WPBakery performance: What we’ve improved since last year

Let’s clear something up – WPBakery isn’t what slows your site down.

What does? A heavy theme, too many plugins (and especially outdated ones), uncompressed images, unused code, bad hosting, and no caching all play a part. And it’s usually a combination of factors that slow a site down, not just one thing alone.

That said, we’ve still made a lot of progress on performance in WPBakery over the past year. From smaller under-the-hood fixes to bigger changes that speed up how your pages load and how the builder works, performance has been a steady focus for us.

Why? Because we listen to your feedback. We want WPBakery to be faster and smoother for everyone – site visitors, content editors, and developers alike.

In this article, we break down the key improvements we’ve made since late 2024 and what they mean for your workflows, your site visitors, and your overall experience using WPBakery:

Element edit window caching

One of the newest performance improvements (in the 8.7 release) is element edit window caching, which makes the editor faster using something called hover-triggered preload.

What does that mean? In simple terms, when you move your mouse over an element, WPBakery starts preloading the edit window in the background. So by the time you click, the settings window opens much faster.

This is done through a mix of caching and smart preloading of parts in the interface, so they’re ready when you need them. It’s like the builder is one step ahead, preparing things in advance to cut down the wait time.

The result? A faster and smoother editing experience – especially if you’re working on mobile or on a slow internet connection (up to 3 seconds saved). It’s a small tweak, but you’ll notice the difference right away.

Code and file folder structure cleanup

In version 8.6, we reorganized WPBakery’s internal file structure. This includes the UI folder structure being refactored, as well as the general folder structure being updated.

While changing the file structure doesn’t speed things up by itself, it makes it easier to improve performance in the long run. With cleaner, more organized code, we can cut down bloat, load things smarter, and make the plugin run faster overall.

So the outcome? Improved code quality and better output performance.

Improved row stretching using CSS

In 8.5, a small improvement, but one you’ve surely noticed, is improved row stretching that has made pages load more smoothly and without sudden layout shifts, using CSS.

This reduces Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), a key factor in page speed scores, in certain scenarios (e.g., full-width row), and you likely already see better performance results, especially on mobile.

Overall, this update makes pages look more stable while loading – and helps improve your site’s speed rating in tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Improved Google Fonts loading

​Since version 8.4, WPBakery loads Google Fonts more efficiently. This reduces render-blocking, so your pages load faster and feel more responsive.

With this update, we also improved the Custom Heading element – it now properly follows your font settings and won’t load Google Fonts when it’s set to use theme fonts.

This has helped reduce font-related delays by avoiding unnecessary font requests and improve overall page load speed.

Smarter script loading

Introduced in version 7.8, scripts are now conditionally loaded based on actual usage, making the whole process smarter.

Whereas before, some scripts were loaded on every page, even if they weren’t being used. Now, the WPBakery checks what your page includes and loads only the required scripts.

This means no unnecessary scripts are loaded on the page, which results in better overall website performance, and subsequently also better results in speed testing tools.

Other noteworthy mentions

  • WPBakery now works seamlessly with WP Rocket, one of the most popular caching plugins in WordPress, thanks to the compatibility introduced in 8.6.1.
  • Backend performance has improved thanks to optimized admin-ajax.php calls introduced in 8.3. This leads to faster interactions in the WordPress admin area.

Looking ahead

Performance improvements aren’t a one-and-done thing – it’s ongoing work. Over the past year, we’ve put in a conscious effort to make WPBakery faster and more responsive, both in the editor and on your website. And we’re not stopping here.

The year is not over yet, and we’re working on new improvements like CSS loading split, which will break CSS into smaller chunks and avoid loading unused styles, and much more.

Your feedback is a big part of this process. Keep sharing your ideas and voting for the features that matter most to you in our roadmap. To see everything we’ve released so far, check out the release notes.

And don’t forget to keep your plugin up to date to get the latest performance upgrades. If you’re a Support Plus subscriber, staying subscribed pays off – you earn a growing loyalty discount every year, up to 50% in total.

Nikola
A marketing person, who believes the limit for daily coffee consumption does not exist.