Jetpack is an excellent, well-rounded WordPress plugin that is integrated with wordpress.com sites by default, though wordpress.org sites can use it as well. It offers stat-tracking, site analytics, security, marketing tools, and customization options all for free, making it one of the single most popular plugins on the market.

However, a common complaint about the plugin is that it has a tendency to really slow down your website, adding up to 1.5 seconds on average to your page load time. That can be a real detriment when competing for those top spots on Google’s search engine, especially now that Google has begun cracking down on page load speeds and bumping pages who don’t load quickly enough further back. This is the top reason that many users are looking to remove Jetpack from WordPress completely.

Many times this perception is actually misguided, and Jetpack is as fast as its equivalent plugins, or even faster, but you may have your own reasons to remove it.

How Do You Remove Jetpack from WordPress?

So, what do you do when your site has been bogged down by some of Jetpack’s extraneous features? Well, that’ll depend on whether you have a .com or a .org site.

A wordpress.com site won’t allow you to completely uninstall or remove Jetpack since it’s the default editor, but you’ll be able to deactivate or disable several of the features that you either don’t need to use or have found an alternative for.

If you have a wordpress.org site, however, you have significantly more control and can utilize other plugins completely in place of Jetpack. This article will give a general overview of how to address Jetpack from either type of site and what kinds of alternatives work best for optimizing page load speed without sacrificing the JP features you loved.

WordPress.Com

This is the completely free version of WordPress that allows anyone and everyone to create and produce content at their leisure. There are absolutely no monetary requirements, and the basic features provided are mostly thanks to Jetpack.

If you’re experiencing some difficulties with your site loading at acceptable speeds but don’t want to upgrade to a self-hosted wordpress.org site, try deactivating all of the modules that you have no use for. This could include several defaults that you didn’t even know existed, ones you simply don’t care about, or ones that you’ve found more efficient replacements for. To do this, you need to go to the full list of JP modules.

Go to your Jetpack Settings menu and scroll down until you see “Debug.” Click on that.

Once you’re on the Debug page, you’ll find a link that says “Access the full list of Jetpack modules available on your site.” Click again.

From this list, you can disable any modules you do not actively need.

Do so for every single one you are not interested in actively using.

Test your website to see how much of a difference those deactivated modules have made!

WordPress.Org

This is the upgraded version of WordPress. You do have to pay for this upgrade, but it’s well worth it given the freedoms you now have and all of the perks and benefits that come with it, including free themes and plugins that will help your website grow and flourish. If you want to remove Jetpack from a wordpress.org domain, the process is significantly simpler and results in a complete removal of the plugin.

• Go to your Plugins page.
• Find Jetpack.
• Click “Deactivate” and “Delete.”

And then you’re done! If you want to take it a step further to be safe, you can scan through your entire database to ensure that any traces it left behind (such as in wp_options and a couple of other locations) are wiped out as well.

Jetpack Alternatives

Now that you’ve either decided to remove Jetpack or have already done so, it’s time to figure out which features you want or need to replace with a more lightweight plugin (or several, even, depending on what you find yourself missing).

Here are some of the most popular Jetpack capabilities and their plugin alternatives.

Jetpack Contact Forms VS Replace with WP Forms Lite – Jetpack’s contact forms are remarkably straightforward and easy to use and customize. Since contact forms are one of the most popular ways of generating leads for salespeople and businesses, this is a vital feature to replace. WP Forms Lite is a free contact forms builder that uses easy drag and drop editors. There are upgrades available with even more capabilities, but this free “lite” version will give you the basics you need without weighing your website down needlessly.

Jetpack Site Analytics VS Google Analytics for WordPress (by MonsterInsights) – Businesses thrive off of site analytics, relying on them to know where the trends are (and aren’t), what they need to improve upon, what they’re doing well with, and what their customers do and don’t like the most about their site and products or services. Jetpack automatically comes with its own built-in stats module, but the free version doesn’t include anything comparable to Google Analytics. If you want top-tier SEO and analytics without Jetpack’s $299/year upgrade and weighty build, Google Analytics for WordPress is the way to go (and it’s free!).

Jetpack Search Engine Optimization VS Yoast SEO – SEO is 100% necessary in today’s digital climate. Your website can’t succeed if it isn’t coming up within at least the first couple of pages on a search engine. Jetpack does provide some assistance with this, but only with the paid upgrade. Yoast SEO is the most popular tool for this kind of feature on the market, offering all kinds of site optimization options for less than half of the cost of the Jetpack upgrade. Additionally, it won’t slow down your site nearly as much as Jetpack will.

Jetpack Site Accelerator(Photon) VS CloudFlare – It’s not so unsurprising that Jetpack would try to address its own disadvantages and provide a site accelerator (previously called “Photon”) to help your site load faster without getting rid of Jetpack altogether. However, using this feature does nothing to actually fix all of the space the plugin takes up. CloudFlare does everything you could want from a site accelerator at a fraction of the digital weight.

Jetpack Communications VS MailChimp – Jetpack allows you to email your visitors and members, but only whenever you create a new post. This is both extremely limiting and creates more work than necessary. Instead, MailChimp is a free plugin that lets you contact your members whenever you need to send out a newsletter or alert them of offers and updates without extra posts.

Is It Worth Removing Jetpack?

That’s entirely up to you! If your site is functioning properly and you love Jetpack’s features and user-friendly structure, you may not need to worry about replacing Jetpack at all.

However, if your page loading speed is lackluster and you find yourself yearning for more efficient alternatives, give some of the ones above a chance and see how much better your website functions without Jetpack weighing it down.