Ultimate List of the Best WordPress Plugins (35+ FREE Tools)

by Southie Williamson on Jan 11, 2024 Reader Disclosure

You’ve figured out your website — you know how to post content and customize your WordPress theme, but you run into a problem. WordPress doesn’t do exactly what you want it to. That’s where the best WordPress plugins come in!

WordPress is built to support plugins that extend its functionality. These plugins, crafted by creative developers, provide new features that solve users’ pressing problems and help you create the website of your dreams. But, not all plugins are created equal.

Many of the best plugins for WordPress are feature-packed and regularly updated, but others are broken and defunct. With over 60,000 plugins in the WordPress.org directory, finding premium tools or the best free WordPress plugins can be pretty overwhelming.

That’s why we’ve curated this ultimate WordPress plugins list. We’ll share the best WordPress plugins for for a variety of uses. These top plugins are established and regularly updated. Plus, almost every plugin on our WordPress tools list is either completely free or offers an excellent free version to get started with.

What Is a WordPress Plugin?

A WordPress plugin is a piece of software that adds functionality to a WordPress website. These plugins can extend the capabilities of your site beyond the default features provided by the core WordPress system. The best WordPress plugins can add various functionalities such as contact forms, SEO optimization, social media integration, eCommerce, and many more.

Are Plugins Worth It on WordPress?

Plugins are absolutely worth it. They can save you a significant amount of time and money, especially for small businesses or individuals with limited resources. They allow you to add complex functionality to your site without having to hire a professional developer.

However, poorly written or outdated plugins can introduce security vulnerabilities or negatively impact site performance. That’s why it’s important to use properly vetted plugins like the ones in this list. Well-maintained plugins make updates easy, reducing the time and effort required to keep your site running smoothly.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the best WordPress plugins to download now!

The Best WordPress Plugins

Our list of the best plugins for WordPress includes essential plugins to speed up your site, recommended plugins for a WordPress blog, must-use plugins for eCommerce, and lots more! Feel free to jump to the section you’re interested in.

The Best WordPress Plugins for Design and Functionality

In this section, we’ll cover a number of the best free WordPress plugins for design and improved functionality. These plugins help you easily add advanced elements to your website to create a better user experience.

1. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin, allowing you to create beautiful galleries without touching a single line of code. The plugin’s user-friendly drag-and-drop builder makes creating a stunning gallery effortless.

By default, Envira Gallery is 100% responsive, mobile-friendly, and optimized for speed and SEO. The plugin’s free version provides everything you need to make a simple gallery with lightbox display in a matter of minutes.

With Envira Gallery, you can create a standalone gallery or embed galleries anywhere on your site including inside a post, on a page, or in a widget area like the sidebar. Just use Envira’s native Gutenberg block or a shortcode to place your gallery.

If you want to unlock additional features and layouts including slideshows, fullscreen, masonry, grid, blogroll, and more, you can upgrade to Envira Gallery Pro.

The premium plugin offers tons of advanced customization, theme selection, addons, and extended support. For example, you can use image tagging to create a filterable gallery for visitors. Check out this live demo of a filterable WordPress picture gallery with Envira.

If you run a media-heavy website, Envira Gallery is a no-brainer. The plugin is perfect for showcasing a portfolio, product photos, travel blog images, and more! Check out more Pro features that make Envira the best gallery plugin for WordPress:

• Add videos to your galleries from YouTube, Vimeo, and more.
• Easily add audio to galleries and slideshows.
• Albums to organize and manage galleries.
• Built-in image compression and deeplinking for SEO.
• Lightroom integration.
• eCommerce integration to sell photos.
• Integration with popular page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder.
• Dynamic galleries to display content from other sources like blog posts, testimonials, Instagram posts, and more.
• Watermarking, image protection, and password-protected galleries.
• Client image proofing.
• Social sharing buttons on images, galleries, and albums.
• And lots more…

Price: Unlock more features with a premium plan starting at $39.50 / year, or download Envira Gallery Lite for free.

Alternatives: Imagely (another excellent gallery plugin for professional photographers that offers print lab fulfillment), Media Library Folders (one of the best media library plugins for WordPress that provides a free and simple file manager).

Get started with Envira Gallery today!

2. SeedProd

Creating a website can be tricky, but with the best WordPress plugin, it becomes a breeze. That’s where SeedProd shines! As the best page builder plugin for WordPress, SeedProd is like having a professional WordPress developer and designer in your back pocket.

Whether you’re a tech whiz or just starting with WordPress, SeedProd is your go-to website builder. The plugin offers an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and over 300 beautiful templates to build pages quickly. Plus, you can even use SeedProd to create completely custom WordPress themes without any code.

You’ll be able to create landing pages, pricing pages, coming soon pages, maintenance mode pages, 404 error pages, and more. The plugin makes it easy to build an entire website from scratch and implement advanced elements like countdown timers, contact forms, buttons, and more with zero technical skills.

SeedProd works with every WordPress theme and also integrates with popular email marketing services, plugins, and CRM software.

Price: SeedProd offers a completely free version. Or, you can unlock more features with paid plans starting at $39.50 / year.

Alternatives: Thrive Architect, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi Builder are also among the best plugins for WordPress page building.

Get started with SeedProd today!

3. Sugar Calendar

Creating and managing a frontend calendar for your WordPress site is easy with Sugar Calendar, the best WordPress calendar plugin. This lightweight yet powerful tool seamlessly integrates into your website, providing a hassle-free experience for both users and administrators.

As the best WordPress events plugin, Sugar Calendar requires only a few configurations to get set up and goes beyond a simple calendar display. It allows you to add essential details such as organizer information, location, start and end times, timezone settings, and more.

All the while, the plugin ensures that your events are presented beautifully. Plus, it offers seamless integration with Stripe and WooCommerce, allowing you to sell event tickets and accept payments directly through your website. You can also sync the plugin with popular calendar apps like Google Calendar, iCal, and others.

From an easy calendar widget to robust event management capabilities, Sugar Calendar delivers a user-friendly experience with features that cater to various needs. We recommend it to anyone seeking to elevate their website’s calendar and events functionality.

Price: Sugar Calendar starts at $49.00 / year and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Booking Calendar (one of the best free WordPress booking plugins), BirchPress (a premium appointment scheduling plugin for WordPress).

Get started with Sugar Calendar today!

4. Soliloquy

When it comes to WordPress sliders, look no further than Soliloquy – a powerful and intelligent plugin that takes the cake as the best WordPress slider plugin available.

Soliloquy empowers you to craft captivating, responsive image and video sliders for your website. With a drag-and-drop builder, setting up visually stunning sliders becomes a breeze, even for beginners.

No need to start from scratch – the plugin offers pre-built templates that kickstart your creativity and integrate with eCommerce to perfectly showcase WooCommerce products.

Soliloquy boasts a feature-rich plugin including fullscreen lightboxes, dynamic sliders, carousel sliders, thumbnail navigation, featured content sliders, and integration with powerful third-party tools. In a nutshell, Soliloquy is a creative powerhouse that simplifies the process of adding a slider to your website.

Price: Starts at $19.50 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Smart Slider 3 is another popular slider plugin.

Get started with Soliloquy today!

5. SearchWP

Want to enhance your WordPress site’s search functionality? Look no further than SearchWP, the best WordPress search plugin available. This advanced plugin elevates the user experience by ensuring visitors can easily locate what they’re looking for on your site.

Unlike the default WordPress search, SearchWP takes a comprehensive approach, indexing everything from post content to custom fields, text files, PDF documents, custom tables, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and even WooCommerce product attributes.

What sets SearchWP apart is its user-friendly customization. You can establish your own relevance scale and fine-tune the algorithm without any coding. This flexibility ensures that your search results align precisely with your site’s unique needs.

Plus, the search metrics feature adds a layer of insight, allowing you to understand what your visitors are searching for, what they find, and what they don’t. This valuable data empowers you to enhance content discoverability and provide a more tailored user experience.

SearchWP seamlessly integrates with major WordPress plugins, including WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Meta Box, Toolset, BigCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, bbPress, and more. Plus, it introduces powerful features like live AJAX search in WordPress.

Price: Starts at $99 / year. SearchWP also offers 2 completely free WordPress plugins that can be used alone or in combination with a paid plan – SearchWP Live Ajax Search adds live search to your site so visitors can see relevant results as they’re typing. SearchWP Modal Search Form adds a modal search form to your website.

Get started with SearchWP today!

6. WPCode

Are you wondering what is the best insert code plugin for WordPress? WPCode (formerly known as Insert Headers and Footers) is the go-to solution for effortlessly managing and inserting code snippets on your WordPress site.

WPCode simplifies the process of adding code to your site, offering a user-friendly experience for beginners and seasoned users alike. You can quickly insert custom PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and text code snippets directly from your WordPress dashboard without editing your theme’s function.php file.

Worried about losing your snippets when changing themes? WPCode ensures your snippets remain intact, working seamlessly across theme transitions.

WPCode also offers a library of 100+ code snippets for easy access to the most common WordPress code snippets, as well as a WordPress code generator, code revisions, conditional logic to specify when code snippets are shown, a private cloud to store and reuse code snippets across multiple websites, and more.

WPCode is a game-changer for business owners. The plugin makes it easy to add, manage, and organize code snippets from one central, beginner-friendly dashboard.

Price: Starts at $49 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Code Snippets (not as feature-rich, but another one of the best free WordPress plugins for adding code), CSS Hero (a premium plugin for customizing your website theme and designing live from the frontend).

Get started with WPCode today!

The Best SEO Plugins and Website Optimization Tools

In this section, we’ll share the best SEO plugins for WordPress as well as the best plugins for optimizing your site in terms of speed, analytics tracking, and more.

7. All in One SEO (AIOSEO)

With over 3 million users, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is a well-trusted name in WordPress SEO (search engine optimization). It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin and offers everything you need to improve your on-page SEO and get your website to rank higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

AIOSEO integrates with the WordPress editor to provide a headline analyzer and real-time TruSEO score of your content along with a checklist of how to improve it. The plugin analyzes your SEO title, meta description, keywords, readability, and lots more.

AIOSEO also lets you generate RSS and XML sitemaps, connect your site with Google Search Console, generate custom schema for FAQs, reviews, food blog recipes, and all other types of schema markup, optimize your posts for social media, and lots more!

AIOSEO is undoubtedly the best free SEO plugin for WordPress. However, the Pro version is worth it if you’re serious about improving your site’s SEO. It offers more powerful features such as a redirection manager, the ability to detect & fix 404 errors, WooCommerce SEO, local SEO, image SEO, smart schema, video and news sitemaps, advanced breadcrumbs, and much more.

AIOSEO Pro even offers a unique internal link assistant that helps you automate the process of internal linking to boost SEO. It’s the only SEO plugin to offer this feature. Overall, we highly recommend AIOSEO as a comprehensive, one-stop shop for all things SEO.

Price: Starts at $49.60 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Yoast SEO (the next best free WordPress SEO plugin), Redirection (a simple plugin for managing 301 redirects), Google XML Sitemaps (a free plugin for creating XML sitemaps).

Get started with AIOSEO today!

8. W3 Total Cache

Speeding up your website is crucial for SEO and an optimal user experience. Luckily, W3 Total Cache emerges as one of the best free WordPress plugins to help with this.

As the best free cache plugin for WordPress, W3 Total Cache employs caching and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to optimize your site’s speed and serve compressed and cached files to visitors. The plugin improves your server’s performance by creating a cache for every part of your WordPress site.

The plugin is designed to compress images and minify HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and feeds to ensure efficient use of resources and a smoother browsing experience.

The result? Reduced load times and a significant improvement in overall site speed. W3 Total Cache is the best plugin to speed up a WordPress site easily and a must-use plugin for all website owners.

Price: Free.

Alternatives: WP Super Cache, Autoptimize, WP Rocket (one of the best WordPress caching plugins available for purchase).

Get started with W3 Total Cache today!

9. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. You can connect your Google Analytics account to your site and set up advanced tracking without editing any code or hiring a developer.

Even for professional marketers, Google Analytics can be time-consuming and tedious to set up manually. Thankfully, that’s not the case with MonsterInsights. In just a few clicks, you can set up analytics and view all of your important reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.

The free version of MonsterInsights still reigns as the best analytics plugin for WordPress, but the Pro version provides access to tons more Google Analytics features and sophisticated tracking. For example, you can set up advanced tracking for form submissions, downloads, eCommerce, social media, ad campaigns, link clicks, traffic sources, and so much more in a matter of minutes.

MonsterInsights handles all the complicated GA4 stuff behind the scenes and gives you the data that matters in easy-to-understand reports. It’s definitely in one of our all-time favorite plugins.

Price: Starts at $99.50 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: ExactMetrics (another one of the best WordPress plugins for analytics that’s very similar to MonsterInsights).

Get started with MonsterInsights today!

10. Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO

Broken Link Checker is one of the best free plugins for WordPress, created by AIOSEO. The plugin lives up to its name and stands out as a user-friendly hero when it comes to website maintenance and SEO.

Broken links negatively affect SEO and can lead to a frustrating user experience, so it’s crucial to fix 404 errors on your site as quickly as possible. But, that can be really time-consuming for content-heavy websites, which is why Broken Link Checker is one of the best WordPress plugins for blogs.

The plugin actively crawls your website for both internal and external broken links. It will show you if each link worked properly (200 status), worked with a redirect (301/302 status), or is broken (404 status). Then, you can simply use the inline URL editing feature to fix links directly from your link monitoring dashboard.

Moreover, Broken Link Checker allows you to choose which content is automatically scanned for 404 errors and prevents search engines from following any broken links until you’re able to fix them. All in all, it’s one of the best WordPress plugins to save time and keep your SEO thriving.

Price: Free for up to 200 internal links. Paid plans start at $4.99 / month.

Get started with Broken Link Checker today!

11. Uncanny Automator

Meet Uncanny Automator, the WordPress automation plugin that turns mundane tasks into automated bliss. This powerful tool simplifies your website management by connecting various processes and plugins seamlessly – no coding required.

Whether you’re looking to streamline routine tasks like form submissions and lead generation, leverage AI power with ChatGPT, or connect two websites for better workflow, like a membership site and an eCommerce store, Uncanny Automator has you covered.

Think of it like Zapier for WordPress. You can choose from over 500 triggers to create “if this, then that” recipes. The plugin connects with tons of popular plugins and even business apps like Slack and Google Sheets to make your website run smarter.

In essence, Uncanny Automator is a user-friendly solution for making your WordPress plugins and business tools communicate efficiently. Plus, the plugin offers a powerful free version with dozens of actions and triggers for automating tasks.

Price: Starts at $149 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Thrive Automator (one of the best WordPress plugins for automation that’s 100% free).

Get started with Uncanny Automator today!

12. Smush

Smush is a simple and straightforward tool that serves as the best image optimization plugin for WordPress. Images add visual appeal, but they often slow down loading times. That’s where Smush steps in to help.

The plugin automatically resizes, compresses, optimizes, and lazy loads images that you upload to your website without sacrificing quality. You can specify individual photos to optimize or perform a bulk compression of all the images in your WordPress media library.

In a nutshell, Smush ensures that your pictures don’t hurt your website speed or search ranking. If you’re looking for the best WordPress speed plugin for an image-heavy site, we highly recommend this free plugin.

Price: Free.

Alternatives: Optimole, Imagify (a free plugin by WP Rocket), WP-Optimize (provides image compression, caching, and full site cleanup). Envira Gallery also offers built-in image compression to improve site speed.

Get started with Smush today!

The Best WordPress Plugins for Marketing, Engagement, and Social Media

In this section, we’ll share the best plugins for WordPress when it comes to improving your marketing and audience engagement. We’ll share our top plugins for contact forms, newsletters, social media, testimonials, and more to help you grow your online business.

13. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a powerful tool for conversion rate optimization and the best WordPress popup plugin. It allows you to create beautiful on-site campaigns to capture email addresses, reduce cart abandonment, and turn visitors into customers.

The plugin offers an extensive collection of high-converting templates that can be used to design popups, slide-ins, announcement bars, gamified spin wheels, opt-in forms, fullscreen welcome mats and more. Plus, with OptinMonster’s advanced display targeting features, you can customize your campaigns to suit individual users, ensuring that the right message is displayed at the right time.

Whether you’re a blogger looking to grow your email list with the best newsletter plugin for WordPress or a small business owner who wants to generate more revenue and reduce abandonment, OptinMonster is an excellent solution. It’s easy to use, extremely powerful, fully customizable, and integrates with a wide range of plugins and email marketing services.

Despite not offering a free version, OptinMonster is the most popular CRO (conversion rate optimization) software available and has over 1 million users. You can also see numerous case studies as proof of its value.

Price: Starts at $9 / month and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Alternatives: Thrive Leads (another one of the best popup plugins for WordPress lead generation), Thrive Ultimatum (countdown timers and scarcity campaigns to leverage FOMO).

Get started with OptinMonster today!

14. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress forms plugin. It allows you to easily create contact forms, surveys, polls, online order forms, booking forms, email subscription forms, and any other type of form for your website without any coding knowledge. The plugin’s drag-and-drop interface allows users to add fields to their forms and preview them in real time.

The plugin supports customization of form styles, such as field labels, borders, error messages, and buttons. It also includes an extensive library of pre-built templates, including payment forms that integrate with Stripe to facilitate online transactions.

As the best contact form plugin for WordPress, WPForms includes spam protection, even in the free version. And unlike most form builders, the free version also includes payment forms, form entry backups, templates, and tags to organize and manage forms.

WPForms really is the best free form plugin for WordPress. That said, when users need more advanced features, they can upgrade to WPForms Pro, which unlocks tons of other standout features like entry management, conversational forms, conditional logic, marketing integrations, and much more.

Overall, WPForms is a versatile and user-friendly plugin for WordPress and a must-have for every website. In fact, we use WPForms Pro for every form on our website!

Price: Starts at $49.50 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Formidable Forms (another excellent forms plugin), UserFeedback (the best WordPress survey plugin for creating a popup widget to collect feedback), Thrive Quiz Builder (the best quiz plugin for WordPress).

Get started with WPForms today!

15. PushEngage

Looking for the best push notifications plugin for WordPress? PushEngage is an exceptional SaaS tool for websites that can help you increase sales and boost engagement by sending notifications to visitors, even when they’re not on your site.

You can personalize the instant notifications that are sent to users and easily design your popup box to allow visitors to opt in or out of receiving notifications. The plugin offers plenty of advanced functionality such as drip campaigns to send a series of notifications, analytics to monitor push campaign performance, cart abandonment auto triggers, and display rules to personalize notifications.

PushEngage is easy to set up and provides a great way to keep your audience involved and up-to-date. For example, you can alert users of a price drop to increase conversions or notify them about your new blog post to drive engagement.

Price: Starts at $9 / month, or you can download the free version.

Get started with PushEngage today!

16. Smash Balloon

If you want to display social media feeds on your site, Smash Balloon is the tool for you. It allows you to display Instagram, Facebook, Twitter (X), TikTok, YouTube, and Reviews feeds in a customizable, responsive format that looks great on any device.

Smash Balloon is considered the best social media plugin for WordPress. However, it’s actually a bundle of plugins, each for a different social feed:

• Instagram Feed: Automatically add your Instagram posts to WordPress in a fully customizable feed layout.
• Facebook Feed: Easily display updates, videos, photos, events, comments, reactions, and other Facebook content on your website.
• Twitter Feed: Seamlessly integrate Twitter (X) content into your website in a variety of different ways.
• YouTube Feed: Automatically show YouTube videos and live streams from your channel in a custom feed.
• TikTok Feed: Display completely customizable TikTok feeds on your website to keep your website fresh and boost your following.
• Reviews Feed: Automatically display your best reviews from platforms like Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and more to build social proof.
• Social Wall: Combine your social media feeds from different channels into one social wall with this aggregate plugin.

The plugins can be used individually, or you can combine various feeds into a cohesive layout with the Social Wall plugin.

These highly-rated plugins simplify the process of showcasing social media content on your site by automatically pulling newly posted content and updating your feed.

Smash Balloon uses your WordPress theme’s fonts and styles to ensure feeds look great right out of the box while still providing plenty of customization. Plus, every feed is optimized to be SEO-friendly and lightning-fast.

Price: The All-Access Bundle is $299 / year and includes all of the plugins, unlimited websites, and priority support. Plans for individual plugins start at $49 / year. There are also free versions available: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), YouTube, and Reviews.

Alternatives: You can use Envira Gallery to dynamically create photo galleries based on your Instagram photos.

Get started with Smash Balloon today!

17. WP Mail SMTP

If you’re running a WordPress site, you know how important it is to have reliable email delivery. WP Mail SMTP is a plugin that allows you to send emails from your WordPress site using a secure SMTP service.

It’s easy to use, offers a handy setup wizard, and helps reconfigure the wp_mail() PHP function to use SMTP – a much more reliable method of email delivery compared to PHP.

This ensures that any WordPress emails you send out from your site are delivered to the recipient’s inbox as they should be, making it one of the best free newsletter plugins for WordPress.

WP Mail SMTP provides integration with all the popular SMTP mail providers like SendLayer, Postmark, Gmail, etc. It also offers premium features like white-glove setup, multiple mailers, smart email routing, open/click tracking, and advanced integrations like Amazon SES.

Price: Starts at $49.00 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Easy WP SMTP (a freemium plugin by SendLayer).

Get started with WP Mail SMTP today!

18. RafflePress

If you’re a blogger or website owner looking to increase your online presence and build a bigger following on social media, you should check out RafflePress. This plugin helps you run giveaways and contests on your site to attract new visitors, generate leads, and boost engagement.

The RafflePress interface is simple and intuitive. You can create a giveaway or contest in minutes using a library of viral giveaway templates. Then, easily customize the design to match your brand’s style using the drag-and-drop builder.

The plugin offers a variety of ways for people to participate in your giveaway, even in the free version. For example, you can ask them to visit your Instagram page or follow you on Twitter (X).

The Pro version of RafflePress provides tons of additional entry options like following you on TikTok, watching a YouTube video, subscribing to your newsletter, and lots more. It also unlocks more features such as giveaway time controls, multiple prize options, and integration with email marketing providers like MailChimp and Drip.

Price: Starts at $39.50 / year, or you can download the free version.

Get started with RafflePress today!

19. Ultimate Social Media Icons

Do you want an easy way to add social buttons to your site? Ultimate Social Media Icons is the best WordPress social sharing plugin for the job. It’s lightweight, fast, customizable, and versatile.

You can choose which social platforms to include, how your buttons look, and where they’re displayed. Customize what action happens when a user clicks a social button and build social proof by showcasing your share counts.

There are many paid solutions for adding social media buttons, but Ultimate Social Media Icons is free tool that beats them all in terms of simplicity and performance.

Price: Free.

Alternatives: Shared Counts, Better Click to Tweet, Monarch by Elegant Themes (included with Divi). You can also use Envira Gallery to add social sharing buttons to your WordPress images.

Get started with Ultimate Social Media Icons today!

20. TrustPulse

Social proof is a powerful tool for building trust with your visitors and boosting conversions. That’s why we love TrustPulse, the best social proof plugin for WordPress.

The plugin tracks purchases, downloads, or registrations on your website and shows popups about other users’ recent activity, such as a sale or signup, in real-time. This helps you leverage social proof to increase your website’s conversion rate.

TrustPulse comes with a visual builder that lets you customize the notifications to match your branding and offers multiple campaign types.

With TrustPulse, you can create a sense of urgency using FOMO (fear of missing out), which can persuade your visitors to take action. It’s definitely one of the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce and online sales.

Price: Starts at $5 / month, or you can download the free version.

Get started with TrustPulse today!

The Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce and Monetization

Whether you run an online store, generate revenue through affiliate marketing, or want to set up a subscription-based site, we’ll help you out by sharing the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce and monetizing your website.

21. Woo

With over 5 million websites using it, Woo (previously known as WooCommerce) is regarded as the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress, and rightly so. It’s a powerful tool that lets you turn your WordPress site into an online store.

One of the best things about Woo is that you can get started for free, display products, and create a fully functional eCommerce store without writing a single line of code.

You can choose from various payment gateways to make it easy for your customers to pay for their purchases, set shipping options, and customize your store’s appearance. Plus, there are tons of free extensions and WooCommerce plugins that you can use to extend its functionality.

However, if you want to take your store to the next level, you can opt for the paid extensions that offer advanced features like gift cards, coupons, and per-product shipping rates.

Pro Tip: Online sellers can benefit from using both Woo and Envira Gallery to advertise products with image galleries or sell digital photos.

With Woo, you get the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress and everything you need to create and manage your online store. It’s an excellent choice for small businesses and entrepreneurs looking to get started with eCommerce.

Price: The base plugin is free, and you can purchase premium Woo extensions.

Alternatives: Easy Digital Downloads is an excellent alternative for selling digital products, which we’ll review next.

Get started with Woo today!

22. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin for selling digital products online, such as ebooks, PDFs, courses, music, software, and more. You can even use it to create a digital marketplace.

The primary focus of the plugin is to facilitate the sale of digital products with utmost efficiency. It’s easy to use, customizable, and integrates with a range of third-party services.

You can install the free WordPress plugin, add your products, set prices, and start selling downloadable content in no time. Easy Digital Downloads is compatible with multiple payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more – providing an easy checkout process for customers.

The free plugin also includes features like a shopping cart, file protection, discount codes, customer management, detailed reporting, and more.

You can increase Easy Digital Downloads’ functionality with a paid plan and extensions. Get features like recurring subscription payments, multi-vendor marketplace support, reviews, advanced integrations, and much more.

Easy Digital Downloads is an easy-to-use plugin for coaches, content creators, developers, and anyone wanting to sell downloadable WordPress content.

Price: Starts at $99.50 / year, or you can download the base plugin completely free.

Alternatives: MemberPress is an excellent alternative for subscription-based sites, which we’ll review next.

Get started with Easy Digital Downloads today!

23. MemberPress

If you’re looking to create a top-notch membership site on WordPress, MemberPress is the perfect way to get started. As the best WordPress membership plugin, MemberPress makes it possible to offer premium content, courses, and other resources exclusively to your members.

The plugin simplifies the process of building online courses and communities, and it allows you to restrict content access based on users’ subscription plans.

You can choose from various payment solutions such as Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net to accept payments from your members. Plus, the plugin integrates with email marketing platforms, affiliate software, and more to take your site to the next level.

Another of MemberPress’s standout features is its courses addon, which allows you to turn your website into an impressive learning management system (LMS).

With powerful features like drip content, course management, quizzes, paid forums, certifications, group memberships, automation, and more, MemberPress is the best plugin for membership on WordPress. In fact, it helps creators generate over $1 billion dollars in revenue each year.

Price: Starts at $179.50 / year and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Alternatives: MemberMouse. Thrive Apprentice and LearnDash are also among the best WordPress LMS plugins for creating and selling online courses.

Get started with MemberPress Today!

24. AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is the best WordPress affiliate plugin that enables you to create a fully functional affiliate program for your website. With its user-friendly interface and advanced tracking capabilities, you can easily manage and reward your affiliates for driving sales or signups.

The plugin comes with a range of features, including an affiliate dashboard, affiliate approval, integrated payouts, and a powerful admin panel for real-time reporting.

AffiliateWP helps you expand your reach and increase sales while maintaining control over your brand with your own banners and links. The plugin seamlessly integrates with popular eCommerce plugins like MemberPress and WooCommerce, making it the best option for quickly creating a full-fledged WordPress referral program.

If you’re looking for a reliable and customizable WordPress affiliate plugin, AffiliateWP is the way to go.

Price: Starts at $149.60 / year and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Alternatives: EasyAffiliate isn’t as feature-rich, but it’s a less-expensive option that still provides excellent value and easy setup.

Get started with AffiliateWP today!

25. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is another one of the best plugins for WordPress affiliate marketing. This must-use plugin lets you create custom links that match your domain name, making your affiliate links shorter, more trustworthy, and easier to track.

With Pretty Links, you can monitor each hit on a URL you create and get a full report on where the hit came from, the browser, the operating system, and the host. This helps you analyze the performance of your affiliate links and make informed decisions to optimize your referral sales.

Additionally, the Pro version can automatically link keywords with affiliate links on your blog posts, saving you time and effort. Overall, Pretty Links is a convenient and efficient way to manage and track your affiliate links and boost your marketing efforts.

Price: Starts at $99.60 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: ThirstyAffiliates is an excellent alternative with Amazon integration and other advanced features. TastyLinks is an affiliate links plugin by WPTasty, which offers tools for food bloggers.

Get started with Pretty Links today!

26. WP Simple Pay

As the name suggests, WP Simple Pay is a straightforward plugin that allows you to accept payments on your site using Stripe, one of the most popular payment gateways.

Suppose you want to accept one-time or recurring payments without setting up a shopping cart, like for donations or local business services. In that case, WP Simple Pay is one of the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress.

Using WP Simple Pay to add a payment button to your site that redirects users to an off-site Stripe checkout page to complete their payment is 100% free. As your business grows, you can upgrade to a paid plan to get no transaction fees, onsite payments, a drag-and-drop payment form builder, and more.

Price: Starts at $49.50 / year for no transaction fees and more features, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: If you regularly accept donation payments, check out WP Charitable (the best WordPress plugin for donations) or Give WP (another popular plugin for nonprofits).

Get started with WP Simple Pay today!

The Best Plugins for WordPress Security

As a business owner, you know how important security is. Keeping your WordPress website safeguarded against spam or cyber-attacks and your content safe is crucial. Next, we’ll dive into the best WordPress security plugins and backup tools.

27. Duplicator

Migrating a WordPress website from one location to another can be quite a hassle, especially if you lack technical expertise. Luckily, Duplicator, the best WordPress migration plugin, offers a straightforward solution to copy, move, or clone your site easily.

This free plugin allows you to duplicate a live or staged site for use elsewhere. It offers one-click setup for streamlined site development.

Aside from migration, Duplicator further solidifies itself as the best backup and restore plugin for WordPress by providing a secure backup solution with encryption, automatic backup schedules, multisite support, and cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). It ensures that your data remains safe and secure at all times.

Overall, Duplicator is perfect for anyone looking to migrate their website or create a secure WordPress backup. It’s our top pick for the best free backup plugin for WordPress.

Price: Starts at $49.50 / year, or you can download the free version.

Alternatives: Solid Backups (a premium-only plugin formerly known as BackupBuddy), UpdraftPlus, Jetpack’s VaultPress.

Get started with Duplicator today!

28. Sucuri

In today’s digital world, website security should be a top priority for all online businesses. Sucuri is the best security plugin for WordPress that provides a comprehensive solution.

It provides a firewall and other reliable security and quick recovery features to protect against brute force hacks, DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, blacklist warnings, spam comment attacks, and pretty much any other security threat.

The plugin provides continuous monitoring of your website to prevent future security issues. As a bonus, Sucuri also automatically adds a CDN layer, which speeds up your website significantly.

Sucuri is an industry leader when it comes to website security. Its robust features make it a top-notch choice for protection and one of the overall best WordPress plugins on the market.

Price: Free. You can purchase a paid plan for advanced monitoring, malware cleanup, and more starting at $199.99 / year.

Alternatives: Wordfence (another popular WordPress plugin for security), Cloudflare (one of the only truly comparable alternatives, but it can get expensive with the addons).

Get started with Sucuri today!

29. Akismet Anti-Spam

Akismet Anti-Spam is a powerful tool that comes pre-installed on WordPress as a default plugin for new installations. However, you’ll still need to activate it to get the benefits.

It’s a simple security plugin that provides maximum protection against spam. Once installed and activated, Akismet scans all comments and contact form submissions and flags suspicious submissions. The plugin has a review section that allows you to monitor which comments are marked as spam and which are cleared, ensuring that your site remains spam-free.

Akismet is the best free WordPress security plugin for spam and an essential tool for any website owner. We highly recommend that all new WordPress users activate it immediately. You’ll need an API key, but you can see this tutorial for help.

Price: Free for personal sites and typically already installed by default. Commercial plans start at $9.95 / month, billed annually.

Alternatives: We don’t recommend getting rid of Akismet, but Antispam Bee is one of the best comment plugins for WordPress that’s free and works well alongside Akismet.

Get started with Akismet Anti-Spam today!

30. Login Lockdown

When it comes to securing your WordPress site, Login Lockdown is a must-have plugin. It protects your website from brute-force attacks by limiting the number of login attempts from a particular IP address.

The plugin is easy to use, and you can customize the lockout settings according to your preferences. The plugin records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt, and it automatically disables a user for a specific time duration after they’ve made incorrect login attempts a certain number of times.

Login Lockdown is one of the best WordPress plugins for keeping your site secure and preventing unauthorized access.

Price: Free.

Alternatives: Limit Login Attempts Reloaded.

Get started with Login Lockdown today!

31. Really Simple SSL

Really Simple SSL is a plugin that helps you switch your site to HTTPS, encrypting the data transmitted between your site and visitors’ browsers.

Even with many free SSL certificates available, moving your entire site to HTTPS can be difficult for beginners. However, it’s important to do, especially since you don’t want visitors to see a “Not Secure” Google warning on your website.

Really Simple SSL is a free plugin for WordPress that lives up to its name. It’s a lightweight plugin that takes care of migrating your site to HTTPS. The plugin’s automatic redirection feature means that all your old URLs will be updated to reflect your newly secured site in just 1 click.

Price: Free.

Alternatives: WP Encryption.

Get started with Really Simple SSL today!

The Best WordPress Plugins for Customer Support

Providing excellent customer service is key to retaining customers and growing your business. WordPress plugins are one of the best ways to enhance your customer support. In this next section, we’ll explore some of the top WordPress plugins for customer support that can help you manage customer queries, streamline your support process, and improve your overall customer experience.

32. Live Chat

If you want to provide real-time support to your website visitors, Live Chat is the best chat plugin for WordPress. With easy integration into your WordPress site, you can quickly set up a chat widget to offer instant customer support.

The chat feedback feature lets you gather valuable insights into user experience and improve your service. Plus, with marketing automation integration, you can streamline your conversational marketing efforts and maximize your outreach.

Live Chat is a reliable and powerful tool for building relationships with your audience and boosting customer satisfaction.

Price: Free. Paid plans start at $20 / month, billed annually.

Alternatives: Hubspot also offers live chat, which we’ll review next.

Get started with Live Chat today!

33. Hubspot

If you’re looking for a comprehensive customer relationships manager (CRM) and marketing automation platform, Hubspot is an excellent choice.

Hubspot’s free WordPress plugin gives you access to a range of features that can help you improve your site’s customer service, marketing, and sales, all from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

You can use Hubspot for forms, popups, automated emails, and more. Plus, Hubspot lets you engage with visitors more conversationally by adding live chat and chatbots to your site.

The best part is that all your interactions with visitors are automatically saved to the Hubspot CRM, and detailed engagement analytics give you insight into how your visitors interact with your content.

The plugin also integrates with other popular WordPress plugins like WPForms and OptinMonster, making it easy to tie everything together. Hubspot is a feature-rich marketing platform, one of the best WordPress chat plugins, and a robust CRM system all wrapped in one.

Price: Free for up to 5 users. Paid tiers start at $18 / month.

Alternatives: Brevo (formerly SendinBlue) is another popular service that lets you connect live chat, CRM, and email in one platform.

Get started with Hubspot today!

34. Heroic KB

Heroic KB from HeroThemes is the end of endless searching and the best WordPress knowledge base plugin. It allows you to create a comprehensive and searchable knowledge base on your website, helping you to provide visitors with information and answers to common questions.

You can create a beautifully designed, customizable knowledge base with Heroic KB in just a few minutes. The article analytics feature also lets you gain valuable insights into how your visitors search your knowledge base. You can learn what content is missing and discover when questions remain unanswered.

One of the most impressive features of Heroic KB is its instant search functionality, which helps visitors find the information they need quickly and easily. This feature is handy for those who don’t know exactly what they’re looking for.

Heroic KB also includes a Help Assistant feature that reduces the number of incoming customer support requests by providing a fast and convenient way for visitors to interact with your knowledge base anywhere on your site.

As a bonus, every Heroic KB purchase includes the Heroic FAQs plugin, a complete Frequently Asked Questions management plugin for WordPress, and access to the premium KnowAll WordPress theme.

Price: Starts at $149.50 / year. You can also bundle your purchase with Heroic Inbox, a popular WordPress HelpDesk plugin.

Get started with Heroic KB today!

35. WP Call Button

WP Call Button is a fantastic, free WordPress plugin that adds a click-to-call button to your WordPress site in seconds. This feature is an excellent way to provide support to visitors, answer their questions, and establish a rapport with customers.

The best part about the plugin is that you don’t need any coding skills or third-party assistance to create call buttons on your website. WP Call Button is 100% mobile-friendly, so you don’t have to worry about responsiveness on different devices.

Additionally, WP Call Button is SEO optimized, so your website remains lightweight, loads quickly, and ranks well on search engines. By adding a click-to-call button to your WordPress site, you can increase your chances of converting leads into customers and ensure your business is easily reachable.

So, go ahead and give WP Call Button a try, improve your website’s functionality, and connect with your audience more effectively.

Price: Free.

Get started with WP Call Button today!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Now that you’ve learned about the best WordPress plugins, let’s answer some common questions about plugins that often get asked by our readers.

How Many Plugins Can WordPress Handle?

The number of plugins that WordPress can handle varies depending on your web hosting and the quality of plugins. It’s pretty common for business websites to have 20-30 installed plugins. In fact, many sites have 50+ installed plugins and still load extremely fast while others may load very slow with only 5 plugins. That’s because high-quality, well-coded, and regularly updated plugins, are much less likely to cause issues.

“Plugin bloat” is a buzzy topic with developers, but it doesn’t paint the whole picture. WordPress can handle 50 lightweight, optimized plugins a lot better than 1 outdated, poorly coded plugin. So, just ensure your plugins are high-quality and use as many as you need to effectively run your business.

Can You Get WordPress Plugins for Free?

Yes, you can get many WordPress plugins for free. Some are 100% free, but often times developers provide a free (Lite) version of their plugin along with premium versions you can upgrade to. You can easily download free plugins from the official WordPress.org directory. For many websites, a plugin’s free version will provide all the needed features.

However, you should never install a nulled plugin on your site. These are pirated copies of premium WordPress products that are distributed unethically. They’re extremely dangerous as they’re known to carry malware, can make you vulnerable to data theft, and are notorious for wreaking havoc on SEO.

How Do I Select a Plugin for My WordPress Site?

The best way to find out if a plugin is right for you is to clearly understand what you need it to do. Free versions are a great way to try out a tool before committing to a premium plugin. The plugins we talked about represent widely-used and well-maintained plugins that stand out in the market for what they provide, and many of them boast millions of users.

However, these plugins only scratch the surface of the WordPress plugin ecosystem. What you consider “the best WordPress plugin” may vary depending on your website’s needs. So, have fun exploring and drop us a comment if you try a plugin on our list or want to share a WordPress tool you love.

What Are the Top 10 WordPress Plugins?

These are the top 10 WordPress plugins that we couldn’t live without. They’re high-value plugins that provide essential features for pretty much any website on WordPress.

1. Envira Gallery – Every website has (or should have) images, and this is the best tool to ensure they’re optimized, mobile-friendly, and displayed beautifully.
2. AIOSEO – This all-in-one tool for SEO will help any website rank higher in search engines.
3. WPForms – Every website needs a contact form (probably other form types as well), and this is the best WordPress form builder plugin.
4. MonsterInsights – You can’t improve what you don’t know, and this plugin makes analytics tracking easy.
5. WPCode – A time-saving, beginner-friendly solution for adding code snippets to WordPress.
6. Duplicator – The best backup and migration plugin, which ensures your website content is always safely stored.
7. SeedProd – Makes building custom website designs and landing pages quick and efficient, even for beginners.
8. W3 Total Cache – A crucial tool for speeding up your website.
9. Broken Link Checker – All websites use links, and this tool makes preventing 404 errors fast and easy.
10. Akismet Anti-Spam – Protects your site against spam and keeps your content clear of unwanted comments.

Well, there you have it. That’s our ultimate guide to the best plugins for WordPress.

We hope this article helped you uncover some of the best free and premium WordPress plugins available. If you’re new to WordPress, be sure to check out Squarespace vs. WordPress for Photographers.

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