Over on the BruteProtect blog they have a look at the Jetpack Bloat Myth, and find that counter-intuitively even though Jetpack has more comprehensive functionality it’s faster than using individual plugins to do the same things. There are economies of scale to Jetpack’s approach, and it doesn’t even include the impact of doing things more advanced and complex like Related Posts. There’s a reason why some web hosts like WP Engine ban most related post plugins but encourage the use of Jetpack.
The performance of the plugin code, though still faster, is still a small difference when compared to the benefit of offloading certain tasks like image resizing, related posts, stats, video transcoding, and more in the future to the WordPress.com cloud (which is now across 11 datacenters worldwide).
Of course if you don’t need the functionality at all it’s always faster to have nothing, but that’s a shrinking minority. There are still more optimizations to be had, and in line with a performance focus in 2015 look for more improvements to come in the future. In the meantime, check out the Jetpack benchmarks.
From my perspective, the performance of Jetpack’s modules has been top notch. It always seems like the right decisions are made in the way the different components are built.
My concern has been with updates to jetpack rendering sites unusable until a new fix is released. I wish I could give more concrete examples, but it has happened a number of times over the years. It’s for this reason that we are hesitant to recommend jetpack for any project unless a good alternative to particular functionality doesn’t exist.
That being said, now that we’re able to cherry pick the different modules, I am more comfortable recommending jetpack for client’s sites.
brust protect must have some seriously crappy hosting. Won’t come up here. They need to get Hosting Matters, great hosting, great service. No B.S.
Seems Jetpack has the same problem too.
Might be a problem with your internet connection? All our services are showing online from multiple locations: http://status.automattic.com/
You can send a traceroute to support@wordpress.com and someone can take a look at it.
I have Hosting Matters too, for years. They are great.
I’ve always assumed JetPack would be faster/ better than offshoot plugins as JetPack has become part of WP seems it should be better integrated. Of course, I still use a mix of both types of plugin. It really depends on what I need and how well the plugin functions once I test it out.
“Performance focus in 2015” – how does that Michael Jackson song go, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror…” – http://gtmetrix.com/reports/ma.tt/iwGxGtLc – Summary: 3 to 4 seconds (sometimes more), 1.4MB and 88 requests… could be a lot better Matt. 😉 Let’s get rid of the wait – for those of us who have slow internet connections! Lol P.S. Happy New Year! Oh, and Jetpack never did seem slow to me… not sure how that myth got started really! 🙁
I suspect it was just a misunderstanding from people thinking that bundling each module into the plugin would cause the plugin as a whole to slow down. Similar to the theory that running too many plugins will slow down your site.
An advanced user will hopefully understand that running a LOT of plugins on your site won’t necessarily slow it down. But saying it will to a newbie user isn’t IMO all that bad advice (all be it not strictly 100% accurate) because a) it’s easy to both remember and understand and b) at the end of the day you show me a site running 50+ plugins and 9/10 I’ll be able to show you a snail-slow site! 😉
I strongly dislike the Jetpack plugin, but performance is never something I’ve considered a problem with it. I always thought the internal code was very good quality and was surprised when they post popped up, indicating that others felt there was a performance problem with the plugin.
If I made 50 great plugins and integrated them all into one single giant plugin, I wonder if Matt would have any issues with installing my giant plugin on his site if he only wanted to use say one or two of my giant plugin’s separate plugin-like features… I for one love JetPack, but I’d somehow love it a hundred times more if it was broken up into separate plugins… It just all feels somehow unnaturally invasive and pushy to me to package so many separate plugins into one big one (even if it doesn’t slow my site down). I could of course use another plugin, but I want the best — and that means I have no choice. 😉 Another question I often wonder about on the subject of JetPack: where will it all end? I.e. How big (in terms of separate plugins all packaged together into one) will JetPack be allowed to become? Will it one day be 100 plugins combined into one? And finally: I initially thought JetPack was a kind of testing ground for new ideas, but now I wonder will parts of JetPack EVER be incorporated into core? … Ryan: why do you “strongly dislike JetPack”? Matt? 😉
My reasons are similar to yours. I despise the idea of having to install a ton of redundant code. It feels dirty.
I also think the UI for Jetpack itself is a bit weird. It doesn’t feel like it’s part of WordPress and seems to break away from WordPress best practices.
I love the individual modules though. They’re great. It’s the packaging that I dislike.
Brin, I doubt they’d incorporate Jetpack into the WordPress.org core, partly because they already have WordPress.com to begin with. Putting Jetpack into the core will just make it more complicated for users. Putting it into the form of a plugin gives people more flexibility.
Amen to a data centered approach. Facts always outperform myths 🙂
Ryan: “I also think the UI for Jetpack itself is a bit weird.” – I’ll totally second that!
I manage 2 WordPress.org multi-sites where I allow users to create a website, and 2 other sub-domain multi-sites that organize & convey information to the public. I use the Jetpack plugin on all of my sites.
I only keep the modules I’m actually using activated. The Jetpack plugin is an excellent plugin, and in my opinion, everyone should be using it, aside from those who don’t need any plugins at all (whereas you’d probably be managing more of a 1 pager, instead of an actual website).
I should let you know that I’m unsure of how well the automatic plugin update is working. I activated this on my WordPress.com account, but I’m still needing to manually update each of my plugins. This new feature seems like an area that could use some improvement.
Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the team at Automattic.com have done. 🙂
My big issue with the “benchmarks” they ran is it basically assumes that people want all the services in Jetpack. The benchmark they ran leaves Jetpack and most of the default on services enabled with 5 other plugins to replace features that are disabled. That’s not a fair benchmark because it will absolutely result in slower load times. However, let’s say you only want social button on your site and have all the other features of Jetpack disabled. Is that faster than another social button specific plugin?
Jetpack is a good plugin and if you are using enough of the features, but as you disable features of Jetpack for other features that are preferred from other plugins (sometimes you just like the features from a specific tool over what is available in Jetpack) then it becomes a big heavy plugin for what it is being used for on the site.
The 2 major problems, almost show stopper I am having with Jetpack
1) To like a blog post on my self-hosted WP multisite, an end-user/reader *has* to be wordpress.com member
2) You cannot Like from BP stream and vice versa – Like do not show up in BP stream or under BP favorites. I understand there are thousand reasons for this but …..
If Like, BP, WP would have been an integrated affair and if any wordpress self hosted site member could have Liked any post ( if site admins set permissions) internet history could have been rewritten for the better!
Jetpack used to be quite sluggish but I feel it’ really upped it’s game of late, and it’s certainly quicker than using several separate plugins to achieve the same thing.
No it isn’t. It should be the same speed either way.
What I meant was that some plugins can become bloated with features you won’t need or use. If you only want the core functionality a certain plugin provides then a lot of Jetpack modules are often more basic and stripped back in this sense.
Hey Matt, I’ve been a critic of Jetpack in the past. It’s easy to make quips about bloat, but I’ve recently started to see the vision behind Jetpack. I finally realized it’s not just a bunch of slapped-together things. There’s plenty of TLC behind it, and I apologize for not paying attention sooner!
Jetpack should ideally be decentralized in some aspects from wp com to encompass self hosted wp org multisites – particularly login credentials. If an user is logged into any site that is wordpress (self hosted or 3rd party wordpress 4.1 etc) that user should be allowed to “Like” – you can see a discussion here https://buddypress.org/support/topic/how-to-like/