Adobe Commerce performance mistakes I see in almost every audit

Adobe Commerce performance mistakes I see in almost every audit

After dozens of Adobe Commerce (Magento) audits across B2C and B2B storefronts, the same culprits keep appearing. And they're not exotic , they're avoidable.

MISTAKE #1 : VARNISH MISCONFIGURATION
Cache hit ratio under 60% on category/PLP pages.
What I find: ESI not set up properly, TTL values too conservative, cache invalidation firing on every CMS save.
Fix: Audit your Varnish VCL, separate CMS cache from catalog cache, use hole-punching for cart/account blocks.

MISTAKE #2 : SYNCHRONOUS INDEXING IN PRODUCTION
Full reindex triggered on product save, blocking storefront performance.
What I find: indexers still set to "Update on Save" instead of "Update by Schedule".
Fix: Switch all indexers to schedule mode. Use cron for execution. Use partial indexing wherever supported.

MISTAKE #3 : N+1 QUERIES IN CUSTOM MODULES
Custom GraphQL resolvers hitting the database once per product in a listing.
What I find: Third-party or custom modules bypassing Magento's collection layer and making individual DB calls in loops.
Fix: Use collection-based loading, implement the DataLoader pattern for GraphQL, add query caching for read-heavy resolvers.

Underpowered Redis configuration (too small max memory, no eviction policy set), causes cache stampedes under load.

None of these require a replatform. They require an audit and the discipline to fix them.