24 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Every Website in 2025

When I first started building WordPress websites in 2006, there were just a handful of different WordPress plugins to choose from.

Today, things are very different. There are more than 59,000 in the free WordPress plugin repository alone. This choice paralysis can make it very hard for new users to pick the best WordPress plugins for their website.

In this article, I’ll share my top recommendations based on 18+ years of experience using and trying out all the top WordPress plugins.

You might be wondering why my advice matters. Here’s why you can trust my recommendations:

• My team and I test hundreds of paid and free WordPress plugins every single year. (You can learn more about how we do this by reading our editorial process).
• We look at each plugin or tool in detail to make sure it’s the very best solution for your needs.
• I only recommend products that I truly believe are the must have WordPress plugins, and will be genuinely helpful to our readers.

Note: These are the plugins that my team installs when I start a new blog or make a new website for my own businesses.

Quick Pick – The Best WordPress Plugins

In a hurry? No problem! Here’s my top 5 must have WordPress plugins:

#	Plugin	Best For	Pricing
🥇	WPForms	WordPress form builder	$49.50/year
🥈	AIOSEO	WordPress SEO	$49.60/year
🥉	Duplicator	Backups and migrations	$49.50/year
4	SeedProd	WordPress page builder	$39.50/year
5	MonsterInsights	Google Analytics in WordPress	$99.60/year

1. WPForms – Best WordPress Form Builder Plugin

New: WPForms now offers AI-Powered form building to speed up form creation even more. Simply describe the kind of form you want and the AI assistant will create it for you in seconds.

WPForms works well with all popular marketing and payment platforms like Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Authorize.net, so you can build powerful payment forms in less than 5 minutes.

It comes with advanced features you may not find in other form builders, such as conversational forms, lead forms, form landing pages, user journey tracking, form abandonment, geolocation tracking, GDPR-friendly, and custom WordPress user registration and login forms.

I use WPForms on WPBeginner and across most of my other websites. In total, over 6 million websites use WPForms, and the plugin has consistently maintained a 4.9 out of 5-star rating for over 5 years now.

If you’re serious about growing your business, then I recommend investing in the Pro version because it has all the powerful features you need to get more leads. You can even use this WPForms coupon to get 50% off your purchase.

To learn more about our firsthand experience with this plugin, check out our detailed WPForms review.

Alternative: If you need to create very advanced, solution-focused WordPress forms, then Formidable Forms is an excellent alternative to WPForms.

2. All in One SEO – Best WordPress SEO Plugin

Out of all the WordPress SEO plugins, AIOSEO offers the most complete set of features and tools you need to make your website content better for the search engines.

It helps you properly add SEO titles, meta descriptions, keywords, generate XML sitemaps, connect your site to Google Search Console, optimize it for social media, and more.

The AIOSEO team continues to innovate and add new SEO features to help improve your search engine rankings. For example, they have a content optimizer with TruSEO score, author SEO, headline analyzer, custom schema generator for adding FAQ schema, reviews schema, and many other schema markup.

They even added an internal link assistant. This feature helps you automatically link different pages on your website, which is great for boosting your SEO. I haven’t seen any other SEO plugin that has this feature.

Plus, you can monitor how well your SEO efforts are working with the built-in search statistics dashboard and keyword rank tracker.

To get started, you can follow our complete AIOSEO setup guide and then move onto our ultimate WordPress SEO tutorial for beginners.

There’s also a free version of AIOSEO available. However, the pro version includes more powerful features like WooCommerce SEO, local SEO, smart schema, video sitemap, news sitemap, smart redirection manager, the ability to find and fix 404 errors, advanced breadcrumbs, and much more.

That said, I highly recommend upgrading to the pro version. You can even save 50% by using our All in One SEO coupon.

Bonus: AIOSEO has few other powerful tools that you can use to boost your search engine rankings and get more visitors:

• SEOBoost – An AI-powered content optimization tool that helps you research, plan, write, and optimize your content for SEO. It also acts as a full system for managing your content, making it easier to collaborate with others and plan your media – you’ll even get unlimited access to free stock photos.
• LowFruits – An easy-to-use keyword research tool that helps you find keywords with low competition that you can actually rank for. You can also track your keyword rankings, identify backlink opportunities, and more.
• Broken Link Checker – A free plugin that scans your website for broken internal and external links. This helps you fix broken URLs quickly, which is great for search engine optimization.
• Duplicate Post by AIOSEO – Easily duplicate posts and pages to make managing content on your site easier than ever. With advanced features like scheduled revisions, you can seamlessly edit and publish changes for your content without disrupting your workflow.

Alternative: Yoast SEO is another good option if you’re looking for an alternative to AIOSEO. We actually used Yoast for many years before moving to AIOSEO (you can learn more about that in our reasons why we switched to AIOSEO post).

3. Duplicator – Best WordPress Backup & Migration Plugin

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then there’s a free version of Duplicator. This lets you create backups manually at any time. You can also move, migrate or clone a WordPress site between domains or hosts without any downtime.

However, if you want to schedule your backups, migrate an entire WordPress multisite network, and access other advanced features, then you’ll need to upgrade to Duplicator Pro.

All in all, Duplicator is a must have plugin for every WordPress blog and website, because having a recent backup is absolutely essential for WordPress security (not to mention your peace of mind!)

For more details, we have a complete Duplicator review that you can read.

Alternative: UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, BlogVault, and VaultPress (Jetpack Backups) are also excellent solutions. In fact, we used JetPack Backups on our own sites before migrating to Duplicator.

4. SeedProd – Best WordPress Page Builder

You’ll find pre-made templates for landing pages, sales pages, thank you pages, webinar registration pages, coming soon pages, maintenance mode pages, 404 pages, frontend login pages, and more.

SeedProd comes with a smart design system, so you can re-use elements instead of doing the same work over and over again. You can define color schemes, save font combinations, page templates, custom blocks, sections, and much more.

It has all the blocks, widgets, and features you’d expect from a powerful page builder, such as optin forms, social profiles, countdown timers, contact forms, buttons, pricing page blocks, various content blocks, and more.

And here’s something really cool: SeedProd has a powerful AI website builder to help you create content faster.

Forget spending hours wrangling content or scouring the web for the perfect images.

Now, you can whip up eye-catching headlines, compelling website copy, and unique, royalty-free images in seconds, all thanks to the power of AI.

If you want to dive deeper, we’ve got a guide on how to use AI to generate images in WordPress.

It also comes with built-in subscriber management and seamless integration with third-party email marketing services and CRM software (Customer Relationship Management).

The best part is that SeedProd works with all WordPress themes, so you don’t have to change your current theme in order to create a new custom design.

There’s also a free version of SeedProd that lets you create beautiful coming soon and maintenance pages. It also has a drag and drop page builder, so you can create custom pages no matter what your budget.

We’ve actually used SeedProd to design a bunch of our partner sites, including some pretty well-known ones like WP Charitable, WPForms, and Duplicator. For a closer look at how we use SeedProd, check out our comprehensive SeedProd review.

Alternative: Thrive Architect, Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi are other excellent page builders with powerful features. I also suggest CSS Hero if you want to customize your theme further.

5. MonsterInsights – Best Google Analytics Plugin

New: There’s now a powerful Conversations AI feature that lets you ask any question about your analytics, and get the answer right away. No more digging through reports to find the data you need.

To help you get started, we have detailed guides on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress, how to use Google Analytics to enable eCommerce tracking, and how to track user engagement.

There’s a free version of MonsterInsights that lets you install Google Analytics in WordPress, no matter what your budget. You can then track important metrics, learn more about your audience, and set your Google Analytics goals.

It’s a fantastic starting point, but if you upgrade to the premium plugin then you can access additional analytics reports, track your eCommerce or form conversion rates, use MonsterInsights with popular plugins like WooCommerce, and much more.

We use MonsterInsights on WPBeginner to track things like form conversions and referral links, while also learning more about our audience in general. To hear more about our firsthand experience with this popular Google Analytics plugin, see our complete MonsterInsights review.

Alternative: OnePageGA is a simple and easy-to-understand one page dashboard for viewing your Google Analytics 4 metrics.

6. OptinMonster – Best Conversion Rate Optimization Plugin

Even better, OptinMonster’s powerful display targeting features allow you to personalize the campaigns for each user, so you can show the right message at the right time.

OptinMonster is also a great solution for bloggers, business websites, and eCommerce sites. Basically, if you want to make more money from the people who visit your website, then you need OptinMonster.

I’ve seen countless businesses use OptinMonster to recover abandoned cart sales, convert website visitors, and grow their email list. You can check out these case studies for more information on how other successful businesses are using OptinMonster.

I use OptinMonster on WPBeginner and across many of our partner websites. You can check out our OptinMonster review for more details.

If you sign up via the WordPress plugin, then you can claim your free version of OptinMonster. This lets you create 3 campaigns with up to 500 campaign impressions, so it’s a great starting point.

Alternatives: Thrive Leads is another popular option if you’re looking for an alternative must-have WordPress plugin for creating popups.

7. MemberPress – Best WordPress Membership Plugin

Since MemberPress is a premium plugin, it comes with many other powerful features, including drip content, course management (LMS), quizzes, certifications, group memberships, paid forums, powerful access rules, automation features, and more.

For more information, see our guide on how to make a membership website in WordPress.

You can also connect MemberPress with all the most popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and others to communicate with your customers.

MemberPress helps creators generate over $1 billion dollars in revenue each year. We also use MemberPress on our video membership site and it’s really helped to grow our email list.

Alternative: Thrive Apprentice and LearnDash are some other good WordPress LMS plugins for creating and selling online courses. Easy Digital Downloads is also a great alternative if you want to sell digital downloads like eBooks, software, and msuic.

Bonus: If you want to add a community section to your WordPress site, with features like discussion forums and groups, then I suggest looking at BuddyBoss. It works very smoothly with MemberPress.

8. Constant Contact – Best Email Marketing Tool

It offers a quick and easy setup for non-techy users. It also works well with popular lead generation plugins for WordPress like OptinMonster and WPForms.

Alternatives: HubSpot, Omnisend, Brevo (Sendinblue), and ConvertKit are good alternatives if you want something more advanced, but they are more expensive.

9. WPConsent – Best WordPress Privacy Compliance Plugin

This is important because many websites use basic cookie banners that don’t actually protect user privacy or meet legal requirements.

But, WPConsent automatically detects and blocks all tracking tools on your site, from Google Analytics to Facebook Pixel, until visitors agree to their use.

You can easily customize consent banners to match your website’s design. Plus, all records of visitor agreements are stored on your own server, giving you full control.

Even better, WPConsent has a geo-location targeting feature. This means you can show different privacy messages to visitors depending on where they are in the world.

There’s a free version of WPConsent available that covers basic compliance needs. It lets you add a banner, customize how it looks, and scan your site for cookies. You can also block those pesky third-party scripts. However, the premium version includes more advanced features including automatic scans, geolocation features, and a detailed consent logo so you can track user interactions.

I use WPConsent on WPBeginner to a display cookie popup banner, manage user consent, and comply with privacy and cookie laws in many different regions.

10. Uncanny Automator – Best WordPress Automation Plugin

There’s a free version of Uncanny Automator that you can get started with.

It seamlessly integrates with over 195+ popular WordPress plugins and third-party platforms, so you can easily build automation recipes without hiring a developer.

Simply choose from over 1,000 triggers and actions to create “if this, then that” style recipes on your WordPress site.

What’s even better is that you can connect two separate WordPress sites to work together (again, no code needed). This is very useful for online stores and membership sites.

Here’s just a few examples of what you can do with this must have WordPress plugin:

• Make two WordPress sites communicate with each other. For example, you can sell products on one website while automatically creating user accounts and setting up access on another.
• Create buttons that can automatically create user accounts and perform other actions on your WordPress website.
• Add custom attributes to user profiles based on what those people do on your site.
• Start automation rules in one WordPress plugin because of an action taken in another plugin (for example, when someone fills out a WPForms form, it can automatically create an order in WooCommerce).
• Connect your WordPress site to business apps like Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, Zoom, and more.
• … and so much more

Want even more examples? Then take a look at our expert review of Uncanny Automator.

11. Sugar Calendar – Best Calendar and Booking Plugin

With the ready-made Sugar Calendar blocks, you can also display calendars on the front end of your site and let visitors book appointments. Users can also add your events to the calendar of their choice, such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Microsoft Outlook.

Additionally, Sugar Calendar offers an Event Ticketing addon. This lets you sell tickets for events and collect payments through Stripe and WooCommerce.

Interested? You can see our Sugar Calendar review for more information, and then check out our guide on how to create an events calendar in WordPress to get started.

12. Smash Balloon – Best Social Media Feeds Plugin

Smash Balloon is easy to setup, with no coding required, and it comes with tons of built-in styling and layout options for quick customization. You can control what content to show or hide using visual moderation tools, highlight certain posts, display likes and comments, and more.

The best part is that your social feeds will update automatically, which keeps your site looking fresh with new content at all times.

Also, even if a social media platform isn’t working, these feeds will still show up on your site. This is thanks to Smash Balloon’s smart feed caching and backup system.

There’s even built-in feed analytics, so you can track clicks, views, and profile visitors for all your social media feeds. This way, you can discover what posts are the most popular and which feeds get the most user interaction.

Even better, there are free versions of all the Smash Balloon plugins. You can use these to display simple social media feeds.

13. WP Charitable – Best WordPRess Donation Plugin

Plus, Charitable helps you attract a wider range of donors by offering many different ways to give.

You can accept one-time donations from people who want to give just once. You can also set up recurring donations for ongoing support, or build a sense of community with crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns (where supporters raise money from their friends).

It also comes with detailed analytics and reporting so you can see exactly how well your fundraising campaigns are performing.

We use WP Charitable on our Balkhi Foundation website to help us collection donations and set up fundraising campaigns.

There’s a free version of Charitable that lets you collect donations through Stripe and PayPal. But if you want access to more payment gateways like Authorize.net, Braintree, and Mollie, then it’s time to upgrade to our premium plugin.

By upgrading to a premium plan, you’ll also unlock advanced fundraising options such as crowdfunding and anonymous donations.

14. Pretty Links – Best Link Management Plugin

This must have WordPress plugin can also put your affiliate marketing strategy on autopilot. For example, it has a keyword replacement feature that adds relevant links to your blog posts automatically.

Other powerful features include auto-rotating links, product displays, QR code creation, split testing, and more.

For more information, check out our detailed Pretty Links review.

Alternative: ThirstyAffiliates is an excellent alternative for affiliate marketers with lots of advanced features including an Amazon integration. TastyLinks is another good option that’s targeted at food bloggers.

15. WP Rocket – Best Performance and Caching Plugin

Most importantly, WP Rocket doesn’t wait for someone to request a page to save it in the cache. It automatically crawls and builds your website cache, which results in an instant performance boost.

For all these reasons (and more), we use WP Rocket to optimize WPBeginner, and we’re very happy with the results. We talk more about our firsthand experience in our detailed WP Rocket review.

WP Rocket also offers Imagify, which is a free image optimization service that can speed up your website even further. To learn more, you can read our in-depth Imagify review.

WP Rocket also integrates with Cloudflare API, Sucuri, and many other tools to improve your website’s caching setup.

In my experience, WP Rocket is by far the easiest and most beginner-friendly caching plugin. The only downside is that it’s a paid only plugin, but they do offer a 14-day money-back guarantee so you can try it without risk.

Alternative: SiteGround Optimizer, WP Super Cache, Airlift, and W3 Total Cache are all free, but they’re not as powerful or user-friendly.

16. PushEngage – Best Push Notification Plugin

PushEngage comes with many powerful features like drip campaigns, a/b testing, dynamic user segmentation, opt-in reminders, powerful analytics, goal tracking, and more.

For eCommerce websites, PushEngage can automatically trigger cart abandonment notifications, price drop alerts, inventory alert notifications, and more.

For bloggers and publishers, PushEngage can automatically send out new blog post notifications to all your subscribers.

PushEngage works seamlessly on all website builder platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, Bigcommerce, and more. They also have a PushEngage WordPress plugin that makes it easy to enable web push notifications on your site.

The best part about PushEngage is that they DO NOT sell your data, unlike every other provider in that space.

Want to learn more? We’ve created an in-depth PushEngage review that covers this solution in detail.

Alternative: OneSignal is another popular alternative, but they sell your data if you’re on the free plan.

17. RafflePress – Best WordPress Giveaway Plugin

RafflePress comes with an easy drag-and-drop giveaway builder along with proven giveaway templates. This means you’ll have no problems creating competitions that catch your audience’s attention.

To enter a giveaway, website visitors will need to enter their email address. In this way, RafflePress can help you get more subscribers for your email newsletter.

RafflePress encourages users to follow you social media pages and share the giveaway with their friends to get more chances to win. This helps increase your social media engagement.

You can easily connect your social profiles, WordPress form plugins, and all popular marketing platforms and CRMs.

RafflePress has a free version called RafflePress Lite. This plugin comes with a Classic Giveaway template so you can create simple competitions with ease. It also has essential actions that can get you more engagement across the major social media platforms.

However, if you want to unlock powerful features such as email marketing integrations, giveaway landing pages, and social logins, then you’ll need to use RafflePress Pro.

Want more details? Be sure to read our complete RafflePress review.

18. Cloudflare – Best WordPress Security Tool

For more info on protecting your website and your business, see our ultimate WordPress security guide, which contains step-by-step instructions for beginners.

Another added benefit of Cloudflare is that they offer a free CDN, which can significantly speed up your site.

While there are other security plugins like MalCare, Sucuri, Wordfence, and WP Activity Log, I find that none of them can provide the complete protection that Cloudflare offers.

Note: At WPBeginner, I recently moved to Cloudflare from Sucuri in order to make my site faster and more secure. To learn more about this decision, check out our article on why WPBeginner switched from Sucuri to Cloudflare .

19. LiveChat – Best WordPress Live Chat Plugin

To learn more about my experience with this must have WordPress plugin, see our LiveChat review.

LiveChat has tons of customization options, plus it comes with a mobile app, so you can provide support in real-time and on-the-go.

LiveChat connects with my existing customer support software, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, email marketing, and many other tools. Most importantly, it loads fast and offers a great user experience.

The team behind LiveChat also created ChatBot.com, which is the best AI powered chatbot software. You can use it in combination with LiveChat to ensure your users always get the fastest response, using a mix of AI and human support.

Alternative: HubSpot and Brevo Chat are other popular services that let you connect chat, CRM, SMS, Facebook, and email in one platform.

20. WP Mail SMTP – Best WordPress SMTP Plugin

Over 3 million websites use WP Mail SMTP because it’s an absolute must-have WordPress plugin. That includes WPBeginner, where we use WP Mail SMTP to improve our email deliverability rates.

There’s also a free WP Mail SMTP plugin that can connect with all the popular SMTP services like SendLayer, SMTP.com, Mailgun, and Gmail. It’s a great starting point, especially if you’re on a tight budget.

21. WPCode – Best Code Snippets Plugin

There’s even a built-in code snippet library where you’ll find all the most common WordPress code snippets. You can then add them to your site with a single click.

Plus, you can manage all your code snippets from the same location and organize them using tags. We use WPCode across some of our partner sites, and it’s really helped us manage and organize our code snippets.

The WPCode Pro version comes with powerful features like an AI snippet generator, version control for code snippets (Code Revisions), device-based targeting for code, the ability to add code snippets to specific posts and pages, conversion pixels, and deeper integration for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, plus many other must-have WordPress plugins.

Alternatively, you can download the free version of WPCode from the official WordPress repository. This plugin has many essential features, plus you can unlock 70 ready-made snippets by registering for a free WPCode account.

For more information about the free and premium versions, check out our WPCode review.

Bonus: WPCode also offers Search & Replace Everything. This powerful WordPress plugin lets you find and replace text, URLs, or images across your WordPress site. The best part is that it also has an easy ‘Undo’ button in case you make a mistake. I consider this a must-have tool in my collection of WordPress plugins.

22. Weglot – Best WordPress Multilingual Plugin

You can choose the languages you want to add, and Weglot will automatically translate your entire website using powerful machine learning.

Weglot is good for SEO, meaning it helps search engines understand your site in different languages. It also has an easy-to-use dashboard, sends visitors to the right language based on their location, translates images and videos, and more.

We go into much more detail, in our in-depth Weglot review.

Alternative: WPML and TranslatePress are both excellent alternatives.

23. WooCommerce – Best WordPress eCommerce Plugin

It was created by the team at Automattic, the same company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, and many other popular services.

Since it’s so popular, it’s no surprise that there’s a robust WooCommerce ecosystem with dedicated WooCommerce hosting, WooCommerce themes, and WooCommerce plugins.

To grow your eCommerce site, I also recommend the following must have WordPress plugins:

• TrustPulse – This helps you quickly build trust with customers using social proof (showing others are buying) and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
• FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) – This helps you create sales funnels and add automatic processes to your online store.
• Advanced Coupons – This WordPress plugin lets you add loyalty programs, gift cards, and other advanced coupon features.
• Stripe for WooCommerce – This free WordPress plugin makes it easy to accept credit card payments, and also lets you add options like Google Pay, Apple Pay, and other payment methods to your WooCommerce store.
• Merchant by aThemes – all-in-one toolkit for WooCommerce with 40 powerful modules designed to enhance your store and boost revenue. Try the live demo.

For more suggestions, see our complete list of best WooCommerce plugins.

Alternative: Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin if your main goal is to sell digital products like eBooks or software.

If you need a way to take payments on WordPress without setting up a shopping cart, then WP Simple Pay is an excellent alternative to WooCommerce.

24. Nextiva – Best Business Phone Service

The best part is that you can get calls to your business number sent directly to your cell phone, which is perfect for small businesses. You can also set your business hours so you don’t get calls during holidays or non-working times.

Nextiva also offers CRM, live chat, online surveys, and other communication features. Even better, you can manage everything a simple web-based admin panel which makes it easy for small business owners to handle everything like a professional.

I use Nextiva VOIP for my business because it’s one of the most affordable and reliable business phone services. It’s also scalable, so it had no problems growing alongside my business.

Want more info? We talk about how WPBeginner uses Nextiva, in this detailed Nextiva review.

Alternative: RingCentral and Ooma are other phone service and business VoIP providers that I highly recommend.

Bonus Tools

Aside from the must-have WordPress plugins and tools I’ve already shared, I also personally use and recommend the following tools:

• WP Simple Pay – A simple WordPress payments plugin that lets you accept credit cards through Stripe without setting up a full eCommerce cart. There’s also a free WP Simple Pay plugin that you can use to accept payments using the Stripe checkout. (Alternative: If you want to use Square for payments, then use MyPayKit).
• SearchWP – The most advanced WordPress search plugin in the market. It helps you improve your site search so that website visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.
• UserFeedback – A simple yet powerful WordPress user feedback plugin that helps you get feedback from visitors and users.
• Thrive Quiz Builder – A powerful lead generation plugin that you can use to create fun, interactive quizzes. This is a great way to get more email subscribers and boost engagement.
• ClickSocial – This social media plugin lets you schedule social posts for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram directly from the WordPress dashboard. It also has a ‘Revive Old WordPress Posts’ feature that automatically shares evergreen content (that’s content that always stays relevant).
• Envira Gallery – I use this WordPress plugin to help me create better photo galleries on WordPress. It includes features for photo albums, sliders, tagging, and other advanced gallery options. Free Envira Gallery version is pretty good for those starting out. You can see live demos of Envira to get an idea of why 100,000+ photographers love this plugin.
• BuddyBoss – This is the best all-in-one course & community platform for WordPress. You can use it to launch a full networking features on your WordPress site and even have your dedicated iOS and Android app for your website. See live demo of BuddyBoss Web and live demo of App platform for the full experience. It’s the best alternative to MightyNetworks, Circle.so, and other expensive SaaS tools.
• PublishPress – This plugin makes it easy for teams to manage their editorial workflow and content directly in the WordPress dashboard.
• Semrush – A complete marketing toolkit for anyone in digital marketing. It includes powerful tools for keyword research, backlink audits, tracking brand mentions, keyword rank tracking, competitor analysis, and more.
• Antispam Bee – An excellent WordPress plugin that helps improve your website’s comments section by reducing spam. I find it works especially well when used together with Akismet to fight against unwanted, spammy comments.
• AffiliateWP – I use this plugin on some of our eCommerce sites to add a referral program. It works seamlessly with WooCommerce and other eCommerce platforms. (Alternative: Easy Affiliate).
• Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) – A collection of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools like email, docs, and spreadsheets. You can also use it to set up a professional email address.
• Grammarly – An excellent grammar-checking tool that comes with a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement, and more.
• FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) – This WordPress plugin helps you build sales funnels, automate marketing for your online store, and provides a simple CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. I find it’s a great ClickFunnels alternative for WordPress users.
• Thrive Comments – A powerful WordPress plugin for comments. It encourages user engagement with features like upvoting, user badges, subscribing to comments, posts from social sites, and more.
• HeroThemes – The best WordPress customer support plugins. They let you manage your customer emails and support tickets directly from WordPress. You can also create a knowledge base to reduce the number of support tickets you get.
• WP 2FA – This plugin helps you improve security by adding two-factor authentication to WordPress. This is a very good popular WordPress plugin that’s actually made by the same people behind WP Activity Log.
• WPBeginner Pro Services – Need help adding custom features on your WordPress site? Work with our expert WordPress development team (Alternatively you can also use – Seahawk Media for WordPress customizations).

This brings us to the end of my list of the best WordPress plugins.

Depending on your business, you might not need every single one of the WordPress plugins and tools I mentioned in this guide. However, it’s pretty typical for our readers to use at least 15-18 of the solutions I’ve covered.

I highly recommend that you either download these WordPress plugins directly from the official WordPress.org plugin directory, or use the links provided in my articles. Please avoid all nulled WordPress plugins and theme websites (which offer pirated software) because they can put your site at risk.

Now that you’ve learned about the must have WordPress plugins, you might also want to see my article on how to increase your website traffic.

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Must Have WordPress Plugins: FAQS

As someone who has helped over 2 million business owners build their websites and choose the best WordPress plugins for their needs, I’ve answered a lot of questions.

Below are some of the most common questions I get asked about WordPress plugins.

What is a WordPress plugin and how do they work?

WordPress plugins are like apps for your website that let you add custom features and functionality like contact forms and ‘pay now’ buttons, without having to write a single line of code. They’re pretty much essential for making your WordPress website do everything you need.

For a more detailed explanation, I recommend checking out our beginner’s guide on what are WordPress plugins.

Will too many WordPress plugins slow down my website?

This is a common worry people have about WordPress plugins. The truth is that it really depends on the plugin, but some plugins can affect your site speed if they’re not coded well.

However, most well-coded plugins will NOT slow down your website, especially if you’re using proper caching and following our WordPress performance best practices.

Plus, some WordPress plugins only run in your website’s admin area, like WP Mail SMTP and Uncanny Automator. These types of WordPress plugins will never slow down your website because they don’t load on the front end (basically, visitors never see them).

But when a WordPress plugin needs to load things like images, scripts, or other files when a user visits your website, then they can impact your overall site speed.

This is why choosing the right WordPress plugins is so important. That said, all the plugins on this ‘must have WordPress plugins’ list are optimized for performance, so they won’t slow down your website.

For more details, see our guide on how WordPress plugins affect your site’s load time.

How many WordPress plugins should I use?

A typical WordPress website will have anywhere between 15 to 18 WordPress plugins. However, when people ask me how many WordPress plugins they should use, I always say you should use as many as your business truly needs, and no more.

What truly matters is not how many WordPress plugins you have, but how well they are made. It’s the quality of the plugins that counts, not the quantity.

For example, the WPBeginner website has over 62 active plugins, and it’s really fast. That’s because we’re using high-quality plugins (most are mentioned here in my must have WordPress plugins list!). Typically, most of my websites have 30+ active plugins, and we’ve never had any problems with site speed.

Often when someone says “WordPress plugins are slowing down your site”, they simply don’t have enough experience, and they’re giving this answer out of frustration.

For a more detailed explanation of this topic, see our comprehensive guide on how many WordPress plugins you should install and what’s too many.

Are premium WordPress plugins worth it?

Yes, premium WordPress plugins are worth every cent because they help you save thousands of dollars in custom development costs. Not to mention, you will get access to expert support and new features regularly.

WordPress plugins are also much more affordable than other similar online services (often called SaaS alternatives). This is because most WordPress plugins are self-hosted on your site, which means you have full control over your data.

Let me give you an example. Imagine trying to build a custom contact form plugin like WPForms from scratch. WPForms gives you an easy drag-and-drop tool, smart conditional logic, hundreds of templates, dozens of integrations, and powerful features like surveys, polls, and even the ability to take payments.

Building something like this would cost you thousands of dollars. But you can buy a premium WPForms license starting at only $39 for the Basic license and $199 for the Pro license.

In comparison, a similar online form tool like Typeform would cost you $996 / year – and it only does a fraction of what WPForms can do.

Do professional developers use WordPress plugins over custom code?

Yes, absolutely! Professional developers often use WordPress plugins instead of writing all the code themselves. They do this to work faster and make their projects more profitable. It doesn’t make sense to build something new from scratch if a tool already exists that does the job well, or even better.

Not to mention the maintenance headache that would come with building something custom.

For example, when you ask a professional development agency to build an online store, they might quote you $15,000 for the project. But what you don’t see, is that they’re using WordPress plugins behind the scenes. This helps them make the project more profitable for their business and also more affordable for you.

They might use must have WordPress plugins such as MonsterInsights to set up conversion tracking, FunnelKit to create custom order forms, All in One SEO for proper SEO schema setup, and so on.

This is why most WordPress plugin companies offer Agency licenses, so developers can use them on client projects.

What is the best free plugin for WordPress?

Some of the best free WordPress plugins include WPForms, All in One SEO, Duplicator, MonsterInsights, SeedProd, WP Mail SMTP, OptinMonster, and WPCode.

What are the top 5 must have plugins you typically use on WordPress sites?

When people ask me for the absolute must-have WordPress plugins I use on almost every website, I always share my top 5. These are the best WordPress plugins I rely on:

1. WPForms – every website needs a contact form and likely other types of forms, and in my opinion, WPForms is the best form builder plugin.
2. AIOSEO – this is a complete SEO toolkit that helps your website show up higher in search engine results. It’s one of the best WordPress plugins for search engine optimization.
3. MonsterInsights – this is my go-to analytics plugin for WordPress. I always say that you can’t make something better if you don’t measure it, and MonsterInsights helps you understand your website’s performance so you can grow it with confidence.
4. SeedProd – I use SeedProd when I want to create custom website designs or landing pages quickly and easily.
5. WPCode – this is a code snippets plugin that I use to add custom code to my sites. In my experience, WPCode lets you replace at least a dozen plugins with an expert code library. Even if you’re new to WordPress, you’ll find it very simple to use.

Beyond these top 5, I also always install a backup plugin like Duplicator and a caching plugin like WP Rocket or WP Super Cache. I also use WP Mail SMTP to ensure my website emails get delivered and OptinMonster to capture more leads and grow my revenue.

I hope this article helped you find the best WordPress plugin for your website. If you have a question or need help finding the best WordPress plugin for your use-case, feel free to reach out to us using our contact form, and our team will be happy to assist.

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