Control What WordPress Loads. Keep Every Page Lean.
Perform is an open-source WordPress performance plugin that helps you remove unnecessary CSS and JavaScript, reduce WordPress and WooCommerce overhead, and add safer page caching without replacing your existing performance stack.
Free and open source. Built for developers, agencies, WooCommerce stores, and plugin-heavy WordPress sites.
Caching Is Only Part of WordPress Performance
A fast cache can serve a slow page more quickly, but it cannot decide whether a contact form stylesheet, page builder script, cart fragment, emoji asset, or legacy WordPress feature belongs on that page.
Perform gives you a practical control layer around those decisions. Use it alongside managed hosting, a CDN, server-level caching, or another caching plugin to reduce what WordPress has to load and execute in the first place.
Performance Controls for Real WordPress Stacks
Unload Unused Assets
Use the Assets Manager to disable CSS and JavaScript where they are not needed. Apply rules to individual pages, post types, or templates while keeping exceptions explicit and reversible.
Reduce WordPress Bloat
Remove optional WordPress features and legacy frontend output such as emojis, embeds, and jQuery Migrate when your site does not depend on them.
Control WooCommerce Overhead
Keep store functionality where it belongs while reducing unnecessary WooCommerce scripts, styles, and cart-fragment activity on pages that do not need them.
Use Safer Page Caching
Enable full-page caching with response validation, safer cache writes, stale regeneration, preload scheduling, and visibility into cache behavior.
Improve Resource Connections
Add DNS prefetch and preconnect hints for important third-party origins, and use CDN controls to adjust how static assets are delivered.
Extend It in Code
Use hooks and filters to integrate Perform with custom themes, plugins, deployment workflows, and client-specific performance requirements.
Built for Sites That Have Outgrown One-Click Optimization
- Agencies: Apply repeatable performance controls across client sites without locking the stack to a proprietary platform.
- Developers: Trace frontend assets, remove unnecessary loading, and extend behavior through WordPress hooks.
- WooCommerce teams: Reduce store overhead without disabling the functionality customers need.
- Technical site owners: Address script and plugin bloat after hosting and caching have already been configured.
Optimize Deliberately, Not Blindly
Performance settings can affect visual components, checkout behavior, analytics, and third-party integrations. Perform keeps asset changes under your control so you can test them, reverse them, and apply exceptions where needed.
The plugin is conservative by default. It does not claim that every optimization is safe for every site, and it does not require you to abandon the hosting or caching tools already working for you.
Free, Open Source, and Built in Public
Perform is available from WordPress.org and developed in a public GitHub repository. You can inspect the code, report issues, follow development, and contribute improvements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not necessarily. Perform can complement server-level caching, managed WordPress hosting, CDNs, and other caching tools by controlling assets and WordPress overhead. If you enable Perform’s page cache, test it against your existing caching layer and avoid running overlapping full-page caches.
An asset may be required by a component or integration even when its purpose is not obvious. Perform keeps asset rules explicit and reversible, but you should test changes across important templates, forms, account pages, and checkout flows.
No, but developers and technically comfortable site owners will get the most value from its granular controls. The plugin is designed to make performance decisions manageable without hiding their impact.