How to Optimize VirtueMart Checkout Speed with Many Payment Plugins Installed?

[rosydam]

Hi everyone,
I'm currently running VirtueMart 4 on Joomla 4, and I've noticed that the checkout page becomes noticeably slower when I enable multiple payment plugins (PayPal, Stripe, local bank gateways, etc.). When I disable some of them, the page loads faster, but obviously, I still need to provide multiple options for my customers.
Has anyone found a good way to optimize checkout speed while keeping several payment methods active?
Is it better to load payment methods via AJAX?
Are there caching strategies that work well with VirtueMart checkout?
Or maybe specific configuration tips inside VirtueMart to reduce the load time?
I think many shop owners who use VirtueMart with multiple gateways may face the same issue, so I'd love to hear about your solutions or best practices.
Thanks in advance!
[edit removed spam]

[hazael]

It's pretty obvious that the more plugins you use, the worse your site's performance gets. For years there's been an ongoing debate between WordPress and Joomla — which CMS is better? The answer is quite simple: it depends. That said, WordPress is fast, but once you start stacking too many plugins, it begins to choke so badly that Joomla eats it for breakfast.

Still, optimization is key — the fewer, the better. That's why I don't get why you'd install separate plugins like PayPal and Stripe, when Stripe already has everything built in.

Support for Joomla 4 ends this year – after October 2025 no further security updates will be released. It's strongly recommended to consider upgrading to Joomla 5 to ensure the stability and security of your website