[New] Introducing Duplicator’s Sleek Redesign: New Look, Same Great Features
We simplified backups and migrations with Duplicator's fresh new look. Dive into our redesigned interface, backup presets, helpful tooltips, and…
[New] Introducing Duplicator’s Sleek Redesign: New Look, Same Great Features
Joella Dunn
Joella Dunn
John Turner
John Turner
Are you looking for the best WordPress plugins to make website management easier?
By installing a WordPress plugin, you’ll add a new feature or functionality to your website. This can be a beginner-friendly alternative to manually editing your site files.
In this post, we’ll give you a list of the best WordPress plugins and how they’ll help you take your website to the next level!
Later on, I’ll recommend many plugins that are useful for WordPress. But, here are some great tools to get you started.
| Plugin | Pricing | Free Version? | Best For |
| Duplicator | $49.50/yr | ✅ | Creating automatic backups or migrating to a new host |
| MonsterInsights | $99.60/yr | ✅ | Tracking website analytics |
| WooCommerce | Free | ✅ | Starting an online store |
| WPForms | $49.50/yr | ✅ | Creating forms for user feedback |
| AIOSEO | $49.60/yr | ✅ | Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) |
| OptinMonster | $9/mo | ❌ | Collecting leads and increasing sales |
| SeedProd | $39.50/yr | ✅ | Building a custom website or landing page |
After you create a WordPress website, you can install plugins to add new features and functionality. Just like downloading apps onto a smartphone, plugins are a great way to extend the core WordPress software.
WordPress is open source, which means that any developer can create a plugin and add it to the Plugin Directory.
Currently, there are over 60,000 plugins available for you to use. These can do everything under the sun, including creating contact forms, landing pages, firewalls, and much more.
To make sure you’re making your website as efficient as possible, it’s important to only install the best WordPress plugins. If you install too many plugins (or the wrong ones), this could slow down your website and cause security vulnerabilities.
Ultimately, plugins can make it much easier to own and manage a website. However, you’ll need to know how to narrow down your options. This will ensure your website has the tools it needs to succeed.
The WordPress Plugin Directory can often be overwhelming when you’re trying to find new plugins. To help you out, let’s round up the best plugins!
We’ll only include top-quality software that is feature-packed, beginner-friendly, and highly recommended by WordPress users like you.
As a website owner, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of maintenance tasks like backups and even large-scale migrations. Although it’s possible to perform these manually, it’s much easier to install a plugin like Duplicator.
Duplicator is the best WordPress backup and migration plugin. To secure your website from data loss or cyber attacks, you can use Duplicator to create full backups of your files and database. Plus, it has customization options so you always save the right data.
You can send your backups to 14 different storage locations. You’ll be able to protect backups from server errors and hacks by storing them off-site.
It even supports automatic backup schedules so you can simply set and forget about your backups.
Once you create a complete backup, you can move this copy of your website anywhere you want. Instead of manually uploading these files to cPanel or an FTP client, simply drop the archive into a new WordPress installation. This makes it incredibly easy to migrate your website.
Unlike other WordPress migration plugins, Duplicator can easily handle large sites and Multisite networks. Its backup engine is so fast that it can migrate sites as big as 400GB without timing out!
But that’s not all. Here are some more features included with Duplicator Pro:
Pricing: Duplicator is available as a free WordPress plugin. If you want extra features like drag-and-drop installs, cloud storage integrations, or backup recovery options, Duplicator Pro starts at $49.50 per year.
Alternatives: Jetpack, UpdraftPlus, BlogVault, and BackupBuddy are also popular WordPress backup plugins.
Whether you’re a blogger or an e-commerce site owner, you’ll probably want to know a little more about your audience. With MonsterInsights, you can do just that. MonsterInsights is an analytics plugin that allows you to connect your site with Google Analytics.
To save time, you can view your Google Analytics stats straight from your WordPress dashboard. You’ll get real-time reports on page views, top traffic sources, e-commerce analytics, and much more.
Ultimately, this can help you optimize and grow your website. You can improve less popular posts, perform A/B testing, and speed up your loading time. All of these factors will bring in new visitors and increase conversions.
Key features:
Pricing: You can try out MonsterInsights for free. However, you might want to upgrade to access a real-time analytics dashboard with reports on everything from site speed to search keywords. The premium plans start at $99.50 yearly.
Since it’s used by over 5 million websites, it’s safe to say that WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress e-commerce plugin. This tool is a powerful solution to help you launch a business online.
When you’re first starting your online store, you can choose a WooCommerce theme that aligns with your specific niche. Then, WooCommerce provides useful product blocks so that you can easily design and customize your product pages.
Plus, WooCommerce has tons of built-in integrations. You’ll be able to add payment gateways, manage shipping details, and even calculate sales tax.
Key features:
Pricing: WooCommerce is completely free to use. If you want to extend the basic features, you can browse the WooCommerce Extensions Store. These add-ons can allow you to sell subscriptions, add product recommendations, and more.
If you don’t have forms on your website, visitors won’t be able to contact you very easily. With WPForms, you can quickly create any type of form. This is the most user-friendly contact form plugin you can find.
As a beginner, WPForms allows you to simply drag and drop fields to create your first online form. Plus, there are form templates available to jumpstart this process. Using these features, you’ll build forms in minutes.
By installing WPForms, you won’t have to worry about manually developing a contact form, quiz, email subscription form, donation form, or any other form for your website. No matter what response you want from your online audience, you can get it with WPForms.
Key features:
Pricing: WPForms Lite is a free plugin if you’re only looking for a basic page builder plugin. However, the premium version is a must-have for businesses that need lead generation features. These plans cost as little as $49.50 per year.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to helping the right people find your website. One of the easiest ways to improve your SEO is by installing a WordPress SEO plugin.
All-in-One SEO is the best tool for optimizing your search ranking organically. It allows you to approach SEO as a beginner, so you won’t ever have to hire an expert.
As you create new posts and pages, AIOSEO analyzes the content with SEO in mind. You can add meta titles, keywords, and meta descriptions to move your post higher in search results.
Key features:
Pricing: You can start improving your SEO with the free version of AIOSEO. If you decide to upgrade, however, you’ll have more powerful features like ChatGPT, a headline analyzer, and smart schema markup starting at $49.60 per year.
Alternative: Yoast SEO is a good alternative to AIOSEO.
OptinMonster is a lead generation plugin to help you monetize the organic traffic on your website. Instead of losing visitors, you can start gaining new subscribers and increasing sales.
Using OptinMonster, you can create a pop-up that visitors use to opt into a specific offer. This could be a floating bar, slide-in, gamified wheel, countdown timer, or sidebar. OptinMonster will even provide hundreds of templates that are proven to increase user engagement.
You can also use OptinMonster to create segmented campaigns. For example, a potential customer might be about to leave your site without making a purchase. With OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology, you’ll send an enticing offer right before they abandon your site.
Key features:
Pricing: There is a free version of OptinMonster that you can find on the Plugin Directory. Alternatively, the premium plans start at $49 per month.
Before you launch your website, you’ll need a beautiful and functional design. This way, your business or blog will look professional and won’t off-put new visitors.
Even if you don’t have any experience, you can use SeedProd to completely design your site. This is a beginner-friendly website builder that helps you create pages, layouts, and a cohesive WordPress theme.
The best part about SeedProd is its drag-and-drop functionality. You can choose from over 90 pre-designed content blocks and drag and drop them anywhere you want. With SeedProd, there’s no need to hire a developer.
Additionally, SeedProd comes with many different page templates. If you’re not sure how to start from scratch, you can immediately apply a beautiful layout. Since it began as a landing page builder, SeedProd has hundreds of templates that are optimized for conversions.
Key features:
Pricing: The free version of SeedProd can be helpful for designing simple landing pages. If you need to build your entire theme, we’d recommend upgrading to the premium version. These plans start at $39.50 per year.
Alternative: Elementor is a popular alternative to SeedProd, but its premium plans are more expensive.
Social media is a critical part of any website’s marketing strategy. But how can you easily add social share buttons to your online posts? This is where Shared Counts comes in.
Shared Counts is a WordPress social sharing plugin. It allows you to feature shareable buttons to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Yummly, and other platforms. By having this simple feature on your website, you’ll increase engagement.
Key features:
Pricing: Shared Counts is free to use.
As a business owner, it’s important to not overlook email as a marketing tool. By creating a newsletter, you can offer valuable content to your audience. Plus, this can be a great way to promote new products or limited-time sales.
Constant Contact is an email marketing service provider that makes it easy to create campaigns. You’ll be able to build emails with pre-made templates and a drag-and-drop interface. Once you launch your campaign, you can view open rates, clicks, shares, and more.
Key features:
Pricing: You can start a free trial to try out Constant Contact for 60 days. If you’re happy with the software, you can purchase a plan starting at $12 per month.
For creating your first membership site, you really can’t go wrong with MemberPress. This is the best WordPress membership plugin for monetizing your online content with subscriptions. It allows you to paywall blog posts, design online courses, and build a virtual community.
MemberPress provides powerful access rules so you can easily choose what content you want to block from the public eye. To promote your memberships, you’ll be able to customize beautiful pricing pages. If you want to start a subscription-based business, MemberPress could be right for you.
Key features:
Pricing: MemberPress is a premium plugin that starts at $179.50 per year. You’ll enjoy no transaction fees or monthly fees.
Another plugin to optimize your email campaigns is WP Mail SMTP. This tool improves your email deliverability. Instead of having your newsletter sent to spam, you can ensure that every email reaches your subscribers’ inboxes.
WP Mail SMTP works by improving the way your WordPress website sends emails. It will reconfigure the wp_mail() function to use a proper SMTP provider. Alternatively, it leverages a built-in SMTP provider integration.
Key features:
Pricing: WP Mail SMTP is available as a free plugin. But, the pro version comes with added support for smart email routing, all SMTP services, and email logging. These premium plans start at $49 yearly.
Anyone who runs a WordPress website needs to invest in top-notch security measures. Otherwise, your hard-earned data might be lost to unexpected cyber attacks. Sucuri is one of the best WordPress security plugins that can offer a great deal of protection for your site.
Sucuri sets up a Website Application Firewall (WAF) that continually blocks any malicious traffic. If the worst happens, Sucuri has a dedicated incident response team to restore hacked websites and remove malware.
Key features:
Pricing: The basic version of the plugin is free. However, essential features like the firewall are limited to the premium plans. You can upgrade to the complete website security platform starting at $199.99 per year.
WooCommerce can help you set up an e-commerce store, but you may want a plugin designed to handle digital products. Enter: Easy Digital Downloads! This plugin is a flexible tool that makes it easy to sell anything from software to digital artwork.
After you activate Easy Digital Downloads, the user-friendly setup wizard will walk you through everything you’ll need to start your business. After this, you’ll be able to see complete records for your orders and customer base. Easy Digital Downloads will also give you detailed reporting on your sales, refunds, taxes, and more.
And the best part? Easy Digital Downloads has no hidden listing fees. You can use it to promote unlimited products and gain unlimited transactions.
Key features:
Pricing: Easy Digital Downloads is completely free. You can take your business one step further by upgrading to a premium pass. These subscription tiers start at $99.50 per month and come with additional features like software licensing and recurring payment options.
If you want to engage with your website visitors and increase your website’s traffic, PushEngage is the perfect WordPress plugin for you. It allows you to send push notifications to your online audience. When you send the right message at the right time, you’ll gain fans and even repeat customers.
PushEngage has a variety of features that make it the best push notification plugin. You’ll be able to create enticing opt-ins with custom text, images, and calls to action. Using the Attributes API, you can send notifications based on hobbies or other personalized details.
Key Features:
Pricing: PushEngage offers a free plan that can support 30 campaigns and 200 subscribers. If you want more advanced features, its premium plans start at just $9 per month.
If you want to display your social media content on your WordPress site, Smash Balloon is the perfect plugin for you. It allows you to integrate feeds from various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
With Smash Balloon, you can customize the look and feel of your social media feeds to match your website’s design. It’s also beginner-friendly and easy to set up, so you can have your social media feeds up and running in no time.
Key features:
Pricing: Smash Balloon offers a free version. Premium plans start at $49 per year.
WP Rocket is a caching plugin that improves your site’s loading speed. It does this by creating static HTML files of your WordPress pages, which makes them load faster for visitors.
Along with caching, WP Rocket can apply image optimization and code minification. These features will go a long way to improving user experience on your website.
Key features:
Pricing: WP Rocket starts at $59 per year for a single website license.
Alternative: For a free caching plugin alternative, check out W3 Total Cache.
If you want to improve your website’s SEO and analyze your competitors, consider using Semrush. This tool provides keyword research, backlink analysis, site audits, and more.
Semrush can be a comprehensive solution for all your SEO needs. It helps you track your SERP positions, discover new keywords, and ultimately grow your website’s traffic and revenue.
Key features:
Pricing: Semrush is a premium tool that starts at $119.95 per month.
SearchWP is a search plugin that helps your website’s visitors find the content they’re looking for. It customizes your website’s existing search functionality into a custom search engine.
Along with your posts, SearchWP indexes everything on your site from the Media Library to custom post types. It also provides detailed search analytics so you can see what your visitors are searching for.
Key features:
Pricing: SearchWP starts at $99 per year. With this plan, you’ll get unlimited search engines and queries.
Social proof can be a powerful tool in converting website visitors into customers. With TrustPulse, you can start taking advantage of this marketing technique.
TrustPulse will create small notifications that show when other people take action on your website. For example, if a user purchases a product, there will be a notification that reads “John from New York just purchased this product”.
These notifications create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out) that can encourage other users to take the same action. TrustPulse also allows you to create custom notifications and track their effectiveness in real time.
Key features:
Pricing: TrustPulse has a free plan, so you can start creating social proof notifications right away. However, the premium plans only start at $5 per month and include page-level targeting and on-fire notifications.
Running a contest or a giveaway can be a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase engagement. RafflePress is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create and manage these contests.
With RafflePress, you can quickly set up a giveaway or a contest without any coding knowledge. This plugin has a drag-and-drop interface and pre-made templates that you can use to create enticing rewards.
RafflePress also comes with viral sharing options that incentivize users to share your contest with their friends and family. Doing this can drum up organic engagement and help you avoid paying for expensive ads!
Key features:
Pricing: You can download RafflePress for free to immediately set up your first giveaway. If you need more advanced features, you can upgrade to the pro version for as little as $39.50 per year.
As you’re running a business, you need to stay organized. Sugar Calendar is a plugin that allows you to organize calendars right from your WordPress dashboard.
With Sugar Calendar, you can create events, schedule appointments, and even sell tickets to events. You can also set up custom event categories and recurring events.
This plugin integrates with personal calendar tools like Google Calendar and iCal. Plus, you can embed your calendar on any page or post on your website so your visitors can see it.
Key features:
Pricing: Sugar Calendar is available as a free WordPress plugin. There is also a premium version that starts at $49 per year.
If you’re looking to better manage your website’s URLs, you need Pretty Links. Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that allows you to shorten, cloak, and track your website links.
With Pretty Links, you can create shorter and more memorable links to share on social media, emails, and anywhere else. Plus, you can view click analytics and improve the performance of your links.
This plugin is especially useful if you’re an affiliate marketer. You can cloak your affiliate links so that they look like your own website links. This can increase trust with your audience and prevent link hijacking.
Key features:
Pricing: Like most of the options on this list, you can download a free version of Pretty Links. For advanced features like keyword auto-linking, premium plans start at $99.50 per year.
To customize your WordPress website, you may need to add code snippets to your functions.php file. However, you may not be comfortable doing this. If so, WPCode is the solution you’ve been searching for.
With WPCode, you can edit your WordPress site’s code directly from the back end of your WordPress dashboard. Using a central interface, you’ll be able to add custom PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
Not only is WPCode a time-saver, but it also makes WordPress development more accessible. It comes with a library with over 100 expert-made code snippets. Plus, WPCode has integrated shortcuts that make your coding more efficient and intuitive.
Key features:
Pricing: WPCode is a free plugin. You’ll also have the option of upgrading to the premium version for as little as $49 per year.
It’s important to be available to your customers when they need you. With LiveChat, you can add a live chat widget to your website.
This feature will allow customers to quickly and easily get in touch with you if they have any questions or concerns. In turn, this can help increase your customer satisfaction and improve your sales.
With LiveChat, you can use the chatbot feature to automate some of your customer support tasks. Even if you’re not available, you can send canned responses so your customers never go unanswered.
Key features:
Pricing: LiveChat starts at $20 per agent per month. However, you can try it out for free for 14 days.
If you want to expand your website’s reach to international audiences, you need to translate your content. WPML (or the WordPress Multilingual Plugin) is a tool that allows you to easily translate your WordPress site into multiple languages.
With WPML, you can create translations for your posts, pages, custom post types, and even menus. Plus, you can use automatic translation or professional human translation services to make the process even easier.
WPML also makes it simple to manage your translations. You can see which content needs to be translated and what translations have already been completed.
Key features:
Pricing: WPML starts at $39 per year. After your purchase, you can get a full refund within 30 days.
Uncanny Automator is a plugin that allows you to automate your WordPress workflows. With Uncanny Automator, you can connect different plugins and apps to create automated tasks.
For example, you could create a workflow that automatically sends an email to new users when they sign up for your site. Or, you could automatically create a new post when you publish a new video on YouTube.
Uncanny Automator integrates with over 90 plugins, including popular tools like WooCommerce, WPForms, and Mailchimp. This means that you can create workflows for almost any task you can imagine.
Key features:
Pricing: There is a free version of Uncanny Automator. If you want to upgrade, plans start at $149 yearly.
You should choose a WordPress plugin that does exactly what you want to do on your website. For example, Duplicator Pro was designed to back up, migrate, and clone websites, so it can be helpful in these specific areas. When you find a plugin, be sure to look at its ratings and reviews to see if other users find it user-friendly.
An SEO plugin provides many useful tools and reports to help you optimize your website’s SEO. Installing a tool like AIOSEO can be a beginner-friendly way to start increasing your search ranking. Using the SEO Audit Checklist, you’ll know exactly how you can start directing the right users to your content.
Any WordPress website could benefit from installing Duplicator, SeedProd, MonsterInsights, AIOSEO, and WPCode.
Here’s why:
If a plugin isn’t coded properly, it could slow down your website. It’s generally a good idea to delete any plugins that you’re not actively using in WordPress. However, when you find reputable plugins, implement caching, and use performance best practices, your plugins likely won’t affect your page loading speed.
To learn more about this, check out our guide on how plugins affect WordPress.
We hope that we helped you find the best WordPress plugins for your website!
If you’re still looking for the right tools to optimize your website, check out these guides:
Ready to start backing up or moving your website? Download Duplicator Pro as your go-to backup and migration plugin!
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