WordPress is a very flexible content management system for creating web pages. One of the main reasons is the wide variety of options available to add more features to your site.
There are thousands of free plugins in the official WordPress directory, covering almost all features for any type of website. It is also possible to get premium WordPress plugins from third-party marketplaces or even on your own.
We’ve tested many plugins to narrow down the options and have compiled a list of the 41 best WordPress plugins for a wide variety of uses.
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41 Best WordPress Plugins
We’ve narrowed down the options and picked the best WordPress plugin for each functionality. To decide which are the best, we have taken into account these aspects:
- Characteristic – We have evaluated each of the plugins to ensure that the features provided fit your goals. We also make sure that they can work on any type of WordPress site.
- Credibility – We have picked many free WordPress plugins available from the official WordPress plugin directory. For premium plugins, we have verified the credibility of the developers to confirm that they are safe.
- Compatibility – the plugin must be compatible with recent versions of WordPress and PHP. We have also chosen plugins that were updated in the last three months.
If you want to consider alternatives, we’ve also included seven honorable mentions at the end of the article.
1. – Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugin
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 5 million
- Punctuation: 4.5/5
- Feature highlights: Integrated WooCommerce dashboard, quick setup wizard, support for multiple payment gateways
- Recommended for: create an ecommerce website
- Price: Free, with optional add-ons starting at 6 dollars a month
WooCommerce is the best. It provides essential eCommerce functionality such as store creation, product listing, and order management.
Additionally, WooCommerce accepts all major credit card and bank transfer payments and seamlessly integrates with 140 region-specific payment gateways.
It comes with a quick setup wizard that guides you step by step. All you have to do is answer the questions, provide details about your store, and you’re good to go.
Managing an online store with WooCommerce is easy as the control panel is integrated with WordPress. Use the sidebar of the administration panel to manage your products, orders or reports.
To create a beautiful store with WordPress and WooCommerce, make sure you use a
two. – Best CRM plugin
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 200,000
- Punctuation: 4.5/5
- Feature highlights: email newsletter, sending contact forms, customizable live chat
- Recommended for: manage clients and generate contacts
- Price: freemium (as of $45 a month)
HubSpot is a complete for WordPress. Even its free version offers enough features to implement CRM strategies on most websites.
Some of its CRM features include a contact form, live chat, and email newsletters. These features automatically sync with the main Contacts panel in the WordPress admin.
In this dashboard, you’ll see the full contact list with customer details, latest activities, lead status, and live chat conversations.
HubSpot’s email automation feature makes sending newsletters or responding to customer emails more convenient. You can send a canned email when a user submits a form or talks to chatbots.
The visual email builder allows you to create the email with ease, offering more than 20 email templates.
3. – Best plugin to create pages
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 5 million
- Punctuation: 4.5/5
- Feature highlights: drag-and-drop editor, template library, 90+ free widgets
- Recommended for: create and customize pages
- Price: freemium (as of $49 a year)
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for the . At its core, Elementor offers drag and drop functionality so that users can customize their pages and posts in no time.
The plugin also offers 100+ pre-made page templates to launch any type of website, 90+ widget options that help incorporate features like social media icons and a progress bar without having to install additional WordPress plugins.
Although Elementor works with almost all WordPress themes, make sure to choose an Elementor-ready one to avoid any issues. When in doubt, use the WordPress theme designed by the plugin developers.
Access the Elementor theme builder by purchasing a . This tool allows you to create a theme from scratch by easily customizing essential parts like header, footer, and even product pages.
Four. – Best WordPress plugin for security
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 4 million
- Punctuation: 4.5/5
- Feature highlights: two-factor authentication (2FA), web application firewall (WAF), security scanner, broken link check
- Recommended for: secure WordPress websites
- Price: freemium (as of $99 a year per license)
Wordfence is the WordPress security plugin many website owners turn to. It covers fundamental security aspects such as login security, malware detection, and preventing malicious traffic.
Once the plugin is installed, the Wordfence dashboard will display various data related to the security of the site, such as a summary of the firewall, the attacks blocked and the analysis of security problems.
The login security feature allows you to set up two-factor authentication for the WordPress admin page. All you have to do is scan the provided QR code using an authenticator app on your mobile device and enter the verification code.
The malware scanner checks WordPress theme and plugin files for malware. It also detects security vulnerabilities such as potential backdoors, code injection, and malicious redirects. The plugin’s broken link checker helps you find bad URLs on your website.
Wordfence’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects your website from malicious traffic. The login limit feature will block IP addresses that fail to login after a specified number of attempts, thus preventing brute force attacks.
After installing the plugin, the firewall will run in learning mode so you can test all its features and avoid false positives, protecting your site more effectively.
5. – Best WordPress plugin for SEO
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 5 million
- Punctuation: 5/5
- Feature highlights: excerpt editor, sitemap generator, on-page SEO tips, FAQ module
- Recommended for: optimize pages and posts for search engines
- Price: freemium (as of $99 a year)
Yoast SEO is a that offers essential web positioning tools. Its excerpt editor allows you to add a keyword, meta title, and meta description to your posts and preview how they will look in search results.
On-page SEO suggestions help optimize your content by improving your keyword usage, meta title, and alt text. Yoast SEO will also suggest internal links to optimize the site structure.
Another notable feature is the FAQ section that allows you to include it in your posts to help improve search engine rankings.
Lastly, the XML Sitemap Generator is useful for submitting your website to search engines using Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
6. – Best plugin to create forms in WordPress
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 5 million
- Punctuation: 5/5
- Feature highlights: drag-and-drop form creation, pre-made form templates, spam protection, shortcode embedding
- Recommended for: create various forms, including contact, comment, and subscription forms
- Price: freemium (as of $31 a year)
WPForms is a complete . Its drag-and-drop form editor and pre-built starter templates will help you create any form for your website in no time.
In total, there are 22 pre-built templates in the free version of the plugin, including a contact form, a registration form, and a newsletter subscription form. It is also possible to create a form from scratch.
All forms created with this plugin are responsive, which means that they will work smoothly on mobile devices. They also come with hCaptcha and reCAPTCHA spam protection measures.
Embedding any form into a WordPress page or post is easy, either using the included block or a shortcode.
7. – Best WordPress Caching Plugin
Plugin Statistics:
- Downloads: More than 100,000
- Punctuation: 4.5/5
- Feature highlights: drag-and-drop form creation, pre-made form templates, spam protection, shortcode embedding
- Recommended for: the complete configuration of the cache, CDN service, optimization of pages and images
- Price: free
The storage in is essential to ensure the maximum performance of a website and is one of the essential WordPress plugins for it.
This free WordPress plugin is easy to use as it offers an intuitive interface to manage the site caching and advanced caching features.
For example, there are various caching controls to enable or disable specific aspects of the site, such as logged in users, PHP resources, and the login page. There are even options to clear the cache for specific URLs.
In addition to caching tools to speed up your website, the plugin comes with a…
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