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“There’s a plugin for that” is the standard answer in the WordPress community to quite a few questions and requests. And, yes, it’s true: If you want to extend your website with certain functions, there is usually a suitable extension and often even several. Their installation is also very simple: With a few clicks, the plugin is ready for use.
How Many WordPress Plugins Are Too Many?
However, any WordPress developer feels a cold horror when they are called to help and find dozens of plugins in the backend. Because the more plugins are used, the more likely there are problems:
- Plugins can get in each other’s way. Plugin conflicts are a common cause when something on a site suddenly stops working (or even the site itself breaks). This is another reason why one of the first things to do when problems arise is: Disable all plugins and see if it then works again. If it does, you have to re-activate the plugins one after the other and test them each time. With dozens of extensions this is a time-consuming and frustrating matter…
- The more plugins you have, the more likely you are to catch a security breach. To prevent this, you need to keep everything up-to-date. WordPress has introduced automatic updates for plugins. In itself good, but plugin conflicts can still occur and then you notice it in doubt only belatedly. Another problem: Plugins that are no longer developed at all. Here you must always remain vigilant and find a replacement in case of need.
- Badly programmed plugins tear down the pagespeed: They slow down your page, which would otherwise load nimbly. This happens when they bloat your page with superfluous code, for example.
- In addition, it is often not clear what the data protection situation is with plugins. What really happens in the background? You can hardly check this without programming knowledge. In this respect, you have to trust the plugin authors. And if your users’ data is sent to servers outside the EU, this can also be problematic in terms of the General Data Protection Regulation.
- Last but not least, your backend becomes more chaotic. Because every plugin works a little bit different. Even the smallest extensions like to nest in the navigation bar on the left. Free plugins sometimes refinance themselves through advertising. In short: Your normally clear and simple WordPress becomes a confusing mishmash.
Therefore, yes, plugins can be a great thing. But the fewer separate plugins you use, the better.
Which Plugins Greyd.Suite Replaces for You
GREYD.SUITE, on the other hand, is a comprehensive extension for WordPress that brings everything together from a single source. We integrate in it exactly the most used and demanded functions that we know from the agency work.
Here are a few examples of what GREYD.SUITE already does and which plugins it makes unnecessary for you:
- Forms: They are important, whether for pure contact or for orders. Depending on the provider, you may even need additional plugins to send the mails or to enable double opt-in. GREYD.Forms has all this integrated.
- Website Management: If you have multiple WordPress sites, you have to do a lot of things over and over again. Management plugins help you to manage everything from one place. This is also included and goes by the name GREYD.Hub.
- Modern and individual design: With WordPress you can already create good-looking pages out of the box. However, more advanced designs such as animations are only possible via self-programmed CSS or appropriate plugins. In the GREYD.SUITE you will find many options and blocks, for example for fancy backgrounds.
- Custom Post Types: Only with this WordPress becomes a full-fledged content management system. But the function is well hidden: Either you have to know how to code or find suitable plugins, which are often rather aimed at developers. With Dynamic Post Types in GREYD.SUITE, you can draw from the full range and very easily create all the content types you need: stores, products, employees, testimonials …
- Content automation: Personalization is an important topic and with Dynamic Content in GREYD.SUITE you can implement numerous automatic customizations. For example, display different content depending on whether a user came from a Google search result or clicked on a link in your newsletter. Or adjust the content depending on the time of day or whether a user is logged in or not. Forms also become more flexible and user-friendly: For example, additional fields only appear when they are needed.
- Pagebuilder: This is always used when you want to create special pages and do not want to program or hire a designer. This includes, for example, landing pages or product pages. GREYD.SUITE is integrated natively in WordPress’ block editor.
- Analytics and tracking: Nearly every site will want to measure success in some form. But even for such a basic function, end users need a plugin. You guessed it: Yes, GREYD.SUITE provides that too. You even get form statistics directly in your backend – GDPR-compliant without any third-party tool!
- Pagespeed optimizations: The loading time of a website is enormously important, because hardly anything frustrates users more than long waiting times. Google & Co. also pay close attention to this! In GREYD.SUITE, we constantly optimize performance and provide you with easy-to-understand functions to further improve it.
- Share buttons for social media: And, yes, even this actually basic functionality needs either custom code or appropriate plugins. This is also integrated in GREYD.SUITE.
- Custom roles & permissions allow you to define exactly who can see and edit which parts of a website, while time-saving admin functions simplify the management of login links, user emails and administrator tasks. With GREYD, you don’t need a plugin for any of this!
- Popups: With individual popups matching the look of your website, you can increase your conversions. With different triggers, animations and rules, you can create unique popups, while the simple implementation and management ensure optimal integration and administration.
- Sliders are an effective way to display visually appealing content such as images, videos and text in a compact way. They enhance the user experience by piquing visitors’ interest and providing them with an interactive way to navigate through different content. In GREYD.SUITE, we have extended the native query loop block to give you the flexibility to design post overviews and sliders.
Just take a look at the feature overview to get an impression yourself.
And we’re not sitting back complacently with that. We’re working hard behind the scenes to make even more plugins obsolete. You can always see what’s coming next on our roadmap!
