I bought mainwp and looked at the extensions. At first glance it looks good. There are many useful extensions. However, I wonder how much the performance of the child sites is affected by mainWP (extensions).
For example, I have installed Pro Reports. This requires an extra plugin on the child sites. However, many plugins also have disadvantages (slow down the site, fill up the server, open security risks, etc.).
Also, for example, I installed the White Label extension. The extension has a lot of settings options. I use only two settings from this extension. The question now is whether it harms the child site more than it helps.
How is the performance of the child sites affected by the amount of extensions? Are all functions of an extension always loaded, even if you only use one setting of the extension?
For example White Label: I use in WordPress options > Dashboard footer content. Does the child site now integrate the full extension or just a snippet that adds the footer content?
This plays a big role. For me personally it’s just a “gimmick” and no extension would justify performance penalty.
Even though an extension can have plenty of options, they do not all run on the child sites.
Options that are not used do not pass any data on the child sites.
And even if you were to choose to use all options of an extension, the date is serialized and stored in one DB entry. We do not create a separate DB entry for each extension option.