To speed up an Elementor site, switch on Elementor's built-in performance features, remove the widgets, add-ons and scripts your pages do not need, size your images, and only then add page caching. You rarely need a rebuild. On my client sites the biggest gains came from deleting things, and an Elementor Pro build such as Samko Holdings measured 96 on desktop and 90 on mobile in PageSpeed Insights after launch.
This is the Elementor-specific version of my general method. For the metrics themselves, read how to fix Core Web Vitals on a WordPress site. If you already have a PageSpeed Insights report, the free Page Speed Fix Planner ranks the fixes by impact, with settings for your platform.
Why are Elementor sites often slow?
Elementor itself is not the main problem. What gets piled on top of it usually is. On the Elementor sites I have repaired or rebuilt, the slowdown came from the same few places:
- Theme demos imported whole. The demo behind the Raasa launch page had installed WooCommerce on a one-page coming-soon site.
- Decoration that blocks the first view. The Crowne Plaza London Kingston site had a heavy loader that delayed every visit, plus smooth-scroll scripts.
- Images exported at the wrong size. Magpie Retreat sold its setting through photography that was low quality and badly sized.
- Old layout structure. Pages built with sections, columns and inner sections nest more wrappers than pages built with Flexbox containers.
- Add-on packs. Each one brings its own CSS and JavaScript.
Which Elementor settings should you change first?
Elementor ships performance switches that many sites never turn on. They live under Elementor's settings, split between the Performance and Features tabs depending on your version.
| Setting | What it does | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Optimised or improved asset loading | Loads widget CSS and JavaScript only on pages that use the widget | Low |
| Inline font icons | Swaps whole icon font files for inline SVG icons | Low, check custom icon styling |
| Lazy load background images | Delays section backgrounds below the first screen | Low, but keep the hero background eager |
| Load Google Fonts locally | Serves fonts from your own domain instead of Google | Low |
| Flexbox containers | Builds layouts with fewer nested wrappers | Medium on old pages, which need converting |
| Element caching | Caches rendered widget output on the server | Medium, test dynamic widgets |
Test switches on staging
Feature names move between Elementor versions, and a few of these change the markup that custom CSS relied on. Switch them on in a staging copy, click through every template, then repeat on the live site.
What should you remove from an Elementor site?
Deleting is faster than optimising. I work down this list:
- Loaders and smooth-scroll scripts. On Crowne Plaza the gains came from removing these, not from adding an optimisation plugin.
- Plugins nobody uses. I removed the leftover WooCommerce install from Raasa because it only added weight and attack surface.
- Spare add-on packs. If one pack provides the two widgets you use, the other packs go.
- Heavy animation. On the Warren House homepage I kept the scroll animations subtle so they add polish without hurting load time on a page that opens with video.
- Widgets that load third-party scripts. Chat bubbles, review sliders and social feeds each cost something. Keep the ones that earn their place.
How do you fix images and the hero section on Elementor?
The hero is usually the largest element on screen, so it decides how fast the page feels.
- Re-export from originals at the right size. On Magpie Retreat I re-exported every image at the dimensions it is shown at instead of running a blanket optimiser, so the photography stayed sharp.
- Use separate mobile images where the crop differs. Wow Vastra has separate desktop and mobile banner sets.
- Never lazy load the hero. Lazy load everything below the first screen instead.
- Set image dimensions so the layout does not jump while loading.
If you need a quick way to get large photos down to size, my free Under1MB converter does it in the browser. The full method is in how to optimise website images without losing quality.
How should you set up caching for Elementor?
Caching comes after the cleanup, not instead of it. On Wow Vastra, moving asset loading into the theme and adding caching brought the desktop homepage to about 1.5 seconds. My own Inspired Monks site runs on Elementor with custom caching logic in PHP, lazy loading and image optimisation at upload, and it gets top Lighthouse performance scores despite the builder.
Two habits stop caching from causing trouble:
- Purge after template edits. Elementor regenerates CSS when you save a template, and a stale page cache can serve old styling.
- Check forms after any caching change. On Samko Holdings and Crowne Plaza, a GoDaddy cache layer swallowed form submissions. Upgrading PHP from 8.0 to 8.3 fixed both.
96
Samko Holdings desktop PageSpeed
90
Samko Holdings mobile PageSpeed
1.5s
Wow Vastra desktop homepage load
What order should you work in?
- 1
Measure on mobile
Run PageSpeed Insights on the homepage and your top landing pages, and save the reports as a baseline.
- 2
Switch on Elementor's performance features
On staging first, then click through every template.
- 3
Remove
Loaders, spare add-on packs, unused plugins and heavy animation.
- 4
Fix the hero and images
Right dimensions, separate mobile crops where needed, lazy loading below the first screen.
- 5
Add caching
Then purge, retest the same pages and test every form.
- 6
Keep the baseline
On Samko Holdings I delivered GTmetrix reports alongside PageSpeed scores, so future changes have something to be measured against.
When is a rebuild worth it instead?
When you are redesigning anyway, or when the site fights every change. If the design is staying, revamping in place is usually cheaper. On Cyprianis I built a new Elementor homepage alongside the old one and swapped it in once it matched the Figma, keeping the plugins and URLs the restaurant relied on.
If you are starting fresh, I would compare builders first: see Bricks vs Elementor vs Oxygen. Speed work on an existing site is part of my technical SEO and Core Web Vitals service. Send me the URL and I will tell you what I would remove first.
