When you need to add new functionality to your site, using the best WordPress plugins makes sense. This is because you get the best feature sets, support, and development quality available. However, there are over 60,000 options within the WordPress Plugin Directory, and not all can be number one.
👉 For this post, we’ll look at some of the best WordPress plugins you can find. We’ll showcase free, freemium, and premium plugins here, in no particular order!
First on our list is an ‘S-tier’ plugin. It could be the one of the best WordPress plugins of all time. Installing Yoast SEO is almost a knee-jerk reaction for millions of WordPress site owners. In fact, it stands among the elite for active installations: five million plus at current writing.
It’s a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugin that provides content analysis in two different areas using a ‘traffic light’ system:
The Readability Analysis is worth an installation alone, as it can make your writing better. Other SEO plugins don’t offer quite the same experience as Yoast SEO.
The free version of Yoast SEO is more than enough for the vast majority of users. However, the premium edition is $99 per year, and includes social media SEO integration, the ability to export focus keywords, suggestions for internal links, and much more.
Image optimization is often an afterthought, but it can do wonders for your site’s loading speed and performance. Optimole rolls image storage, compression, and delivery into one.
This plugin is unique, in that it can serve as an all-in-one solution for your images. Here’s why:
We think you can achieve a lot with the free version of Optimole, but the premium version also lets you serve images from a CDN with greater power. What’s more, you can serve those images to at least 25,000 users per month. Plans begin from $19.08 per month based on annual billing.
Next is Gravity Forms. It often features on plugin roundups because it’s not only one of the best WordPress plugins available, but arguably the best form builder altogether.
The plugin uses a drag-and-drop builder within WordPress to help you build forms using a number of elements. However, it has two standout features we like for managing social media:
Gravity Forms offers three premium tiers: Basic ($59 per year), Pro ($159 per year), and Elite ($259 per year). Each tier scales the number of licenses you receive along with the functionality you get.
Here’s another S-tier plugin. Wordfence has installs on over four million WordPress websites, and it’s often a non-negotiable for many site owners. As far as security goes, Wordfence is definitely one of the best WordPress plugins around.
The plugin combines a number of crucial security tools into one package:
As with Yoast SEO, the free version of Wordfence is likely all that most users will need. However, the premium version is $119 per year, and comes with real-time threat intelligence, a real-time IP blocklist, and much more.
Backups can be like insurance, in that you don’t need it until you do. As such, a backup plugin that won’t let you down is a necessity. UpdraftPlus represents the pinnacle of backup plugins and has done so for sometime.
There’s a trend among many of the best WordPress plugins on this list in that the free version offers a lot. It’s the same with UpdraftPlus:
However, starting from $70 per year, the premium version includes valuable functionality, such as pre-update automatic backups, the ability to run backups at specific times, and saving backups to multiple locations.
What would a list of best WordPress plugins be without the number one e-commerce plugin for the platform? WooCommerce is practically the only option you’ll want to consider setting up a store on your WordPress website.
Here’s why many love WooCommerce:
Best of all, the core WooCommerce plugin is completely free. To bolster its functionality, you can purchase one of hundreds of extensions. The WooCommerce Marketplace is to the e-commerce platform as the WordPress Plugin Directory is to the Content Management System (CMS). As such, you can tailor your store to your own unique needs.
Depending on how you install WordPress, you might see a pre-install of the Akismet anti-spam plugin. This is a fine ‘hands-off’ way to halt comment spam on your site, but there’s a much better plugin available. Antispam Bee gives you progressive comment spam tools, right from the WordPress dashboard.
From our research, Antispam Bee has the most active installs of any spam plugin for WordPress apart from Akismet. There are a few reasons for this:
For all of this, you’d expect to pay a pretty penny. However, Antispam Bee has no cost and no premium upgrade path. The full functionality is available without restriction.
The WordPress Block Editor is now an excellent way to create post and page content for your site. However, the default collection of Blocks has scope for greater functionality.
Enter Otter Blocks. This builds onto the default Block Editor with further ways to design your pages:
We have a full review of Otter Blocks on CodeinWP. It’s essential reading if you want to enhance what the Block Editor can do.
The free version of Otter Blocks provides a lot of functionality, but a premium plan can give you more. From $49 per year, you can access a WooCommerce Product Builder, an Enhanced Popup Builder, and much more.
We have bias, but Revive Old Posts is definitely one of the best WordPress plugins for social media use. It gives your marketing a double attack: new promotion for your on-site blog and content for your social media channels.
Any plugin that can help automate cross-promotion has value, and Revive Old Posts is arguably the best for it. It offers a few different ways to bolster your blog:
In fact, there’s plenty more you can achieve with Revive Old Posts. Our review gives you some insight into what it does.
As for price, we have a free version, but the premium version is where the value really lies. Plans start from $75 per year for a single-site license.
Capturing what your visitors do on-site is vital for optimization. However, this can often come with some privacy concerns. Burst Statistics is one of the best WordPress plugins you can find, as it focuses on user privacy first and foremost.
Here’s what the plugin gives you:
Burst Statistics is one plugin that you don’t realize can be so important to your site. Even better, it’s completely free to use and offers no premium version.
Most WordPress sites that take on users will need a plugin like this next one. WP User Manager gives you that degree of functionality and much more besides.
The plugin offers a lot of flexibility, and it can adapt to a multitude of situations:
When it comes to price, there are four tiers to choose from. Pricing starts at $149 per year and gives you a single-site license.
A Learning Management System (LMS) isn’t for every type of site, but if you want to sell courses, it’s essential. LearnDash is the best in our opinion because it comes with such a wealth of functionality.
The plugin is a boon for both teachers and learners:
A single-site license for the LearnDash WordPress plugin is $199 per year. However, there are other tiers available that offer LearnDash as part of the cloud, and add-ons for the core platform.
You may think tables are old and not relevant, but they still have vital applications for modern websites. Visualizer lets you create both tables and charts in one plugin.
The development team have packed in lots of functionality:
For $99 per year, you can have a single-site Visualizer license. However, higher tiers give you a greater number of licenses and slightly more functionality.
Our penultimate entry on this list of best WordPress plugins is the cookie and privacy solution by iubenda. When it comes to rock-solid cookie and privacy policies, it’s par excellence.
This all-in-one compliance solution gives you so much, we can’t cover it all here. However, here’s what it does best:
When it comes to pricing, you can get on board for just $5.99 per month, per site on the Essentials plan.
The last on our list of best WordPress plugins is WP Rocket. It’s a premium only caching plugin that routinely beats out the entire field.
Here’s why thousands of users consider WP Rocket as their go-to for site caching:
Regardless of the tier you choose, you get the full functionality of WP Rocket. A single-site license starts from $59 per year.
The best WordPress plugins all have one thing in common: they make the process of running a WordPress website smoother. For instance, Wordfence, Antispam Bee, and UpdraftPlus are a triple whammy for your site’s security, and you can use iubenda to protect your visitors’ information.
When it comes to speed and performance, Optimole and WP Rocket are your go-to plugins. In fact, for every niche, there’s always a gold-standard plugin to choose from.
Want to improve your marketing? Use Yoast SEO and Revive Old Posts, plus Burst Statistics for high-quality analytics.
And, if you want to expand the functionality of your site, you have a few great options: Visualizer and Otter Blocks to add new content types to your posts and pages, WooCommerce for creating an online store, Gravity Forms for allowing users to contact you, WP User Manager for handling large numbers of users, and LearnDash for adding courses to your site.
Which entry on our list of best WordPress plugins floats your boat? Let us know in the comments section below, along with why you love it!
Despite its advancing age, Facebook is still a giant in the social media world. For online marketers, it’s particularly notable thanks to its robust advertising system. However, Facebook now offers so many options through the Facebook Ads Manager ...
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have become ubiquitous in western culture, but there are always new platforms trying to rise to the surface. In this article, we’re going to examine some of the social media platforms that hope to ...
A "regram" is seen on a daily basis for many Instagram users - and many companies, or influencers, use regramming for high-quality, user-generated content. What's regramming? It's the act of using someone else's Instagram photo and resharing it on ...
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn’t just important on websites. It’s also crucial when it comes to your social media content. Social media profiles often rank above actual websites on search engines, so you want to make sure your profiles are ...
Here at Revive.Social, we believe in the power of data. We know automation works, and we know our Revive Old Post plugin is an effective way to automate your social media presence and boost high-quality content on your WordPress site. However, ...