What are the Best WordPress Plugins?

Discover what are the best WordPress plugins to take your WordPress website to the next level using these 32 best WordPress plugins list.

Best WordPress Plugins

With over 55,000 WordPress plugins available, it’s quite difficult for beginners to find the best WordPress plugins for their need. Often we’re asked by users if there is a magic list of “must have WordPress plugins” that all pros use. The answer is YES. Having the right set of plugins can make a huge difference in your blog / website growth. In this article, we have hand-picked the best WordPress plugins of 2021.

Our focus with this article is to highlight the best WordPress plugins in their respective categories. If you are not sure how to install a WordPress plugin or how to find the best WordPress plugin, then scroll down to the very bottom of this article to find that information.

Depending on your use case, you might not need all of these plugins on your website, but we believe a lot of these are needed for just about every type of website.

Before we get started, it’s worth taking a moment to examine a few things:

1) Finding the best WordPress plugin.

2) Free vs. premium.

3) How to install a plugin.

4) Finding The Best WordPress Plugin.

As we mentioned earlier, there are thousands of free and paid WordPress plugins. Locating a plugin for something that you want to do on your site can be difficult. Here is how you would begin your search.

Best Free WordPress.org plugins

The search feature on the WordPress.org directory can help you narrow down your quest. However, you will still have to scroll down a lot and many of the results will not be relevant at all.

The best way to search for plugins is by using Google Search, or search through WPBeginner’s plugins category.

When looking at plugins in WordPress.org directory, look at the plugin stats below each listing. It shows the total number of active installs for a plugin, higher installs means that it has been tested and used by more websites. You will also see the average review stars, last updated, and tested up to information.

Plugin Results Page in WordPress.org Directory

For more detailed instructions take a look at this beginner’s guide on how to choose the best WordPress plugin.

Top WordPress Plugins – Free vs. Premium

There are thousands of WordPress plugins, which are available for free on WordPress.org directory. However, there are lots of WordPress plugins that are sold on third party websites as premium plugins. This makes many new users wonder whether premium or paid plugins are better in some way?

Free WordPress plugins are available to you without any warranties. Support for free plugins is usually limited, and it is not guaranteed. Some free plugin authors do provide excellent support for their free plugins, but sooner or later it becomes a chore. There is no financial incentive for plugin authors to keep answering user questions on their free plugins. This means that free WordPress plugins are available on an as-is basis with no warranties.

Paid WordPress plugins on the other hand offer premium support for their product. Most of them are licensed GPL too, which means they also come with limited warranty. But having access to support means you can get help much faster.

This does not mean that premium plugins are always a better alternative to free WordPress plugins. In fact, many of the most popular WordPress plugins are free. For example, Yoast SEO, WP Super Cache, WPForms, and many more.

You should focus on finding a good plugin, that is easy to use, and has excellent reviews. Once you have narrowed down your search, you can decide whether you want to go for premium plugin or a free alternative. You can try the free plugins first but if they are too difficult to use, then you can go for a paid plugin.

How to Install a WordPress Plugin?

There are two easy ways to install a WordPress plugin from the admin area of your site. For free WordPress plugins, you can go to Plugins » Add New and search for the plugin name that you want to install.

Carefully look at the results to make sure that you are downloading the plugin you wanted and then click on the Install button. Once installed, you will need to activate the plugin.

If you downloaded a WordPress plugin in a zip file, then this is how you will install it.

Simply go to Plugins » Add New page, and then click on the ‘Upload Plugin’ button at the top.

WordPress will now show you a page where you can upload the plugin zip file. Simply click on the choose file button, locate the zip file on your computer, and then click on the install now button.

WordPress will now upload the plugin file to your website, extract it, and install the plugin. Once the installation is finished, it will show you a success message with a link to activate the plugin.

It is important to remember, that you need to activate a plugin before you could use it on your WordPress site.

For more detailed instructions, take a look at our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Having that said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress plugins on the market.

Best WordPress Plugins

Here are the 32 best plugins that we believe every website must have:

1) WPForms – Best WordPress Form Plugin.

2) MonsterInsights – Best Analytics Plugin for WordPress.

3) SeedProd – Best Landing Page Builder Plugin.

4) OptinMonster – Best Lead Generation Plugin.

5) Smash Balloon – Best WordPress Social Feed Plugin.

6) RafflePress – Best WordPress Contest Plugin.

7) TrustPulse – Best Social Proof Notification App.

8) PushEngage – Best Web Push Notification Plugin.

9) WP Mail SMTP – Best SMTP plugin.

10) Uncanny Automator – Best WordPress Admin Automation Plugin.

11) Yoast SEO – Best WordPress Plugin for SEO.

12) Sucuri – Best WordPress Plugin for Site Security.

13) UpdraftPlus – Top WordPress Plugin for Backup.

14) Constant Contact – Top Email Marketing Tool.

15) MemberPress – Most Popular Membership Plugin.

16) Beaver Builder – Best WordPress Plugins for Page Building.

17) LearnDash – Best LMS plugin..

18) WooCommerce – Best WordPress eCommerce plugin.

19) Shared Counts – Best Social Sharing Plugin.

20) CSS Hero – Best WordPress Theme Editor Plugin.

21) WP Rocket – Best WordPress Cache Plugin.

22) Live Chat – Best Live Chat Plugin.

23) Envira Gallery – Top WordPress Gallery Plugin.

24) Pretty Links – Top Affiliate Marketing Plugin.

25) Revive Old Post – Best Post Scheduling Plugin.

26) Smart Slider 3 – Best Slider plugin.

27) WPML – Best WordPress Translation Plugin.

28) User Role Editor – Best User Role Editor Tool.

29) Better Search Replace – Best Replacing Tool.

30) AdSanity – Top WordPress Plugin for Ads.

31) W3 Total Cache – Top Caching Plugin.

32) Insert Headers and Footers – Top Snippet Plugin.

Read more here.