Benchmark
Popup plugin page weight: Easy Popups vs Popup Maker
What does a popup plugin add to your pages? We set up the same simple popup (a heading, one line of text and a button, opening after 3 seconds) with Easy Popups and with Popup Maker, and measured what each one loads.
- 4× less JavaScript and CSS than Popup Maker (15 KB vs 62 KB gzip)
- 0 KB loaded on pages without a popup (Popup Maker: 37 KB)
- +2 requests with a popup on the page (Popup Maker: +9)
Page with the popup
Homepage, guest visitor, median of 10 runs. Added = loaded by the plugin on top of the same page with no popup plugin.
| Metric | Easy Popups | Popup Maker |
|---|---|---|
| Requests added | 2 | 9 |
| JS + CSS added (gzip) | 15 KB | 62 KB |
| JS + CSS added (uncompressed) | 61 KB | 342 KB |
| Layout shift (CLS) | 0 | 0.0045 |
Page without a popup
A page where neither plugin is set to show a popup, median of 10 runs.
| Metric | Easy Popups | Popup Maker |
|---|---|---|
| Requests added | 0 | 5 |
| JS + CSS added (gzip) | 0 KB | 37 KB |
| JS + CSS added (uncompressed) | 0 KB | 250 KB |
How we measured
We loaded each page 11 times in headless Chrome, each time in a fresh browser with an empty cache, threw away the first load and report the median of the other 10. “Added” means files that appear with the plugin active and not on the same page without any popup plugin.
Only one popup plugin was active at a time, with the same popup in each: heading, one line of text and a “Shop now” button, opening after 3 seconds, shown on the homepage only. Page caching was off. Everything else on the store stayed the same.
Easy Popups 1.6.1 and Popup Maker 1.25.0. Popup Maker’s extra files include WordPress block-editor stylesheets and a Google Fonts stylesheet.
Questions
Why does Easy Popups load nothing on some pages?
Easy Popups checks which popups are set to show on each page and only loads its script and styles where one will appear.
Is this a fair comparison?
Both plugins showed the same simple popup on the same store, one at a time, with caching off. Popup Maker has many more features, such as exit intent and analytics; if you need those, its extra weight buys you something.
Can I reproduce this?
Yes. The setup and method are above; the same approach works on a staging copy of your own site.