10 Tools to Check Website Speed and Performance
Google factors in a site’s loading speed when determining its ranking. While this might not have a significant impact, it’s still an aspect that we, as webmasters, should consider. The reason is straightforward: most visitors are typically in a hurry, and no one appreciates waiting an extended period for a website to load its content or fail to do so.
In other words, if your site is slow, you risk losing many visitors. Visitors equate to traffic, traffic influences reputation, and it can potentially generate revenue. Ignoring the repercussions of a slow-loading site can set off a domino effect.
Before diving into the codes to enhance speed, it’s crucial to pinpoint what constitutes your website. This is because improvements can’t be made without identifying the elements slowing it down. This article offers a curated list of valuable web services and tools designed to help you diagnose and analyze your site, granting a deeper understanding of its performance.
Overview:
| Tool’s Name | Offers Free Plan? | Starting Price of Paid Plans |
|---|---|---|
| Pingdom | No | $10 per month |
| GTmetrix | Yes | $10.67 per month (billed yearly) |
| K6 | Yes | $29/month |
| PageSpeed Insights | Yes | – |
| KeyCDN Speed Test | Yes | – |
| WebPageTest | Yes | – |
| Uptrends | No | US$17.50 per month |
| Yellow-Lab | Yes | – |
| Site24x7 | No | $9/mo (billed annually) |
| Uptime.com | No | $24 per month |
Pingdom
Pingdom is a user-friendly tool that helps you check how fast your website loads. By entering your website’s address, you can see how long it takes for your page to show up and find out what parts of your site might be slowing it down. The main goal of Pingdom is to help make websites load faster by pointing out what’s working well and what needs improvement.
The tool also keeps an eye on your website to make sure it’s always up and running smoothly. It does this from over 70 locations worldwide, ensuring a global perspective.
When you use Pingdom, you’ll see a colorful chart that breaks down the different steps your website goes through when someone visits it, like connecting to the server or loading images. This chart also shows different types of content, such as text or pictures, so you can easily see what makes up your page. Plus, colored dots will let you know if everything on your site is working as it should or if there are any issues you need to address.
Price:
Pingdom offers two main monitoring services:
- Synthetic Monitoring: Starts at $10 per month. This service offers transaction, page speed, and uptime monitoring. It also includes features such as email and SMS alerts.
- Real User Monitoring: Also priced at $10 per month. It focuses on understanding web application performance from the user’s perspective. Features include unlimited site tracking, shareable reports, and a 13-month data retention period.
Both plans come with the benefit of allowing unlimited users.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix helps you see how quickly your website loads. By using it, you can find out if your site is speedy or if there are things slowing it down. One of the great features of GTmetrix is that it lets you keep track of your website’s speed over time. You can set it up to test your site regularly, and if something’s not right, GTmetrix will let you know and show you what’s causing the delay. This means you can fix problems fast and keep your website running smoothly for your visitors.
Another cool thing about GTmetrix is that it lets you see how your website looks and works on real phones, like Samsung Galaxy or iPhone, as well as on over 30 other simulated devices. This helps make sure your site looks great and works well for everyone, no matter what device they’re using.
Lastly, GTmetrix tests your website from 22 locations around the world. This means you can be confident that your site loads quickly for people everywhere, not just in one place.
Price:
GTmetrix offers a range of plans:
- Basic Plan: Free forever with limited features.
- Solo Plan: Priced at $10.67 per month (billed at $128 yearly).
- Starter Plan: $21.25 per month (billed at $255 yearly).
- Growth Plan: $42.50 per month (billed at $510 yearly). This plan boasts additional benefits such as higher queue priority, PRO analysis options, and video capture for alerts.
K6
k6, created by Grafana, is a tool designed to make load testing easy for developers and QA teams. Being open-source and paired with a cloud service, k6 helps teams test how much traffic their systems can handle. This ensures that teams can fix issues, improve system reliability, and launch products knowing they’re stable and reliable.
One of k6’s standout features is its ability to script tests using Javascript. Users can run these tests on their own computers, spread them out over multiple machines, or even use the cloud. And the best part? You can switch between local and cloud testing using the same script. Plus, k6 lets you test from 21 different locations, ensuring a broad coverage.
But k6 isn’t just about load testing. It can be expanded to do other types of tests, like checking how a website works from start to finish. This means you can test both the website and the systems behind it to get a full picture of the user’s experience. Additionally, k6 works well with other development tools and can be enhanced with extensions to add more features.
Price:
K6 offers a range of pricing plans to cater to different user needs:
- Cloud Free: A cost-free plan with limited Cloud features, including 50GB Logs, 3 Grafana Monthly Active Users, 500 k6 Virtual User Hours, and community-only support.
- Cloud Pro: Priced at $29/month (plus additional usage costs), this plan is designed for companies with increased users and data, offering 100GB Logs, 5 Grafana Monthly Active Users, 1000 k6 Virtual User Hours, and 8×5 weekday support.
- Cloud Advanced: At $299/month (plus usage), it’s ideal for enterprises, providing similar limits as the Pro plan but with all enterprise plugins included.
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed, created by Google, is a tool designed to help those who run or build websites understand how well their pages are performing. By simply typing in a website address, users can see a report that tells them what’s working well and what might be slowing their site down. The main aim of PageSpeed is to give clear advice on how to make web pages work faster and better.
Every web page tested gets a score showing how well it’s optimized, with higher scores meaning better performance. PageSpeed looks at various things that can affect how quickly a page loads, like how fast the server responds, whether images are the right size, and if there are any scripts that might be causing delays.
What’s great about PageSpeed is that it doesn’t just point out problems; it offers solutions. For example, if it finds pictures that are too big, it’ll suggest making them smaller to help the page load faster. Or if there are scripts that slow things down, it’ll give advice on how to adjust them for better speed.
Price:
PageSpeed Insights is free
KeyCDN Website Speed Test
KeyCDN’s Website Speed Test tool is designed to check how fast any HTML page loads, giving users a deep look into things like how long requests take, the size of the content, and overall loading times.
When you use this tool, you’ll see a clear picture of how each part of your page performs, from timings to HTTP headers. It even shows a preview of the website, so you can connect the performance data with what you see on the screen. This makes it simpler to understand how different parts of your site affect its speed.
But that’s not all. The tool also teaches users about HTTP status codes, which are the computer’s way of saying if a page loaded correctly or if there was an error. Plus, it breaks down the different kinds of content on a page, like text, pictures, videos, and more. This helps users get a better idea of what’s on their site and how each piece affects how fast it loads.
Price:
This tool is is free to use.
Visit KeyCDN Website Speed Test
WebPageTest by Catchpoint
WebPageTest is a tool that lets you see how fast your website loads from different places and on different web browsers.
With WebPageTest, you can pick from various locations around the world to see if there are any changes in loading times based on where someone is. Plus, since people use different web browsers, the tool lets you test your site on multiple ones to ensure everyone gets a smooth experience.
What’s great about WebPageTest is that it keeps you in the loop. As it checks your site, it gives you live updates on how the tests are going, so you’re always informed about your website’s performance.
Price:
This tool is is free to use.
Uptrends Website Speed Test
Uptrends helps you understand how your website works on both computers and mobile devices. It shows you how quickly your web pages load and points out areas that might need some improvements.
With Uptrends, you can see important details like when the first part of your page shows up and how fast your server responds. The tool also offers a series of pictures that display how your page loads step by step. This helps you visually see the loading process.
Additionally, Uptrends lets you look into the specifics of your web page. You can check out things like the number of items on your page, their sizes, and where they come from. A feature called the waterfall report provides more information about each item, helping you get a better idea of your website’s setup and how it performs.
Price:
Uptrends offers a range of pricing plans:
- Starter: Priced at US$17.50 per month, it offers monitoring for 10 sites (only uptime).
- Premium: Available at US$50.27 per month.
- Professional: Costs US$245.09 per month.
- Business: Starts from US$24.42 per month and offers unlimited monitoring with a pay-per-monitor system.
- Enterprise: Begins at US$58.36 per month with similar unlimited monitoring features.
Visit Uptrends Website Speed Test
Yellow Lab
YellowLab.tools is a free tool that helps you see how well your website performs. It specifically looks for parts of your site that might be too heavy and slow down the user’s experience.
One of the main things YellowLab.tools does is check how fast your web pages load. It makes sure your website follows guidelines that help it run smoothly and quickly.
The tool also gives a close look at the different parts of your website, like the text, styles, scripts, pictures, and fonts. This helps you understand what’s on your site and how each part affects its speed.
Additionally, YellowLab.tools has some extra settings for those who want a more specific analysis. You can add things like cookies, use a proxy, or even block certain parts of your site during the test to see how it affects performance.
Price:
This tool is free to use.
Site24x7
Site24x7 by ManageEngine is a tool that gives you a full view of how your IT systems are working. It makes sure everything in your IT setup is running as it should, without any hitches.
With Site24x7, you can check how different online services are performing, like websites, email servers, and more. It does this from over 120 places around the world, so you know how your services are doing everywhere. The tool also lets you keep an eye on important network equipment like routers and switches, helping you manage even the most complex networks.
On top of that, if you’re using cloud services and want to keep costs down, Site24x7 has features to help you manage your spending. You can set budgets and see where your money is going, helping you make smart decisions. Plus, Site24x7 uses advanced technology like artificial intelligence to spot any unusual activity in your IT systems. This means it can find and fix problems before they become big issues.
Price:
Site24x7 provides a comprehensive monitoring solution with several pricing options tailored to various needs:
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Starter Plan ($10/mo or $9/mo annually) offers basic monitoring features, including 10 basic monitors, 1 advanced monitor, and 3 status pages in StatusIQ.
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Pro Plan ($39/mo or $35/mo annually) enhances the offering with 40 basic monitors, 3 advanced monitors, and increased RUM pageviews.
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Classic Plan ($99/mo or $89/mo annually) further expands the service with 100 basic monitors, 5 advanced monitors, and 10 network interfaces.
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Enterprise Plan ($499/mo or $449/mo annually) is the most extensive package, boasting 500 basic monitors, 25 advanced monitors, and a significant increase in network interfaces, NetFlow interfaces, and logs.
All plans come with a 30-day free trial and allow multi-user access and third-party integration.
Uptime.com
Uptime.com helps you keep an eye on how your website, network, and email are working. With it, you can choose specific websites or domains, set up checks, and start monitoring how they perform from different places around the world.
One of the main concerns for website owners is when their site goes down. Uptime.com helps with this by sending alerts if there’s any downtime. To make sure these alerts are accurate, the platform checks from over five different locations, reducing the chances of false alarms.
Uptime.com also provides detailed reports and data. Users can set up their dashboards to show the most important information, and even see how real users experience their website. This helps in making improvements based on actual user data.
And if there’s ever a problem, Uptime.com has a special page where you can let your website visitors know what’s going on. This helps keep things transparent and builds trust with your audience.
Price:
- Starter Plan: Starts at $24 per month. It offers basic monitoring necessities.
- Essential Plan: Starts from $80 per month. This plan includes industry standard monitoring essentials.
- Premium Plan: Starts at $455 per month. It encompasses everything in the Essential plan and more.
All plans come with an offer of 2 months free when opting for annual subscriptions.