Did you know there are over 55,000 WordPress plugins out there? That’s true! Be it SEO, Google Analytics, social media, contact forms, website security, or email marketing, there are plugins for every category. But with so many different options, it’s difficult for new users to select the best WordPress plugins for their website. By having too many unnecessary plugins, you can hamper your site’s performance and hold back your website’s growth.
So, to help you out, in this article we’ll cover the best WordPress plugins (free and paid) that are a must-have on your website. You can jump ahead to any category you’re interested in:
- Best Analytics WordPress Plugins
- Best Forms Plugins for WordPress
- Best WordPress Plugin for Conversions
- Best WordPress Plugins for Giveaways
- Best Social Media WordPress Plugins
- Best WordPress Automation Plugins
- Best Email Marketing WordPress Plugins
- Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
- Best WordPress Plugin for Security
- Best WordPress Page Builder Plugins
- Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce
- Best WordPress LMS Plugins
- Best WordPress Plugin for Live Chat
- Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins
Let’s get started…
Best Analytics WordPress Plugins
The most important thing you need to grow your website is an understanding of your users and how they behave on your site. The best Analytics plugin for WordPress can help you measure your site’s performance, track user behavior, and give you the data you need to make decisions that will grow your website and your business.
1. ExactMetrics
ExactMetrics is the best premium WordPress Analytics plugin you can use today. You can use it to add Google Analytics to your WordPress site without any coding.
Besides that, it makes it super easy to set up advanced tracking in just a few clicks. So, you can track user behavior, which is not possible by default in Google Analytics. For instance, you can automatically set up events and track file downloads, outbound links, affiliate link clicks, and more.
ExactMetrics also offers different addons that you can use to track form conversions, eCommerce performance, make your site GDPR compliant, and much more.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-use plugin
- Connect Google Analytics with WordPress
- Track form submissions
- Set up tracking across all devices
- One-click ad tracking
- Automatically track affiliate link clicks
- Track media and video plays on your website
- Configure custom events without coding
- Track WordPress categories and tags
Price: ExactMetrics offers free + paid plans (which start from $99.50 per year)
2. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is one of the best WordPress plugins for Google Analytics. It also offers features to track user behavior along with setting up advanced tracking in Analytics. And you can easily configure Google Analytics without the need to hire a developer.
Key Features:
- Get detailed reports inside your WordPress dashboard
- Automatic scroll depth tracking
- Track online store performance with an eCommerce addon
- Outbound link tracking
- File download tracking
- Set up custom dimensions with just a few clicks
- Affiliate link tracking
- Easy integration with popular WordPress plugins
Price: Premium plans start from $99.50 per year
Best Forms Plugins for WordPress
No matter what type of website you have, you’ll want your visitors to get in touch with you. The best way to do that is through a contact form. There are many plugins that let you add a contact form to your WordPress website, but with the best plugins, you can do so much more.
3. WPForms
WPForms is the best form plugin for WordPress. You can create all types of forms using its simple drag-and-drop builder. Plus, it offers loads of options for customization, so you can create a form the way you want.
Key Features:
- Drag and drop builder
- Prebuilt templates to choose from
- Mobile-friendly and SEO-optimized
- Integration with popular email marketing tools
- Receive payments through WPForms
- Accept file uploads
- Smart conditional logic for form fields
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $49.50 per year
4. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is another plugin you can use to create different, more complicated forms in WordPress. It also offers a drag-and-drop builder that makes it super easy to build any type of form. It also allows you to display statistics and graphs of your form submissions.
Key Features:
- Allow users to edit form submissions in the frontend
- Build multi-page forms
- Drag and drop builder
- Create polls and surveys
- Display graphs and stats of form submissions
- Calculation forms
- Easily customize form HTML
- Mobile responsive designs
Price: Premium packages start from $39.50 per year
5. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is one of the best WordPress plugins you can use for building forms. It has an easy-to-use interface and offers integrations with popular marketing tools like Constant Contact and Zapier. And you can use it to create forms for accepting payments.
Key Features:
- Create multi-part forms
- Use conditional logic for form fields
- Create beautiful forms with layouts and styles
- Save progress while building a form
- Accept file uploads and PDF form submissions
Price: Free + paid plans start from $99 per year
Best WordPress Plugins for Conversions
Now, are you looking to boost conversions on your website? Or do you want to generate leads? There are different plugins that can help you boost your sales and get more people to convert.
6. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the best WordPress plugin for conversion rate optimization and generating leads. It’s a powerful plugin that lets you convert abandoning visitors into leads. You can choose from different popup templates and use display rules to show the right message at the right time.
Key Features:
- Exit Intent technology
- Display messages to visitors from a specific location
- Easy to use drag and drop builder
- Mobile friendly popups
- Pre-made campaign templates
- Create campaigns such as a floating bar or lightbox popups
Price: Basic plan starts from $9 per month (billed annually)
7. TrustPulse
TrustPulse uses the power of social proof to boost your sales and conversions. Using FOMO (fear of missing out), you can show exactly when someone bought a product on your website. This provides proof to users who are looking for feedback before making a purchase.
Key Features:
- Real-time event tracking
- Live stream of any action on your website
- Social proof notifications
- Use advanced targeting rules to show notifications
- Measure views and conversions in FOMO analytics
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $5 per month
8. PushEngage
PushEngage is the best push notifications plugin for WordPress. It helps you send targeted messages to your users and instantly inform them about a new blog post, new product, flash sale, and much more.
Key Features:
- Send personalized notifications
- Reduce cart abandonment
- Send instant alerts for price drops
- Send notifications in different languages
- A/B test push notifications
- Set up revenue tracking
- Create drip campaigns for notifications
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $9 per month
Best WordPress Plugin for Giveaways
Are you planning on running a giveaway on your website but don’t know how to get started? You can use a WordPress plugin that lets you create engaging giveaways without having to invest in a professional developer.
9. RafflePress
RafflePress is the best WordPress plugin for giveaways. It offers beautiful templates that are mobile responsive and helps you can create viral giveaways. RafflePress also integrates with email marketing tools, so you can grow your email subscribers as well.
Key Features:
- Drag and drop giveaway builder
- Choose from different templates
- Mobile-friendly designs
- 1 click entry and fraud protection
- Integrate with social media platforms
- Set up tracking and retargeting
Price: Free + premium version with prices starting from $31.60 per year
Best Social Media WordPress Plugins
Social media is a great place to drive traffic and engagement on your website. You can also display social media content on your website to attract your visitors. In this section, we’ll show you some of the best social media WordPress plugins.
10. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon is a social feed plugin that you can use to display content from different social platforms on your website. What makes it the best WordPress plugin for social media is its simplicity. You can set up social feeds in just 30 seconds.
Key Features:
- Facebook Feed for adding videos, photos, and events
- Twitter Feed to integrate Twitter cards
- Easily moderate content
- Instagram Feed for adding hashtag feeds
- TikTok Feed for your best videos
- Reviews Feed for sharing customer reviews
- Display Instagram stories as a lightbox popup
- YouTube Feed to show videos and even live stream
- Social Wall to display a mixture of content from all your channels
Price: Smash Balloon plans start from $49 per year
11. Shared Counts
Shared Counts is another top WordPress plugin that allows you to add social share buttons on your posts. It’s very easy to use as you can add a shortcode before or after your post to display the buttons. This is a must-have plugin if you want your readers to share your content on different social networks.
Key Features:
- Easily add Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn buttons
- Integrate email-sharing options
- Show your share counts
- A secure plugin that doesn’t use cookies or tracking scripts
Price: Free
Best WordPress Automation Plugins
Do you want to automate routine tasks and save time? With WordPress automation plugins, you can easily do that. Let’s take a look.
12. Uncanny Automator
Uncanny Automator is the best automation plugin for WordPress. It helps you connect different plugins with each other and automate routine tasks. And the best part is you don’t have to edit code. The plugin takes care of the automation for you.
Key Features:
- Easy-to-use plugin
- 100+ integrations
- Uses a simple recipe builder
- Use Zapier to connect 1000+ apps
- Create billions of automation recipes
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $149 per year
Best Email Marketing WordPress Plugins
Now, if you’re gathering an email list, then you need a plugin that easily sends bulk emails to your subscribers. But at times, you aren’t able to send emails from your WordPress website. This is where the best WordPress plugins for email marketing can help you out.
13. WP Mail SMTP
WP Mail SMTP is an important WordPress plugin that ensures your emails reach your subscribers. Send emails from your WordPress website without running into deliverability issues!
Key Features:
- Easily integrates with web hosting services
- Fixes email deliverability issues
- White glove setup
- Automatically track sent emails
- Manage notifications
Price: Free + Paid plans that start from $49 per year
Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
Do you want to boost your organic traffic? Or perhaps you want to optimize your content for SEO (search engine optimization)? With the best WordPress plugins for SEO, you can ensure that your content is properly optimized and easily ranks higher on search engines.
14. All in One SEO
All in One SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. You can use it to optimize your website and improve your rankings. And the plugin is super easy to use and works right out of the box for beginners.
Key Features:
- Easily submit sitemaps to Google and Bing
- Create a schema.org markup
- Supports Google Analytics
- Integrates with eCommerce sites
- Automatically generate meta tags
- Headline assistant
Price: Free + premium plans that start from $49.60 per year
15. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins for SEO. You can optimize your content for keywords, include keyphrases, and more. The plugin also checks the readability of your content and suggests fixes for improvement.
Key Features:
- Automatically create an XML sitemap
- Optimize your content for SEO
- Get internal link suggestions
- Content insights for better rankings
- Easily redirect URLs
- 24/7 customer support
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $99 per year
Best WordPress Plugin for Security
There is nothing worse than having malware and hackers exploit your website. These malicious people can hijack your sensitive data and ask for ransom. Or they can compromise your service with bot traffic and cause a lot of damage. To protect your site, you need the best WordPress security plugins.
16. Sucuri
Sucuri is the best WordPress plugin for strengthening your site’s security. It prevents future attacks and actively monitors for threats. You can ensure that hackers can access your sensitive data and your website is safe from DDoS attacks.
Key Features:
- Web application firewall (WAP)
- Protect your site against hacks and malicious code
- Prevent brute force attacks
- DDoS attack mitigation
- SSL certificate monitoring
- Regularly scans for malware
Price: Free plugin with paid plans starting from $199.99 per year
17. SolidWP
SolidWP, formerly BackupBuddy, is the best WordPress backup plugin that’s extremely useful in creating backups. In case your security measures fail and your site gets compromised, with SolidWP, you’ll have all your important data saved so you can recover instantly.
Key Features:
- Instantly backup, restore, and move WordPress
- Protect your site from malware
- Easy to use and setup
- Customize backup content
- Get instant email notifications
- Schedule backups
- Store backup files remotely
Price: You can get the plugin for $99 per year
18. Login LockDown
Login LockDown is another WordPress security plugin to have on your website. It protects your site from brute force attacks where the attacker could use different methods to log in to your site.
Key Features:
- Records IP address and timestamp of failed login attempts
- Detects if a certain number of login attempts
- Block login function for an IP range
- Prevent brute force attacks
- 1-hour lockout for an IP block
- Manage login settings
Price: Free
Best WordPress Page Builder Plugins
If you’re looking to build complex webpages and don’t know to code, then WordPress page builder plugins can help. They offer simple page builders and remove the limitations of WordPress editor.
19. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best landing page and website theme builder for WordPress. You can create just about any landing page or WordPress theme using its drag-and-drop builder, be it a sales page, a coming soon page, a webinar page, or an opt-in page.
Key Features:
- Drag and drop page and website builder
- Built-in coming soon, 404, and maintenance mode pages
- Select from over 750+ Google fonts and 50+ themes
- Mobile ready pages
- Choose from a variety of templates
- Easy integration with email marketing tools
Prices: Prices start from $31.60 per year
20. Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is one of the most popular WordPress page builder plugins. It offers a drag-and-drop builder that you can use to create stylish pages. And the best part is, you don’t have to code. The builder works right out of the box.
Key Features:
- Easy to use plugin
- Drag and drop page builder
- Multiple customization options
- Create mobile responsive pages
- Pre-built layouts
- Customer support
- Save and export full-page layouts
Prices: Free + premium plan starting from $99
Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce
You can use WordPress to create your own eCommerce store. And to help you out, you can use different plugins and sell products online.
21. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the best WordPress plugin for eCommerce. It powers a huge number of eCommerce stores on the internet. And one of the reasons for its success is how easy it is to use, and it offers vast flexibility with premium extensions.
Key Features:
- Set up an online store in no time
- Offers flexible and secure payment options
- Easily manage your orders
- Customize your store the way you want
- Easy integration of hundreds of free and paid extensions
- Detailed documentation for support
Price: Free to use but offers paid extensions
22. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is another popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. Using the plugin, you can sell different digital products and monetize your website. Sell eBooks, PDFs, plugins, and just about any kind of digital file through Easy Digital Downloads.
Key Features:
- Add buy now or add to cart buttons
- Manage your customer database
- Track customer lifetime value and activity
- Create discount codes
- Get detailed reports of your online store
- Download and save your data via CSV file
Price: Free + paid version that starts at $99.50 per year
Best WordPress Plugins for Membership
Are you looking for more ways to make money from your WordPress website? Then why not consider creating a member section? With a membership WordPress plugin, you can easily do that.
23. MemberPress
MemberPress is one of the best WordPress plugins that you can use to create a membership website. This way, you can charge a premium from your visitors if they want access to unique and useful content.
Key Features:
- Easy to use
- Control the content you wish to show
- Create your own forum on your WordPress website
- Generate coupons and giveaways
- Highly secure plugin
- Create dynamic pricing pages
- Clear reporting
- Easy integration with other plugins
Price: Its basic plan starts from $179.50 per year
Best WordPress LMS Plugins
Another way you can monetize your site is by selling online courses inside a learning management system (LMS). And an easy way of creating courses is through the best WordPress LMS plugins.
24. LearnDash
LearnDash is the best WordPress plugin for creating courses on your website. It’s trusted by many universities, training organizations, and new businesses.
Key Features:
- Simple yet powerful course builder
- Advanced quiz options
- Create your own branded portal
- Award certifications and badges to participants
- Grade quizzes and assignments
- Award course points
Price: You can get LearnDash for $199 per year
25. LifterLMS
LifterLMS is another top LMS WordPress plugin that helps you set up online courses on your website. It’s very easy to use, as it offers a drag-and-drop builder to create clean courses.
Key Features:
- Add videos, text, audio, and more with ease
- Drag and drop course builder
- Create dynamic multimedia quizzes
- Add prerequisites for courses
- Track course progress
- Offer certifications
- Lesson downloader
Price: Free + paid plans starting from $199 per year
Best WordPress Plugin for Live Chat
Now, are you looking for a way to resolve your user’s questions instantly? If yes, then nothing beats a live chat WordPress plugin. Visitors can hop on a chat window, and your support agent can answer all their questions there and then.
26. LiveChat
LiveChat is the best WordPress plugin for adding live chat to your website. It offers a clean user interface and is highly user-friendly. You can easily offer a solution to your users and capture leads during the process.
Key Features:
- Elegant chat box for your website
- Mobile responsive design
- Use different chat tools like tags, rich messages, etc.
- Customize your chat boxes
- Get detailed reports of chats, agents, tickets, etc.
- Strong security features
Prices: LiveChat prices start from $20 per month per agent
Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins
Do you want to take your affiliate marketing to the next level? And want to simplify a lot of processes to save time? Then the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketing are your best friend.
27. Pretty Links
Pretty Links is the best WordPress plugin for managing affiliate links on your website. It turns your long and ugly URLs into more readable and shareable links. Plus, you don’t have to change affiliate links individually on your site. Just make the change in Pretty Links, and it will automatically update all the links.
Key Features:
- Clean your affiliate links
- Easily organize all your affiliates in a single database
- Track each affiliate link on your website
- Add smart redirection
Prices: Free + premium plans starting from $99.60 per year
Final Verdict – Best WordPress Plugins
This brings us to the end of the guide. To boost your WordPress experience and make a lot of processes simple, you can select any plugin from our list.
For instance, plugins like ExactMetrics can help you track the performance of your website. And if you want to boost conversions and capture leads on your site, then OptinMonster can help you out.
Another important plugin to have is WPForms. It lets you create different types of forms on your website so people can easily get in touch with you. Similarly, you can use plugins like RafflePress to offer giveaways and increase your social followers and email subscribers.
And that’s it!
We hope you liked our article on the best WordPress plugins. You can also check out 8 Awesome WordPress Tutorials & Resources for Beginners.
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