Hubspot. This is simply put unacceptable! This needs to be fixed ASAP. I read through this thread and have seen that this has been ongoing for over 1 year. I really hope they take this seriously and fix this issue.

[JonasHopp]

I'm facing similar issues as this thread is stating.

What's the status on the HubSpot's side?

[PamCotton]

Hello @JonasHopp,

I connected with our team, and currently, there are no updates yet about this case.

My recommendation would be to continue leaving our feedback here so our product team is aware of our customer's needs.

Thank you,

Pam

[philipcron]

Hi @PamCotton,

What exactly do we need to do before the HubSpot development team hears us and actually invests time and effort to fix this issue?

It really seems like we are at the bottom of the totem pole. This is extremely frustrating! I know you are well aware that Google now ranks us based on our page speed and other metrics that your plugin literally drains from our websites.

Is there someone I can call or email directly to discuss this urgent matter?

Thanks!

[PamCotton]

Hello @philipcron,

I was able to talk more with our team and It is important to remember that performance recommendations surfaced in external tools are typically formulated by bots and automated measures to evaluate a site and assign a score or grade.

With that in mind, these scores don’t always replicate the actual visitor’s experience of the page load. 

In the case of chat, the widget is designed to not load until the site is fully loaded. That means it won’t impact the speed of the site loading, only the overall time of page load. From the visitor’s perspective, the website is loaded and interactable before the widget loads since these are asynchronous actions.

Tests like Google PSI measure based on total time to load, instead, so they are tracking something different than what the visitor really experiences on the page. 

All that said, we absolutely understand users tracking that number and hoping to see improvement.  On our end, we need to balance whether we are solving for the page visitor or solving for the test since the two are not always aligned.

We are always investigating ways to improve these numbers and it is on our radar to do further investigation here.

Once I have more information I will continue to update this thread.

Kindly,

Pam