TLDR: Delete Elementor, use Gutenberg (with an extra block plugin if you need one). Completely delete Updraft Plus (the proper way).
A couple of weeks ago, my site was randomly hitting the RAM limit even when I wasn’t using it (see Website randomly hitting RAM Limit even when not In use). Because of this, my account kept getting closed and I didn’t know what to do, but I was able to fix it. I also made a bunch of other changes and now my site is much faster. So here’s what I did:
- The first thing I did was just delete Updraft Plus (only by pressing “delete” on WordPress. I didn’t go into the files and properly delete it.) I didn’t feel a significant speed increase/decrease and I still got a RAM usage warning email from just editing a post.
- Then I took a break for about a week and disabled Elementor (I didn’t fully delete it yet) and already I stopped getting RAM limit warnings, which felt amazing. However, my site was still relatively slow.
- In my Hosting Support post I didn’t talk about what theme I was using. I was using Astra. At the time I thought it was a heavyweight theme, so I removed it and got Kadence instead. I also disabled all of the other plugins I wasn’t using, to list: Yoast, WPforms, Starter Templates, and Unlimited Elementor Elements. I started rebuilding the pages and menus with the Gutenberg editor + the Kadence blocks plugin for Gutenberg.
- It took a while but I finally finished redesigning all of the pages. It definitely didn’t take as long as I thought it would and I already had all the content so it was pretty easy. Ever since disabling Elementor I didn’t get a single RAM warning as I was rebuilding everything. I’d also like to say, Gutenberg felt SO MUCH better than Elementor. It was easier to use and felt a lot faster. So definitely ditch Elementor on free hosting.
- I finally decided to completely delete all the plugins I had disabled including Elementor and my site got a LOT faster. I could definitely notice and it was significantly faster than when I didn’t have Elementor.
So that’s how I ended up fixing my site. Now, here are some additional things that I did to replace the plugins I had and speed it up:
- The only 2 plugins I kept active the entire time were WP Mail SMTP and W3 Total Cache. I need SMTP because it’s the only way for my site to send emails. I also think W3 Total Cache speeds up my site even though it’s another plugin.
- To replace YoastSEO and possibly another analytics plugin I was planning to get, I installed RankMath. I’ve done some research and I’ve found out that it’s a lot faster than Yoast and has more features.
- When I removed Updraft Plus, to backup my website I was instead using FTP with Filezilla. But it was EXTREMELY slow and ended up taking 3-4 hours just for 1 backup until I found out that Updraft Plus and a bunch of my other plugins left databases, files that weren’t in the plugins folder, and etc. behind. I deleted those and did a backup today and it only took around 10 minutes. So yeah, significant difference.
So that’s everything I’ve done so far. I’m also planning (and wondering) how I can make my site even faster. I’m trying to use a lot the recommendations from this other post Themes and Plugins you recommend and don't recommend. The main plugins I’m looking into that are on that list are Asset Cleanup and replacing W3 Total Cache with Litespeed. I’m a bit skeptical on switching to Litespeed and the only reason why I’m considering it is because it has image optimization which I don’t think W3 Total Cache has, and if I want one I’ll have to install another plugin which might be slower than just installing one plugin for handling image optimization and cache. But at the same time, Litespeed doesn’t use InfinityFree’s servers. If anyone knows anything about this that would help.
Since making these changes, my site is running much faster and has not hit the RAM limit once. Here’s a speed test:
Let me know if there is any other info I can provide on what helped resolve this issue. I appreciate all the help your forum provided in getting my site fixed!