SiteGround web hosting is well known and trusted by over 3 million domains worldwide. But while SiteGround shines as a hosting provider, its SiteGround Optimizer plugin can be a bit of a problem child for your PageSpeed performance scores. Instead of speeding up your site, it might actually slow it down. Yes, the irony is real.

This impacts not only your website’s PageSpeed performance scores but the user experience, too. And with only 3 seconds or less to make an impression big enough to get your visitor to stay on your website, are you really willing to risk it?

What You Need to Know Highlights

• SiteGround Optimizer can slow down your site’s backend, increase load times, and lower performance scores, impacting user experience.
• Be the Page SEO improved a client’s PageSpeed performance score by 70% and slashed load times by 65% with smarter optimization tools.
• Tools like WP Rocket, Imagify, and 10Web Booster actually speed up your site without breaking it.

What Is SiteGround Optimizer?

SiteGround Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that is automatically installed when you use SiteGround hosting. It also works as your caching tool, so don’t go deleting it unless you have another tool like JetPack installed. 

SiteGround Optimizer is designed to improve website performance through caching, image optimization, and other speed-enhancing features. Sounds great, right? 

Hate to be the one to pop anyone’s bubble, but SiteGround Optimizer can weigh down your site’s backend and negatively impact PageSpeed performance and page load speeds by more than 60%. 

SiteGround Optimizer PageSpeed Issues

SiteGround Optimizer adds extra processes that can slow down your admin panel. If you’ve ever felt like you were editing your site in slow motion, SiteGround Optimizer could be the reason.

To add insult to injury, features like “Defer Render-blocking JS” or “Remove Query Strings from Static Resources” can cause compatibility issues or even break parts of your site.

Then there are the performance scans with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix, which probably (or in my experience do) show low performance and page load scores when SiteGround is in use. And let’s face it—nobody wants to see a performance score that screams “meh” when you’re using a tool that literally has ‘optimizer’ in the name. 

How We Improved PageSpeed Performance Scores by 70%

We’ve had more than one client come to us using SiteGround, and we’ve successfully optimized site PageSpeed performance scores and page load speeds for them all. But one of our clients at Be the Page SEO had a website stuck at a 51 performance score, with a page load time of 11.6 seconds (ouch). After removing SiteGround Optimizer optimization features and switching to better tools:

• The performance score jumped from 51 to 87, a 70% improvement!
• The speed index dropped from 11.6 seconds to an impressive 4.1 seconds. A 65% increase!

Alternatives to SiteGround Optimizer for PageSpeed Performance

If you’re ready to ditch SiteGround Optimizer (and you should be), here are three tools we recommend that can take your website performance to the next level but also won’t break your website (looking at you, WP Optimizer).

WP Rocket

WP Rocket has been around for years and doesn’t require you to speak tech in order to use it. You don’t have to worry about it breaking your website either. WP Rocket works with just about every website builder out there, like Avada or Elementor. 

Plus, it has features like lazy loading, file minification, JavaScript delay, and more:

• User-friendly 
• Advanced caching
• Core Web Vitals optimization
• Doesn’t require advanced technical skills to use it
• Offers free and paid versions

Imagify

Optimizing images is something you need for fast websites, and Imagify does this beautifully by compressing images into lightweight formats like WebP without sacrificing quality. It also plays nice with other plugins like 10 Web Booster, JetPack, and WP Rocket. 

• Lossy/lossless compression
• Bulk optimization
• Free and paid versions

10Web Booster

This tool automates frontend optimization and can boost your PageSpeed scores into the 90+ range with minimal effort. 10Web Booster even integrates with Cloudflare Enterprise CDN for even faster content delivery.

• Automated Core Web Vitals improvements
• CDN integration
• Free version and paid

For PageSpeed Performance Ditch SiteGround Optimizer

After adding whichever alternative to SiteGround you decide to run with, don’t forget to turn off the optimizing features you have turned on in SiteGround Optimizer. You can still use it for caching if you just can’t part with it, but once you’re using another tool of optimization, to get the full value of the other tool, make sure the SiteGround Optimizer features are turned off. 

SiteGround is one of the most trusted names in the industry for hosting, but their optimizer plugin definitely lacks speed and efficiency. 

So go ahead—ditch the bloatware and give your site the upgrade it deserves. Your visitors (and Google) will thank you.