WordPress started as an Open-Source Content Management System (CMS), that was written in PHP supplemented with a MariaDB or MySQL database. It was developed as a blog-publishing system but it evolved to support other types of web content like Forums, Traditional Mailing Lists, Online Stores, to name a few.
This blog talks about the top WordPress Plugins that you can avail of. This includes WordPress Plugins free and the ones that you have to pay for. It also gives a brief introduction to WordPress before diving into the Best WordPress Plugins.
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What is WordPress?
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WordPress is currently one of the most widely used CMS in the market, with over 41% of the top 10 million websites leveraging it. WordPress has also found uses across other fields such as Pervasive Display Systems (PDS) (application domains such as healthcare, computing, etc).
To start working on WordPress, you need to install it on a Web Server, where a computer runs the software package WordPress.org to serve as a Network Host or as a part of a hosting service like WordPress.com. You can use a local computer for learning purposes and single-user testing.
WordPress ensures more human-readable permalinks by directing all requests for non-static URIs to a single PHP file. This file can parse the URI and identify the target page.
Key Features of WordPress
Here are a few key features of WordPress:
- Ease of Publishing: WordPress became popular because of how easy it was to publish any form of content to the Internet with it. You can pen down pages and posts, plug in different types of media, and format them seamlessly in a matter of a few clicks. Once you have ironed out the details, you can get your content on the web with just a click with WordPress.
- Publishing Tools: You can manage your content seamlessly with WordPress. You can glance through post revisions, create drafts, and even schedule publications. You can decide if you wish to make your content private or public. If you wish to make some content private, you can secure it with a password in a hassle-free fashion.
- Simplicity: The WordPress interface allows you to get publishing very quickly, with a simplistic UI to supplement your user experience.
- User Management: You can decide the different levels of access for your website. Every website has several people associated with it. An Editor works on content, the Administrator manages the site, Contributors and Authors write the content, and subscribers have a profile to manage.
- Flexibility: WordPress allows you to develop almost every type of website imaginable, ranging from a personal blog to an eCommerce website. You can improve your website with custom themes built for specific use cases and supplement it with various plugins to work on a better user interface for your users. WordPress also grants you the freedom to build a website from scratch and build it to completion in no time flat.
- Optimized for SEO: WordPress has been optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) right out of the gate. To achieve a more fine-grained SEO control, you can utilize various SEO plugins offered by WordPress.
- Media Management: The ability to add media seamlessly is imperative for a CMS. With WordPress in place, you can simply drag-and-drop media to the uploader to add it to your website. Apart from the ability to add captions and alt text, WordPress houses a few image editing tools that you can play around with.
- Easy Installation and Upgrades: WordPress is very easy to install and upgrade. Numerous web hosts offer One-Click WP Installers. If you prefer an FTP program, you can start with creating a database, uploading WordPress with FTP, and then running the installer.
Why do you need a WordPress Plugin?
WordPress Plugins are the building blocks of your WordPress site. WordPress Plugins are instrumental in bringing important functions to your website, whether it is to increase site speed, improve SEO, add contact forms, offer email opt-ins, or create an online store.
You can choose from over a thousand free and premium WordPress Plugins to add and download. In the next section, you will be taking a look at a couple of WordPress Plugins that can come in handy for every business use case.
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Top 24 WordPress Plugins to Make your Website Delightful
Here are the best 24 WordPress plugins that you can use to enhance the visual appeal of your website:
- WooCommerce
- WP Forms
- MonsterInsights
- Yoast SEO
- Elementor
- Constant Contact
- All in one SEO
- Jetpack
- MemberPress
- SeedProd
- WP Rocket
- UpDraftPlus
- Sucuri
- WordFence Security
- RafflePress
- PushEngage
- Uncanny Automator
- Google Workspace
- SEMRush
- LiveChat
- Nextiva
- WP-Optimize
- WP Mail SMTP
- WPML
1. WooCommerce
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If you wish to sell services or products on your websites, you can use the eCommerce plugin provided by WordPress: WooCommerce. WooCommerce leads the race as one of the Best WordPress Plugins for eCommerce. Armed with this, you can easily convert your WordPress blog into a fully functional store.
Owing to its virtually limitless customization, you can sell everything from physical products to digital products, show ratings and reviews, set currencies, set unlimited images per product, add filtering or sorting functions, enable tiered pricing and subscriptions, and much more. The best caveat of leveraging WooCommerce is that it is free. Since WooCommerce has been made by the same company as the WordPress CMS (Automattic), it ensures that your business is built on the back of a reliable and high-quality plugin.
WooCommerce is a ubiquitous choice for millions of WordPress websites running an online store because of its high customization capability that allows you to adapt the tool to your precise needs.
2. WP Forms
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WP Forms is one of the best WordPress Plugins known for its Form Builder that has cemented its authority in this marketplace. It is a beginner-friendly tool that simplifies the process of adding forms to your WordPress site. You can create forms with the code-free drag-and-drop builder, which allows you to add any form field you want in your desired order.
The free version of WP Forms provides basic contact form features like email notifications, CAPTCHA, Form Fields, and much more. The premium version, on the other hand, provides you with more functionalities like the ability to create multi-page forms, add survey functionality, along with integrations.
WP Forms is primarily recommended for its easy-to-use interface. You can use it to capture whatever user information you require, from in-depth surveys to contact information.
3. MonsterInsights
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MonsterInsights is known as one of the best WordPress plugins for Google Analytics. Monster Insights allows you to properly connect your website with Google Analytics so that you can look at exactly how many people find and use your website.
MonsterInsights is a handy tool that can show all the important statistics that matter right now inside the WordPress dashboard. You can then enhance your website accordingly to drastically improve your revenue, subscribers, and traffic.
4. Yoast SEO
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Yoast SEO is one of the most talked-about WordPress Plugins that makes it easy to optimize your posts and pages to rank higher on search engines. Yoast SEO provides you with handy templates for meta descriptions and titles, ensuring that you understand how to craft this information under the best SEO practices. With Yoast SEO, you can also analyze your content for both keywords and readability. This allows you to balance high-quality content with SEO.
It is highly recommended since it also provides tactical help to make your content shine in the SERPs apart from automatic SEO improvements.
5. Elementor
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Elementor is one of the top WordPress plugins used for Page Building for the WordPress CMS. Elementor lets you place a vast array of page elements with a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface. Therefore, you can construct your ideal website by simply dragging and clicking your desired elements into the builder area with Elementor. You do not need any coding knowledge to do the same.
Elementor is one of the most highly recommended WordPress Plugins due to its simplicity, compatibility with many WordPress themes, and ease of use. It also provides an extensive list of page elements that can be easily added to any page and craft a highly effective site.
6. Constant Contact
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Email continues to be the most dependable and effective marketing tool at your disposal as a business owner. It lets you stay in touch with your users even after a visitor has left your site. Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world, with a quick and easy set-up for users without a coding background.
Constant Contact can also work well with popular Lead Generation Plugins for WordPress like WPForms and OptinMonster.
7. All in one SEO
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All in one SEO (AIO SEO) is one of the most talked-about WordPress plugins known for managing extensive on-site SEO and making optimizations to make a site rank higher in the results. AIO SEO allows you to conduct site-wide audits to look at the health of your current site. It also gives you a better understanding of where you can make updates. On every page, you’re given the ability to change things like title tags, meta descriptions, and much more. Apart from this, if you’re looking to get up and running quickly, AIO SEO houses a setup wizard to quickly adjust settings based on an industry’s unique needs.
It is recommended that you leverage AIO SEO if you’re just learning how to optimize your website since AIO SEO offers a comprehensive, user-friendly solution to improve and monitor your on-page SEO. The tools and dashboard are intuitive, helping both experienced and new website owners rank higher.
8. Jetpack
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Jetpack has been designed by Automattic as one of the best multi-purpose WordPress Plugins that can help you out with design, marketing, and security. Among its vast array of features, you can find multiple WordPress themes, spam filtering, malware scanning, downtime monitoring, automated social media posting, CDN, login security, lazy image loading, and much more.
9. MemberPress
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MemberPress is one of the best WordPress plugins if you are trying to build communities, online courses, and membership sites using WordPress. You can create subscriptions and restrict content access to users based on their subscription plans. It works pretty well with all popular payment solutions like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and much more.
You can also connect MemberPress with all the popular Email Marketing platforms like ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc.
10. SeedProd
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SeedProd is one of the most reputable WordPress Plugins that can be used for Page Building. SeedProd specializes in landing pages, so, if you need help creating high-converting landing pages that make an impression, SeedProd allows you to do it with ease.
Since SeedProd focuses on landing pages, it offers certain page elements that are specifically made to convert visitors. Apart from landing pages, there are page template options for product sales, webinars, 404 pages, thank-yous, maintenance mode, and coming soon pages. SeedProd understands that every one of the situations mentioned above represents opportunities to convert, so it provides compatible features accordingly. It is highly recommended because it helps offer an excellent first impression to your visitors.
11. WP Rocket
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WP Rocket is known as a premium website optimization plugin for WordPress. Upon activation, WP Rocket can instantly implement several methods to speed up your page load speeds. This includes enabling various forms of preloaded content and caching, minifying JavaScript and CSS files, GZIP Compression, and lazy-loading images.
WP Rocket is one of the highly recommended WordPress plugins since it provides an intuitive interface, extensive features, and top-notch support to make things run quickly and smoothly.
12. UpDraftPlus
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Even though everyone wants everything to be hunky-dory with their website, accidents can inevitably happen in WordPress. This spells out the importance of creating regular backups for your WordPress website, allowing you to revert to an older version or recover lost data in the event of a glitch or accident.
Boasting over 3 million downloads since its inception, UpDraftPlus is one of the best WordPress Plugins for backups. You can even schedule routine backups and push your backups to Cloud Storage services like Google Drive and DropBox.
13. Sucuri
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Security is the top priority for online business owners, so, Sucuri provides a web application firewall and a WordPress security plugin that is one of the best protection-based WordPress Plugins you can receive for your website.
Sucuri can protect and monitor your site in the event of DDoS attacks, XSS attacks, malware threats, spam comment attacks, brute force attacks, and every type of attack.
14. WordFence Security
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WordFence is one of the most talked-about WordPress plugins that provides its users with robust security features. WordFence Security puts a firewall on your site to keep it away from malicious traffic. Apart from this, it also offers a malware scanner that can block suspect external attempts and provide a secure login system.
15. RafflePress
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Giveaways represent a wonderful opportunity to connect with new users, reach new audiences, and deepen engagement. The RafflePress plugin provides a drag-and-drop campaign builder that allows you to set up your giveaway in seconds flat. With RafflePress, you can easily create a landing page specifically for a certain giveaway. It also allows you to prevent fraud with one-time entries. Users can also share it or refer to it on social media. This makes RafflePress one of the most highly recommended WordPress Plugins for giveaways.
16. PushEngage
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PushEngage is known as one of the most coveted web push notification WordPress plugins. With PushEngage, you can send targeted announcements and messages to your website visitors through the browser push notification technology.
PushEngage offers a comprehensive suite of powerful features like Dynamic User Segmentation, Drip Campaigns, A/B Testing, Powerful Analytics, Opt-in Reminders, Goal Tracking, etc.
17. Uncanny Automator
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Uncanny Automator is known as one of the most coveted WordPress Plugins when it comes to automation. It allows you to connect your existing WordPress plugins to work together without dabbling with code. This allows you to automate routine admin tasks and save money.
Uncanny Automator can seamlessly integrate with the most popular third-party platforms and WordPress plugins so that you can easily build automation recipes without the expertise of a developer.
18. Google Workspace
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Google Workspace was created by Google as a suite of web applications like spreadsheets, emails, documents, etc. This extensive and powerful set of applications is easy to deploy, cheaper, and hassle-free.
Google Workspace also helps you save costs on software licenses, hiring IT staff, hardware, managing backups, and much more. It is one of the most coveted WordPress Plugins since it allows you to use professional email addresses with your business domain within Gmail.
19. SEMRush
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SEMRush is known as an all-in-one marketing toolkit for business owners and digital marketing professionals. It comes with powerful tools to help you improve your social media, SEO, paid traffic strategy, and content & PR strategy.
SEMRush is highly recommended since it can also help you gather competitive intelligence on your competitors. This allows you to outrank them and cement yourself as a force to reckon with in your industry.
20. LiveChat
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LiveChat is widely regarded as the best live chat support software for eCommerce and business websites. It is super easy to use and it allows you to quickly add live chat to your website. This plugin also integrates with your existing support software, email marketing, CRM, and other tools.
21. Nextiva
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Nextiva is widely regarded as the best business phone service in terms of features and ease of use that puts it on the list of must-have WordPress Plugins. Nextiva’s platform provides CRM features as well, along with online surveys, live chat, and other communication features. You can manage all of it in a simple web-based admin panel. This makes it easy for small business owners to manage everything like a professional.
22. WP-Optimize
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WP-Optimize is one of the most integral WordPress plugins for any website that has an extensive WordPress database. This plugin can easily clean up any unnecessary contents of your database, such as spam comments and auto drafts. They don’t add any value to your site but may end up slowing down the performance of your website.
It can also compress images and enable caching to improve site speeds. WP-Optimize can accomplish this seemingly complex task with just the click of a button. WP-Optimize is one of the most highly recommended WordPress plugins to improve your website load times, especially over weak internet connections and on mobile devices.
23. WP Mail SMTP
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WordPress leverages the PHP mail function to send emails by default. The primary difficulty here is that either WordPress hosting companies block it to prevent abuse, or they might not have it set up properly. This means you and your users might miss out on important email notifications from your WordPress website.
With WP Mail SMTP, you can send WordPress emails using a proper SMTP email server. Boasting a user base of over 2 million websites, WP Mail SMTP is one of the must-have WordPress plugins. You can use it for free, but its paid version (WP Mail SMTP Pro) provides a white-glove setup and many more features. Plus, their staff will set it up for you and connect it to use your SMTP service provider.
24. WPML
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WordPress doesn’t let you build a multilingual website by default. This can pose a challenge to businesses that cater to a multilingual customer base located in different geographic localities.
WPML offers you a solution to this common problem. It is a WordPress multilingual plugin that lets you create multi-lingual websites on WordPress. It is one of the most highly recommended WordPress Plugins because it is SEO-friendly, easy to use, and helps you produce content in various languages. It also works well with other plugins like Elementor, Yoast, WooCommerce, etc.
Conclusion
This blog talks about the Best WordPress Plugins that can be found in the marketplace. These are bound to be in great demand. It also gives a brief introduction to WordPress and the importance of WP Plugins in propelling your business growth to greater heights.
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