Why is chess.com so slow?

I used to play rapid and blitz chess on here but strange things kept happening like I would have to click a piece 12 times to get it to highlight and then click the square move the piece into numerous times. The process can take a full minute to do. Even trying to write this many of the letters won't print even though I pressed those keys. This other chess website I use works just fine. I can only play correspondence chess on here now the website freezes my computer during rapid games and I lose on time. When I log in to chess.com I have to wait at least a minute before I can click on my correspondence games on the left. Often when I put the cursor over the red indicator that means my opponent has made a move the rest of the information won't appear. I have to wait and move the cursor around for a minute in order to get the information to be revealed with that tab on the left. Then I click on it and wait a long time just seeing the brown background I chose as a theme. Slowly some of the chess pieces in the game I'm playing will start to appear. I played one rapid or blitz game where on top my opponent's clock was ticking down and on bottom mine was not. I waited a long time and then a message popped up saying I lost on time. That was incredibly weird and the last straw for me. But like I said this other chess site everything comes up immediately, no weird stuff. So it makes me think it is just this website and not my computer.

I use Microsoft Edge with Windows 10 on a wireless notebook. It is a free account so I can't go back to old chess.com. I couldn't imagine paying for this nightmare. I live in the US. It also appears that somehow no one can see my forums posts on here for some reason

First, you would be better off with Firefox or Chrome.

Second, read through the following.  It is about disconnects but many of the solutions can help with slowness issues.

https://support.chess.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1444918-my-internet-connection-is-fine---why-am-i-getting-disconnects-

Finally, for Live, this may be of help.

https://www.chess.com/blog/News/how-to-adjust-your-live-chess-connection

this website is getting way to slow for 1 min blitz. I also noticed clocks from Asian countries players, especially India, tend to move too slow, which indicates latency issues. Problem is that an Asian opponent would have made a move that gets registered but I would only be able to see the move after several second delay, which basically eats out my clock 4-8 seconds. But aside from these days, the problem has gotten worse. Now, I cannot play 4 or 5 games straight without having my game completely crashing. Just lost 100 rating points today because i cannot make moves. I even cleaned browsing history, tried different browsers, or even removed some suspect Microsoft Updates. on each occasion, i can only play at normal speed for 2 games and then the lag starts in the third game. I have to stop playing then. Chess.com may not have enough computing resources to efficiently handle hundreds of thousands of games at any given time. The website has become popular but the company is appears to be way behind the curve in managing the increased demand it appears. BTW, this started happening recently. For a long time, I did not have this kind of problem. 

I should add that I have high speed Internet, with and a computer with Quad Core CPU, lots of RAM and SSD hard disk. When my chess game is very slow, I am still able to browse video broadcasting at normal speed from news websites like CNN and MSNBC. 

I'm here for the same reasons.  Now I'm no computer expert, but I enjoy playing on Safari on my macBook. Games start fine, then 3 or 4 minutes in the response time becomes very sluggish.  This a recent development in the last few days.  I've emptied caches, cleared history, restarted and still experiencing the same problem.  I'm on a good secure wireless network and all that.  Curious if other members are experiencing this.

Came here for the same reason. Been using chess.com for over 5 years and this problem has been happening since the weekend. I log in and then first 2 games go ok, third starts to have time lag and then games after that become impossible or near with the game just frozen often for a minute after a move while my time gradually runs out. I've noticed it isn't just me as a lot of other players are disconnecting against me after a few moves

I doubt chess.com is slow your computer is probably slow you might want to get a new one if you can afford it.  
Otherwise, you might try a different browser
Also try this https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6283840?p=speedtest&visit_id=637104839038019875-4043449989&rd=1
To test your internet speed under 40 is good but 35 is pretty average unless you have a nice computer. 

The slow down started happening for me a few days ago, it doesn't seem related to networking, while dragging my chess piece the game will just basically stutter and sometimes freeze with a chess piece hanging in between squares.  It may be related to some browser update (I use chrome) but my pc and internet are fine.

You might want to report that to chess.com support. I'm guessing it is a bug related to one of their new updates. I'm sure they would want to know so they can fix it and they might even be able to help you with that specific problem as well.  

One more thing, check out these links and see if they can help.
https://support.chess.com/article/213-how-do-i-fix-my-disconnect-lag-issues
https://support.chess.com/article/357-what-is-lag-in-live-chess

It has seemed faster lately than when I first started. This is a different computer and I'm using Google Chrome now. I still only play daily chess though. Thanks! I posted that more than 2 years ago. 

Wow! I didn't even realize that when I posted it.  

okay so I have that same issue: I can no longer play bullet games or I'll have a very very slow game, like when it lags, i can't even take the piece, when i move my mouse on the left side of the website to test, it doesn't even react but when i move my mouse on the bottow of my screen, my pc itself works pretty well; i can still check other tabs, i can open/close stuff, like, the pc itself is fine, but chess.com randomly slows down; it can happen for 10 seconds or for the whole game and it's pretty frustrating when both of players have 15seconds left and so you want to play fast and precisly but i can't. It happened to me since the update.

Same experience.  I constantly experience lag on chess.com, either through disconnects or pieces not responding to my movements.  And I know it's not my computer or my internet.  First of all, I'm hard wired by Cat5A to my modem.  I'm also using Chrome, which is one of the supposedly preferred browsers.  Second, I'm livestreaming the Thanksgiving day parade in my living room with no interruption on wifi.  I love the level of competition on this site and the breadth of user base, but I have a lot of problems using it that I don't experience on another free chess playing site that will remain nameless, which does prevent me from wanting to pay for a membership.

Posted two years ago, and apparently still a problem for a lot of people.

I ended up contacting support and they're aware of the issue, I'd suggest like @QuantumYankee said to send a bug report and they'll help you out.

Unbelievable. This word is exact definition of live chess today. Lag about 10 seconds in 3 mins games. If u want sell your premium membership, u couldn't do better... (but u should think if that's the right way, because f.e. i'm done with it). Ads make from chessboard the frozen kingdom and i don't want to play blindfolded.

Other traffic on your connection can cause issues. When other members of my household are streaming, I can have lag.

https://support.chess.com/article/213-how-do-i-fix-my-disconnect-lag-issues

That said, based on the number of recent posts/topics, it sound like there are some ads on the ad provider that are causing issues for basic members.

time to enable adblock..