It is easy to get confused amidst the tens and thousands of plugins available for WordPress websites. Most of them are useful but very few of them come under the category of must-have plugins for WordPress websites.
In this article, we will discuss the top 11 WordPress plugins that you will want to install irrespective of the niche of your website. To help you make an informed decision we will also explain why we think these plugins would be beneficial to you as a WordPress user.
Let’s jump right into it!
Must-have Plugins for WordPress
1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is by far the most popular WordPress SEO that not only helps you improve your SEO but also analyzes your content’s readability. Yoast SEO has helped millions of website users beat the competition by providing them with a better, faster, and stronger website. It has proven helpful in optimizing WordPress pages and posts by leveraging keywords and meta descriptions.
The base version of Yoast SEO has everything that you may need to manage your SEO and is 100% free of cost. However, they also have a premium version for users who wish to unlock even more tools and functionalities.
2. Elementor
Elementor is a visual page builder that lets you craft original designs for your page. It equips you to add cool effects like background overlay, hover effects, animation, and more with a single drag-and-drop option. You do not have to be a website development aficionado to create a beautiful landing page for your website.
Elementor has a collection of 150+ beautifully built templates for users to select from. The main Elementor plugin is available free of cost for users but if you need to avail more benefits and features then there are paid packages available.
3. Constant Contact
The Constant Contact plugin makes it easier and faster for website owners to capture user information right from the WordPress site. Whether it is email addresses, contact info, or sign-ups, your forms can be customized based on what data fields you are interested in. The forms will be created automatically based on the theme and style of your WordPress site. New email information that you will be capturing will get automatically added to the Constant Contact email lists of your choosing. To get maximum results out of your marketing efforts, Constant Contact is the one plugin you must have.
Also, see Blog Topic Generators for WordPress
4. Optimole
Did you know that in most websites images occupy more than 50% of the average web page size? That means optimizing images can play a major role in increasing the loading time of your website. It is important because one-half of your visitors will look for another option if your website fails to load in time.
Optimole is a plugin that optimizes every graphic you upload on your website so that it takes up less space and effectively speeds up your site. This plugin is free for up to 5,000 visitors per month. After which you can opt for a paid version.
5. Revive Old Post
If you are someone who is looking to boost their website traffic, grow your social media followers, and keep existing users engaged without creating content every day then this plugin is for you. Revive Old Post automatically shares posts and content from WordPress sites to social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc.
Revive Old Post plugin is useful for small blogs or websites, large blogs or websites, social media marketers, e-commerce online stores, and more. There are both free and paid versions of this available for WordPress users.
6. Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is the most popular WordPress firewall and security scanner. With the presence of an endpoint firewall and malware scanner, Wordfence Security is the most comprehensive security solution available for WordPress. The Web Application Firewall is capable of identifying and blocking malicious traffic. It also limits user login attempts to protect the website from brute force attacks.
To save your site from dangerous URLs and suspicious content, Wordfence Security scans all the file contents, posts, and comments. Wordfence Security is also capable of checking if your IP has been blocklisted for malicious activities. Wordfence has both free and premium versions available for users.
Also, see WordPress SEO tools to maximize your traffic
7. UpdraftPlus
UPdraftPlus has proved to be the most trusted WordPress backup, restore, and clone plugin. According to statistics, close to 30,000 websites get hacked every day. Moreover, your websites can get affected by server crashes, dodgy updates, or human error. This makes UpdraftPlus a must-have plugin that will safeguard your backup by integrating with multiple cloud storage options.
Not only this, with UpdraftPlus you can even automate your backups with a recurring schedule. There are both free and premium versions of UpdraftPlus available for users as per requirement.
8. WPForms
Wish to create eye-catching forms without having to deal with any code? WPForms is a highly user-friendly and mobile responsive plugin that will help you in creating beautiful forms. WPForms is not only capable of giving you a modern customizable form but also helps in generating better conversions, getting more survey results and a lot more.
With WPForms you can save your precious time by leveraging the pre-built templates. The Lite version of WPForms is available for free whereas the Pro version will help users unlock more features and integrations. Over 3 million websites are already using WPForms to create attractive contact forms.
9. Sassy Social Share
Sassy social share is a plugin useful for website users who wish to share their content on social media platforms. It enables users to share content over Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, Google, Pinterest, Whatsapp, and over 100 more social sharing services. It is a free plugin that makes it extremely desirable for users. It is also compatible with the Gutenberg editor.
Sassy Social Share provides unique button styles and customization options that can be added both before and after content. Another plus point of this plugin is that everything is responsive. It gives the option to enable or disable both horizontal or vertical floating buttons for mobile devices.
10. WP Rocket
With WP Rocket users can speed up the loading times of their websites. This powerful caching plugin creates cached copies so that the servers have to work less. Load times are very critical in these times to keep customers. Caching solutions are much more effective than image optimization.
WP Rocket is capable of reducing the load times of a website by 63%. The only downside of the WP Rocket is that there is no free version available. But the results are worth your money. A single site’s year-long license can be acquired at $49.
11. Redirection
Since we are discussing the must-have plugins for WordPress, we should not possibly end this list without mentioning Redirection. Redirection lets you keep a track of broken URLs and keeps a full record of data on clicks.
Since it gets difficult to check every single post or page on your website by hand, especially if you have hundreds of posts, Redirection helps you show a list of pages that are 404s. You can enter the URL where you want the Redirection plugin to direct the traffic. Redirection is available for free of cost to users.
