Quick Version
Elementor is doing a Lot of work, so is Elementor Pro. Each element that you have enabled gets loaded for every page edit. Too many scripts, each loading slowly, has the entire loading process time out. On a “decent” hosting, there are many that could each take 300ms or longer to load. Superb hosting will load “the gazillion files” faster.
— WordPress left menu, Elementor, Element Manager, Scan Element Usage, then Deactivate Unused Elements.
— Disable your browser extensions, many of them really slow down your page load. I’m using screen shots so much in my site, I have Fireshot extension. I’m copying URLs so much I have Copy URL to Clipboard on. I’m using Bitwarden as my Password Keeper. All the others? Enable them only when you need them.
— Check that at the hosting account level or the CDN level (but not both), you have caching on, for all the scripts and css files (one or more for each Elementor element).
— Keep your WordPress plugins as low as possible, for what your site needs. Have Wordfence so you are much less likely to get hacked; Google Site Kit so your pages all get on the search engines; The SEO Framework a lower-resource and easier tool than Yoast so social media and search engines use an image heading and description for each page. If you are going to sell anything, use Surecart instead of WooCommerce as much lower resources on your site.
Here is the quick, unpolished, no screen-shot answer
Why is your Elementor “Edit with Elementor” page loading so slowly?
Lets separate the page load time of the finished page, which a “great host” will definitely help with, from “Editing the page in Elementor, the page takes a long time to load”.
Is it “taking too long” or is it “frozen while loading”?
Frozen while loading: Go back to the page where you clicked “Edit with Elementor” from the top menu and do it again; or go back to the list of pages, and click “Edit with Elementor” again. Internet glitches or timeouts will interrupt “the gazillion things Elementor has to load”. I notice it is not enough to “refresh the page”; going back and re-launching Elementor seems to work better.
Find out specifically “what is loading slow”, for example in your browser’s Inspector you can go through the Network tab to see how long each tiny “thingy” (to avoid using the word “element” so we don’t confuse it with Elementor) takes to load.
In Chrome (or Brave) browser you can use the Lighthouse tab to get an outside analysis of the page loading (make sure you select Performance in the Categories).
Gives an enormous amount of data, and some of the things it shows you can not do anything about (for example, /wp-admin/load-scripts.php is required and you can’t change it).
You might see some external service is slow and holding everything up.
Make sure Network tab has “Disable cache” un-checked for when you are using Elementor; and “No Throttling” (don’t want to be emulating a 3G mobile phone).
You definitely want Inspector’s “3 dots” menu, Dock side “In separate window”, since both it and Elementor need Screen Space.
You won’t be able to make out the Waterfall graph, too tiny.
Don’t click on any of the column headings yet (Name, Status, Type, Initiator, etc) so you see things in the order they load.
Once you’ve glanced at the load times, in order, and not found anything obvious delaying everything, you can click on the Time heading, to see the ones that take the longest.
On a client’s “inexpensive but WordPress optimized hosting” site, there are many things that load in over 200ms:
frontend.min.css 303 ms
elementor.js 209 ms
widget-image.min.css 306 ms
widget-google_maps.min.css 303 ms
You’ll see a lot of “widget-” scripts and css, so if you don’t use an Elementor Element at all on this site, disable it in the main page of Elementor settings.
If you do not Need a plugin, uninstall it; that is always important for page speed in any WordPress site. Unless you take the time to configure a “load plugins only when needed” plugin, and then test Everything, which most people will never do… Then in WordPress every file needed by every plugin enabled on the site, loads for Every page.
On a more complex site (with Elementor, Elementor Pro, WooCommerce with several add-ons, Astra, Astra Pro, several other plugins), on a host that gives this site a mobile PageSpeed score of 90, yet still at a great price:
frontend.min.css 289 ms
elementor.js 153 ms
widget-image.min.css 126 ms
widget-google_maps.min.css 241 ms
Superb hosting has “all those gazillion files” overall load faster.
One thing that definitely will slow down Elementor loading is a slow browser add-on. Minimize your browser add-ons.
If you use the Lighthouse tab of Inspector, you will see: “There were issues affecting this run of Lighthouse: Chrome extensions negatively affected this page’s load performance. Try auditing the page in incognito mode or from a Chrome profile without extensions.”
To measure the actual page, Incognito mode will work. To analyze Elementor editing the page, you have to be logged in.
Your password keeper needs to be enabled.
Your AI meeting note taker doesn’t need to be enabled.
Your screen capture add-on (likely) needs to be enabled.
Your video capture add-on probably doesn’t need to be enabled, at least not while editing.
Your grammar checker shouldn’t be on for WordPress editing; too many interruptions. (Check grammar on the text of your post, before you put it into WordPress, and check grammar again on the text of the final post. Don’t check while you are using Elementor.)
Don’t have multiple tabs open, each editing the Same post. That could make Elementor (or WordPress?) have to check both for changes the other is making.
Check if your browser itself is slow.
Chrome/Brave has “3 dash menu”, More tools, Performance. Shows you which pages or sub-page is, right now, taking up CPU or memory. Pages “sitting idle” with a video on them often hog resources.
Brave (probably Chrome too) has “free up memory from inactive tabs”; you should enable this.
Firefox has equivalent tools. Many other browsers are “based on” Chrome or Firefox; but if your browser isn’t, it likely won’t have the website developer tools you need.
Don’t blame Elementor if your computer is slow because you’re trying to run a lot, with only 8GB RAM in your computer. Windows in particular barely runs in 8GB. Find out if your computer can be upgraded to 16GB RAM or even 32GB RAM. I’d rather buy a computer with a slower CPU that has plenty of RAM.
If your computer won’t run Windows 11, but runs fine with Windows 10, or if it won’t run the latest OS/X, test Linux Mint booting off a thumb drive, and if you like it even running slower-on-thumb-drive, you can install Mint dual-boot. It loads all the same disk types, runs many of the same programs such as Chrome, Brave, Firefox, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, VLC Media Player. As a user (not command line user/troubleshooter), the user interface is very similar to Windows and to OS/X.
There are a few good suggestions on https://elementor.com/help/elementor-not-loading/ mainly keeping Elementor and Elementor Pro similar versions; and “X frame restrictions and Cross-origin issues”.
If you “must have Windows”, let me know, I might take your “now worthless” computer and refurbish it with Linux Mint and sell it to a needy family at a “lower than a new Windows 11 computer” price.)
Any questions, or need something explained in more detail? Contact me, or add a comment here.
