This article will cover why you should care about website load time. Also, show you the 20 best website speed test tools.
Poor website speed performance is something that no website owner wants to experience. Make sure that doesn't happen to you by checking overall website speed.
Website speed test tool allows you to monitor your website speed and gives suggestions on its weak points. That way, you can make the necessary improvements whenever they are needed.
Why test website speed?
As a visitor, how do you feel if you encounter a website that takes a long time to load?
If your answer is no discomfort, we welcome your patience.
Because according to Kissmetrics, 40% of visitors leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Website speed is important for the following reasons:
- Impact on SERP – Search engines only have a little time to collect results. If the website fails to load within that short time, you will rank lower.
- Impact on website traffic – This is what we meant in the example above. Slow loading equates to a 40% risk of losing potential visitors (or worse, losing customers).
- Impact on SEO – The search engine needs to secure its reputation and it doesn't appreciate low speed pages for harming user experience.
All in all, every website owner needs to maintain website performance to provide the best possible user experience. One of the ways to do that is using a website speed test tool.
Although we do not cover the topic of web optimization, you can take a look at this list to improve website loading speed.
Top 20 free website speed test tools
There are many speed testing tools that can suit your needs. We have created a list of the 20 best free tools to save your time.
1. GTmetrix
Dealing with site speed and performance optimization, GTmetrixH's key features are suitable for most web performance monitoring.
It sends summaries of key performance metrics, site monitoring, and site audit capabilities from multiple regions around the world. All free.
You can also conduct a connection throttling test to see how well the website performs on different speed lines.
2. WebPagetest
Website speed test tool WebPagetest tests speed from many locations around the world using Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, … for free.
Its key features include multi-step transaction checking, video recording, and content blocking.
At the end of the test, you'll receive waterfall charts of resource loading, test page speed optimization, and suggest improvements.
3. Google PageSpeed Insights
Because Google owns this website speed testing tool, the user experience metrics are based on the site's performance on Chrome UX Report, both on mobile and desktop.
This test gives you theoretical data and actual data. Theoretical data deals with performance issues while actual data contains real-time performance data experienced by visitors.
This speed test tool is favored by independent website owners and small and medium business owners. They are people who want to know the easiest and simplest way to maintain web performance.
4. Site Speed (Google Analytics)
As part of Google Analytics, Site Speed evaluates web performance based on three aspects: page load time, execution speed, and length of the analysis.
The test report contains a detailed breakdown of individual pages and resource performance, as well as relevant optimization tips.
5. Google Test My Site
As mobile phones become more and more popular these days, mobile sites need to maintain the same performance as desktops.
Test My Site will measure your website's speed for mobile devices, benchmark it against competitors, and provide customized reports along with recommendations on how to improve pages performance.
6. YSlow
This free, open-source website speed test tool analyzes the performance of a website based on 23 of Yahoo's 34 rules for high-performing websites. It is a plugin for web browsers and command-line scripts for Node.js and PhantomJS servers.
YSlow was originally implemented from Firefox, so it allows full access to page element information through the Firebug Net Panel.
7. Pingdom
Not only does Pingdom perform thorough web performance monitoring, but the tool also monitors downtime.
Pingdom uses more than 70 global polling stations to test websites. At the end of the test, you'll get detailed information on performance and bottlenecks that are hindering site speed.
If you want more thorough monitoring, you can purchase a paid plan and get other services like uptime monitoring, page speed monitoring, transaction monitoring, visitor insights, and more. server monitoring. Whenever there is a problem, the alert feature will let you know immediately.
8. KeyCDN Website Speed Test
With the option to perform website speed tests from 14 different locations, KeyCDN serves as a potential real website testing tool.
In addition to full site speed testing and geolocation testing, the tool can also perform SSL FREAK attack testing to ensure the security of your website's SSL/TLS.
9. Dotcom-Monitor
Dotcom's free tools help you conduct browser-based website testing on various desktop and mobile devices, from 20 test locations around the globe.
The advantage of Dotcom is, all the tests by location can be done at the same time. Towards the end, you'll receive individual waterfall reports and performance reports from each location.
10. Dareboost
The Dareboost website speed test tool is capable of performing performance monitoring from 13 test locations and seven devices. Devices include many types of mobile devices.
Key features of this tool include the ability to simulate speed tests with ad-blocking and non-adblocking, and domain-specific blocking to uncover the culprit behind poor web performance.
The experiment generates a thorough report with recommendations divided into several categories. These groups will make it easier for you to prioritize needed improvements.
11. Geek Flare
Geek Flare offers the same standard performance monitoring as any other website speed test tool. You can test how fast your website loads on desktop or mobile from multiple locations around the world.
Test metrics include page size, screenshots, number of requests by type, and Time to First Byte.
12. New Relic
As a software analytics company, New Relic knows the ins and outs of application performance.
Free online aggregator website test helps you test websites from nine different regions.
If you require a wider range of testing, the paid plans will do the trick. It has the ability to monitor dynamically changing systems, simulate behavior to isolate problems and analyze the business impact of web performance.
13. LoadImpact
This cloud-based website speed test tool specializes in web, app, and API performance issues. Using k6 as an open-source, command-line-based load time testing tool, issues can be detected easily in the software development lifecycle.
LoadImpact's website speed test is free, but you need to purchase their plan to use other tools.
14. Web Page Analyzer
This free website speed test tool gives you a calculation of the page size, elements, download time, and size of individual elements on your site.
Custom recommendations are made based on this data: site size guide and web optimization trends and methods.
15. Image Analysis Tool (Cloudinary)
If the website contains a lot of images, the resulting load speed may be congested. Using this Cloudinary tool it is possible to accurately assess image-related issues such as size, format, quality, and encoding.
16. Monitis
Monitis's free speed test tool gives you the load time of elements on your website. Trials were conducted simultaneously from the US, Europe, and Asia.
With the paid plans, you get a wider range of monitoring: websites, networks, servers, and applications. You can also conduct custom monitoring on your business systems and metrics using the API.
17. Chrome DevTools
Here is another tool from Google that can help you improve your load times. Identifying developers as key users, this website speed test tool helps to quickly edit pages and diagnose problems.
This tool is integrated directly into the Chrome browser. Its official homepage offers tutorials for beginners who want to learn about simple programming and tips for web optimization.
18. GiftOfSpeed
Rate web page load times from eight different locations using the GiftOfSpeed speed test. You can also directly improve your web performance with other free website speed test tools like CSS optimization test, broken request check, and JavaScript compressor.
19. Uptrends
Uptrends offers a free website speed test tool to test website loadtime on desktop or mobile from ten different locations. You can also set bandwidth throttling and the web browser in which the test will be conducted.
Website monitoring tools are also available for free. Its features include a wide range of test locations, email alerts, and dashboard monitoring.
20. BatchSpeed
Combines Google's PageSpeed API, BatchSpeed's tool, which crawls websites, multiple URLs, and XML sitemaps before conducting a speed test.
Results can be sorted by speed, size, recommendation, or priority.
Final Thoughts
Web performance is an important aspect that needs attention from every web owner. Since most visitors don't have time for slow loading websites. Page load time becomes an important factor in determining the quality of user experience.
Slow loading times also play a major role in causing your website to rank low in the SERP and low web traffic. The bottom line is that you don't want these problems to happen to your site.
There are many website speed testing tools out there, but only a few will suit your needs.
If you're looking for an easy-to-use tool, Google has many handy tools like PageSpeed Insights and Test My Site that can help. These tools can be free and integrated directly into Google Chrome, so it's very accessible to everyone.
If the website contains a large number of images, Image Analysis Tool is the perfect choice for you. It helps you improve the use of high-quality images without losing load time.
For more monitoring testing options and optimization methods, Pingdom and Monitis are a few of the best website testing tools. Thanks to the reputation and complexity of these tools, they will help you handle large-scale websites. In addition, allowing you to have the best possible web performance monitoring tests and spot the slows for you.
All in all, there's simply no reason not to monitor your web performance or test your site speed regularly.
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