Review of the performance impact of the WP SlimStat Version 3.6.1 plugin on our WordPress website.

After moving several websites to a new server we were looking for a new WordPress statistics plugin to replace the kstats / kstats-reloaded / statpress-visitors plugins we’ve been using.

WP SlimStat is very popular and was updated recently so we decided to give it a try. While the plugin is impressive for its classy presentation and contains the statistical data you expect to find in such a plugin we do have concerns about its apparent negative impact on site performance.

We ran several tests using the PS Profiler plugin which is used to report on the performance of a sites installed plugins. The results from those tests do vary somewhat but all clearly showed that WP SlimStat has a large impact on page loading performance.

In the graphics below you’ll see that the all plugin load time was 0.189s without the SlimStat plugin and 1.734s with it installed. That may be significant enough to be visibly noticeable on the site. Plugin load time jumped to 87.4% with the plugin up from 40.5% without the plugin. MySQL queries jumped to 85 queries with the plugin from 61 queries without.

The site we tested the plugin on does use a lot of resources, so much so that it can exceed it’s host plan limits so we have to minimize overheads.

Performance is relative, for some people / sites it’s an issue and for others not as much. For ourselves, we’ve unfortunately decided to uninstall what is otherwise a cool plugin.

P3 Test Results Without WP SlimStat Plugin Installed

P3 Test Without WP SlimStat Plugin

P3 Test Results With WP SlimStat Plugin Installed

P3 Test With WP SlimStat Plugin