You have probably already tried. A Saturday afternoon with a caching plugin, an image compression plugin and a few tutorials. The PageSpeed score moved a little, then a visitor mentioned that the menu no longer opens on their phone, and you are not sure which of the twenty settings you changed caused it. Now you are wondering whether to keep going or pay someone.
“Should I hire someone to speed up my website, or keep going myself?” The answer depends less on how slow the site is than on what kind of site it is, how much risk you can tolerate, and what your time is worth. The work sorts into three piles: what an owner can safely do, what needs care, and what is usually better handed over. After that come the questions to ask a provider, and the warning signs that should make you walk away.
What owners can safely do themselves
A fair amount of speed work is low risk and needs no code. If you are comfortable in your website’s admin area, these are reasonable to do yourself:
- Compress and resize images before uploading. Most phone photos are far larger than any web page needs. Resizing them first is the single habit that prevents a lot of slowness later.
- Remove what you do not use. Deactivate and delete plugins nobody needs, old sliders, unused contact forms, social feeds from accounts you stopped posting on. Take a backup first.
- Simplify heavy pages. A homepage with a slider, a background video, an Instagram feed and three testimonial carousels will be slow however it is optimised. Choosing one strong image is an editorial decision, and it is yours.
- Turn on the caching your host already provides. Many hosts include a caching option in their control panel or a recommended plugin. Their documentation is usually the safest guide.
- Keep WordPress, the theme and plugins updated, after a backup, and check the site afterwards.
Our step-by-step post on speeding up a WordPress website yourself covers this kind of work in order.
Where it gets risky
The next layer of settings is where most DIY attempts go wrong. These options exist in popular caching and optimisation plugins, and they can help, but each one can break something in a way that is not obvious straight away. What each technique actually does is explained in the website speed and performance guide; here the point is the risk.
| Setting | What can go wrong |
|---|---|
| Combining or minifying CSS and JavaScript | Layouts break on some pages, scripts stop running, or the problem only appears on mobile |
| Deferring or delaying JavaScript | Menus, sliders, forms or cookie banners stop working until the visitor scrolls or taps |
| Removing unused CSS | Styles that appear only on hover, in popups or on certain pages disappear |
| Caching on a store | Wrong cart contents, someone else’s details shown, or prices not updating |
| CDN or Cloudflare rules | Logged-in pages cached for everyone, old versions served after changes |
| Database clean-up tools | Settings or data removed that a plugin still needed |
The trouble with these is not that they are difficult to switch on. It is that you need to know what to test afterwards, and how to tell which setting caused a fault when several were changed at once. If you do try them, change one thing at a time, on a staging copy of the site if your host offers one, and test forms, menus, logins and checkout after each change.
When it is usually worth handing over
Some situations tip the balance towards paying for help, mostly because the cost of a mistake is higher than the cost of the work.
- The site takes payments or bookings. A broken checkout for a day can cost more than the speed work, and stores have caching rules that are easy to get wrong.
- You have already tried the safe steps and the site is still slow. What remains is usually server response, scripts or the theme, which need diagnosis rather than another plugin.
- The slowness is on the server side. If even a plain page takes a long time before anything arrives, the answer lies in hosting, database queries or PHP, which most owners cannot inspect.
- The site was built by someone else with custom code, a heavy page builder or a child theme you do not understand.
- Your time is better spent elsewhere. Learning enough to do this properly takes many hours. For some owners that is interesting; for others it is time away from customers.
Should I hire someone to speed up my website? A quick test
When weighing up DIY vs professional speed optimisation, answer these honestly:
- Do you have a recent backup you have actually restored, or know how to restore?
- Can you test changes somewhere other than the live site?
- Does the site take money, bookings or logins?
- Have you already done the safe steps above?
- Would you know how to undo a change that broke the layout?
If you answered yes to the first two, no to the third and no to the fourth, start yourself. If the site takes money, or you have done the basics and stalled, or you have no safe way to undo a mistake, it is probably time to bring someone in. The cost side of that decision is covered separately in what speed optimisation costs and why.
What to ask a provider before you agree
Good providers will be happy to answer these. Vague answers are informative too.
- How will you measure the starting point? You want named tools, several runs, mobile results and specific pages, not one score.
- Which pages will you test? The homepage alone is not enough; ask for your key landing pages and, on a store, product and checkout pages.
- Will you work on staging first? And what happens if something breaks after the changes go live?
- What will you change? Plugins added or removed, settings changed, code edited. Ask for a written list at the end.
- What access do you need? Usually admin access to WordPress and sometimes hosting. Create a separate account for them rather than sharing yours, and remove it when the work is done.
- Will you tell me if the problem is the hosting or the theme? A provider who will only tune plugins may avoid saying the real limit is elsewhere.
- Do you need me to buy anything? Some recommend a premium plugin or a hosting change. That can be fine, but you should know before work starts.
Before talking to anyone, it helps to know roughly how slowness affects your business, because that tells you how much the work is worth. The lead post on speed and sales explains how to look at that on your own site.
Red flags
Walk away, or at least ask harder questions, if you hear any of these:
- A promised score. “We will get you 90 plus” or “100 on PageSpeed, promised” is a promise nobody can keep honestly, because the score depends on your theme, plugins, third-party scripts and how the test happens to run that day. A score is also not the same as a fast site; see whether a perfect PageSpeed score is necessary.
- A promised ranking. Speed is one of many things Google considers. Nobody can promise that faster pages will move you up.
- No measurements before work starts. Without a baseline, any result can be claimed.
- Turning things off rather than fixing them. Removing your chat widget, tracking or contact form will raise a score. It also removes things you need. Ask what was disabled.
- Requests for passwords by message or email with no mention of a separate account.
- No written list of changes at the end.
If you decide to do it yourself
Doing it yourself is a perfectly reasonable choice for many small sites. Protect yourself with a few habits: take a backup before each session, write down every setting you change, test on a phone as well as a laptop, test forms after each change, and stop when changes start producing smaller improvements than the time they take. Often the useful part is done after the first two or three steps.
Frequently asked questions
Can a caching plugin alone fix a slow website?
Sometimes it makes a large difference, especially if the site had no caching at all. It will not fix oversized images, heavy scripts, a slow theme or a server that is struggling, so if a caching plugin helps only a little, the remaining slowness probably comes from one of those.
What access should I give someone speeding up my site?
Usually an administrator account in WordPress, created just for them, and sometimes hosting access if server settings need checking. Avoid sharing your own login. When the work is finished, remove the account or downgrade it, and change any hosting passwords you shared.
How do I check the work was actually done well?
Ask for the same tests on the same pages before and after, with several runs each, plus a written list of changes. Then use the site yourself on a phone: open the menu, submit a form, add to cart if you sell online. Faster numbers with broken features is not a good result.
Is it a bad idea to try first and hire someone later?
No, as long as you keep a note of what you changed. A list of plugins installed and settings altered helps whoever takes over, and saves them time undoing conflicting changes. Settings left half-configured across several plugins can make later work slower, so mention everything you tried.
Our WordPress speed optimisation service is aimed at owners who have tried plugins and still have a slow site. It runs the way this post suggests: baseline tests, a ranked list of fixes, your say-so before each change, and the same tests repeated at the end. Ask us the questions on the list above before you agree to anything.
Next in this series: How to Keep a Website Fast After It Has Been Optimised
