Question - Would you wait for a website that takes ages to load, knowing that it has great content and is exactly what you need?

Most people would search for a faster-loading website with subpar content rather than wait for a slow website to make its eventual appearance. The quality of the content doesn't even matter at this point anymore. So as a website developer, shouldn't you do everything you can to enhance your website's speed?

Naturally, you should. However, the only small issue is that you need a dedicated website speed tester to get a complete grasp of the finished website’s loading speed. But before we dive into this, let's examine what a website/webpage speed is and why it matters.

What is a website/webpage's speed?

In simple terms, a website/webpage's speed is the amount of time your website/webpage takes to load and enable users to see and interact with content. More technically, it is the response time between the browser request and its fulfilment by the website. Many things affect a website's speed monitoring, such as the content's type and quality: connection type, operating system, browser, and more.

Why does website loading speed matter?

The reason your website's speed matters is simple - people are impatient and won't wait for more than 3 seconds for its content to load. While back in the day, people could even wait for minutes, technology has advanced, and site speed is generally high. So if your site's speed is low, it will not gain traffic, which is bad for business.

Along with this, website loading speed affects SEO performance drastically. This is because Slow loading sites' speed increases bounce rate and an overall decrease in visitors - which are big factors when it comes to the best SEO practices.

The good news is that this same advancement has provided us with some of the best website speed test tools.

What are some of the best Web speed test tools?

 

Web speed analysis tools are simple websites or applications designed to give a rough estimation regarding the loading speed of your website. The analysis tools consider many variables such as render-blocking resources, DOM Size, network payloads, image sizes, static assets, and more.

Like everything else, some do this job better than others. Here we will look at some of the best website speed test tools.

1)  Google PageSpeed Insight

Google is well known for providing us with some of the best free tools. This includes the Gdrive for free storage, Gmail, GSuite, and more. While their free analysis tools have some limitations, they are still among the best.

Among many such tools, Google PageSpeed Insight is Google's answer to the need and demand for a free analysis tool to test website speed.

This is an extremely simple website speed testing tool where all you need to do is insert the URL of your website. Once the analysis is finished, it will give your website a general score of Fast, Average, or Slow, both for desktop and mobile devices (mobile website speed test), while also providing some optimization advice. While the speed reports are not specific, it is still good enough to enlist this free tool on the list of "The best website speed testing tools."

2) GTMetrix

GTMetrix is an online application that offers free insight into your page performance. It is extremely simple to use this tool as well. All you need to do is copy the URL and paste it into the tool. After brief processing, this website will show you decently detailed information regarding the speed of your website.

Your website speed will be shown in grades from A to F. The higher your grade, the better your website speed. Along with this, GTMetrix also gives you suggestions regarding how to improve your website speed as well.

GTMeterix is one of the best website speed testing tools. Although the free version of this website tool is decent enough, if you go into the premium version, you can get more details and tips on improving your website speed.

3) Site 24X7

 

Site 24x7 is another tool to test website speed. Similar to other tools we have mentioned earlier, this website tool provides you with page loading time and response time in milliseconds, page speed score, and more. Along with this, you can also see the number of responses and average response time.

While Site 24x7 does not provide improvement tips, it gives you detailed information regarding your website speed and webpage.

4) Webpage test

Although the webpage test has more limited options, it is extremely specific regarding results. You can see extremely detailed reports regarding your website speed, including First Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shifts, first-byte speed, speed of render start, and more.

Webpage tests sacrifice some result processing speed to provide you with more detailed results. You can even get a detailed report visually.

Webpage test is one of the best website speed test tools if you want detailed information.

5) Uptime

Uptime provides you with some of the most detailed data with decent tips. That said, you will have some limitations regarding the data in the fee version. However, if you go premium, you will have access to the best website speed improvement tips and speed data. 

The premium version of the tool checks your website across the networks throughout the globe and uses real user monitoring. You will need to compromise the detailed and accurate reports for limited checks. You only have 20 checks in the basic plan and 500 checks on the enterprise plan.

6) Dareboost

Dareboost is another free website testing tool whose functionality falls somewhere between webpage test details and the speed of GTMetrix. With Dareboost, you have the best results at decent results along with real user monitoring. The only reason why Dareboost is at the end of our list is that you need to sign up, and even then, you can only use five scans per month in the free version.

While this is good for personal websites, this can be an issue for small businesses.

Honourable Mentions

Besides the one we mentioned here, we would also like to mention the Pingdom speed test tool and Alertra as honourable mentions. Pingdom speed test tool is essentially the paid version of Site 24x7 but with reasonably better services.

At the same time, Alterra is not a website speed testing tool but a free ping service for monitoring uptime.

In the end

There are many website speed test checker tools, including those with the option to check the website speed on your mobile i.e., mobile website speed test. That said, the ones we mentioned here are some of the best.

While the free ones may not provide you with the best nor the fastest results - they work well for small to medium-sized businesses. At the same time, the paid best website testing tools are not accessible to all but provide you with deeper and more comprehensive reports. Unless your business is big, free tools should be good enough.

We hope you found this informative and helpful. And as always, thank you for reading till the end.

FAQ

Q: Does website speed effect SEO?

A: Yes it does. In fact, website speed is one of important facts that you need to consider for SEO.

Q: How can I test my website performace for free?

A: You can test your website performance for free by using any of the free website performance tools.

Q: Are free websitespeed test tools useful?

A: They are. In fact, if you do not have a big business/large website, then free tools should be enough for you. 

Q: Can you trust reports from free website speed test tools?

A: Although free versions of website test tools do not provide you with the detailed reports they are trustworthy and you can get a decent amount of data if you use multiple tools.