With so many plugins available on the market, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the different options out there. But how do you know which plugin to choose?
There is a lot more to consider then just the features the plugin offers. Some plugins can really effect the performance of your website. The can clutter up your files and make your website slow. And slow websites are not very loved by Google!
Don’t worry. We’ve come up with a complete list of plugins that we recommend. Plugins with clean codes, regular updates and that won’t affect your website’s performance too much.
While you don’t have to use every plugin on this list, you’ll find plugins that meet needs you didn’t even know you have no matter your industry. Whether you prefer free plugins or need premium options, we’ve got you covered with this A-Z Best WordPress Plugins Guide. At the end of this guide, you’ll also find a list of plugins we would NOT recommend, based on how they affect the website’s performance.
A-Z Best WordPress Plugins
Age Verification
- AgeVerify
To prevent young eyes from viewing your website, install AgeVerify, which checks visitor’s age when they first load your site. This is great for dispensaries, breweries, and other providers that cater to an over-18 or over-21 crowd.
- Age Gate
Age Gate is a similar plugin that’s SEO-friendly but will bar visitors who do not meet the age threshold from accessing your site. Customise the settings to block only specific content from underaged visitors.
Backups/Updates/Monitoring
- ManageWP
Save time and effort with ManageWP, which will create backups of your website, check for security risks, monitor uptime, and optimise website performance. ManageWP is a comprehensive plugin that allows teams and clients to work together without risking the security of a site.
- VaultPress
VaultPress not only creates backups from which you can restore or migrate your website, but it also scans your WordPress site for malware and blocks spammers. The ability to repair infected files is a particularly helpful function of the plugin.
Caching
Although not free, WP Rocket ensures your website is zippy by compressing files using GZIP and caching pages. WP Rocket can cache your entire sitemap, optimise Google fonts, optimise your database, and much more. Prices start at $49 annually for a single site.
- W3 Total Cache
Free and in use by over 1 million sites, W3 Super Cache works for mobile visitors, is compatible with content delivery networks, works with SSL, and can even cache feeds to ensure your website is as fast as possible.
- Cache Enabler
This lightweight plugin creates static versions of pages and stores them on your server to speed up your site. Cache Enabler works great when combined with image optimiser Optimus, which we’ll recommend further down.
Change Login URL
- WPS Hide Login
Prevent unauthorised users and bots from finding your WordPress login page with WPS Hide Login, which allows you to change the URL to your login page to anything you desire.
Among Perfmatters’ many functions is the ability to change the login URL of your WordPress dashboard. Perfmatters is a very powerful plugin! More information about this plugin further below at “Performance”. Users can also disable and remove functions to improve site speed and easily add code to the header or footer. Perfmatters has so many more features that we would recommend checking out their website. It’s a premium plugin but it has so many good features to improve website performance that it’s definitely worth the money, especially if you don’t want to pay for a WordPress Management Service.
Code Snippets
- Head Footer Post injections
Easily add code to your site’s header or footer. Head, Footer and Post Injections is the simple way to add verification and tracking codes without editing your theme files.
Contact Form
- Gravity Forms
Create professional-looking contact forms that integrate with services such as PayPal, MailChimp, and more with Gravity Forms.
Even beginners can create powerful formswith this plugin. Ninja Forms also works with Paypal and credit card processors to accept payments.
- WDContactFormBuilder
Quickly choose from one of the default themes and templates after installing the WDContactFormBuilder for free.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- Zero BS CRM
As the name suggests, Zero BS CRM lets you interact with customers hassle-free. It supports sales, mail campaigns, invoicing, and more. The plugin is compatible with Paypal, Gravity Forms, and WooCommerce.
Trying WP ERP to manage your company’s accounting needs from your WordPress dashboard. The free plugin includes employee management with a dashboard for each user and HR reports.
E-Commerce
Turn your website into a store with the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce.
- Easy Digital Downloads
Sell digital content from your site with https://easydigitaldownloads.com/, which supports a shopping cart, discount codes, and activity tracking.
Image Optimiser
- Imagify
Compress images up to 2MB in size with Imagify’s three different compression modes.
Shrink unlimited images for faster load times without reducing quality with Smush.
- Optimole
Compress up to 1GB of images per month with Optimole, which preserves image quality with both lossy and lossless compression.
- Optimus
Optimus reduces file sizes by up to 70% to increase site load time.
Lead Generation
OptInMonster grows your email list and increases sales with visual offers that are customised for individual visitors.
- Bloom
Grow your mailing list and generate leads with Bloom, a plugin that lets you display targeted content based on readers’ location and interaction histories.
MailOptin sends automated emails to users following specific trigger events to generate leads and increase your subscriber count.
LMS (Learning Management System)
- LearnDash
Developers, schools, and training companies all rely on LearnDash to provide courses to users who can be rewarded for participation. With the plugin, you can also sell courses.
Create, sell, and deliver courses with LifterLMS. It’s compatible with popular page builders and works with plugins such as Affiliate WP, Monster Insights, and multiple form plugins.
Memberships
- Ultimate Membership Pro
Control multi-level access to your website with Ultimate Membership Pro, which supports paid access.
- Membership by Supsystic
Membership by Supsystic is an easy way to build a community with users, messaging, profiles, and more features; it also integrates with eCommerce plugins.
Page Builders
Achieve live design and inline editing with Elementor, which eliminates the need to preview your work.
- PDF Embedder
Upload PDFs directly to your site and display them with PDF Embedder.
- Google Doc Embedder
Google Doc Embedder is compatible with various file types and is convenient for those who frequently use Google Docs.
Performance
- Query Monitor
Query Monitor digs into your database queries, scripts, and stylesheets to boost site performance.
We’ve mentioned Perfmatters’ previously as a plugin with the ability to change the login URL of your WordPress dashboard. But it can do so much more! Users can also disable and remove functions to improve site speed and easily add code to the header or footer. Perfmatters has so many performance features that we would recommend checking out their website. It’s a premium plugin but definitely worth the money, especially if you don’t want to pay for a WordPress Management Service.
Photo Gallery
Build responsive lightbox and multiple styles of grid galleries with just a few clicks, thanks to Modula.
- Envira Gallery
Envira is a drag-and-drop gallery builder that never sacrifices website speed.
PHP Snippets
- Code Snippets
Avoid slowing your site with bloated plugins by simply editing your functions file with the Code Snippets plugin.
Q&A
- DW Question & Answer
Answer and filter questions asked by visitors through DW Question and Answer, a plugin that supports shortcodes and multiple languages.
CM Answers supports multiple users, polls and file uploads in discussion board format.
Real Estate
- Estatik
Add real estate listings to your site with Estatik, a plugin that comes with themes, is compatible with shortcodes, and has advanced browsing features such as wishlists and saved searches.
- Real Estate Pro
For $63, you can run Real Estate Pro on a single site to display listings with Google Maps integration.
Security
- Wordfence Security
Wordfence has the most powerful free security solution for WordPress websites. It includes Firewall, country blocking, repairing files, monitoring traffic and much more. They have a premium option available.
- Sucuri Security
If you are looking for the best cloud based security plugin, then Sucuri is the way to go. In our opinion, it’s the best security plugin on the market, but unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a free version. Their Firewall packages start from 19.98 USD per month, but because the plugin blocks unwanted traffic in the cloud and not on the server, it will keep your site speed and performance at its best.
- WP Security Audit Log
This plugin focusses mainly on real time user activity and monitoring logins. It can help you keeping an eye on what is happening on your website.
- Google Authenticator
The main feature of the Google Authenticator plugin is to give two-factor authentication to your WordPress logins With 2FA it is basically impossible for potential attackers to login to your website.
SEO
- Yoast SEO
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo is one of the most popular WordPress plugins available with over 5 million active installs! Optimise for keywords, control how your website looks to Google, check the readability of posts, and set up breadcrumbs for better indexing and site navigation. The premium version suggests internal links, provides content insights, redirects URLs, and provides an overview of SEO scores. Yoast SEO is a must-have for every WordPress website!
- The SEO Framework
Advertised as the “fastest WordPress SEO plugin,” The SEO Framework, automatically generates meta tags, and colored guidelines help make improvements to your page SEO. The plugin prevents SEO attacks and redirect errors.
Slider
- Slider Revolution
Create a slider for your website that will work no matter what device your visitors use with Slider Revolution. Animations ensure that your sliders are attractive and functional. Slider Revolution comes with over 200 templates and can draw multimedia from social networks.
- Smart Slider 3
With just a few clicks, you can add your first slider to your website with Smart Slider 3. The visual UI is intuitive, even if you’ve never dabbled with sliders before and includes a live slider editor. Customisation slides by adding layers to SEO-optimised slides.
Social Media
This plugin adds attractive sharing buttons to your site without slowing it down. One of the useful features of Social Warfare is the ability to save social shares when moving websites.
- Easy Social Share Buttons
With Easy Social Share Buttons, visitors can share your content to social media and subscribe to your mailing list. The plugin’s unique after share events allow you to take advantage of what visitors do after sharing to grow your following. Easy Social Share has a built-in social chat for you to communicate with visitors and facilitates sharing quotes to Twitter.
- Instagram Feed
Instagram Feed seamlessly displays customized content from your Instagram on your website, works with hashtags, and is compatible with multiple feeds.
Spam
- Akismet
Akismet will filter comments, form submissions, and trackbacks to prevent spammers from wasting your time. Subscribe for $5 per month to use the plugin on commercial sites, get priority support, and have access to advanced stats for your website.
- Google Captcha
reCAPTCHA is Google’s third version of spam-blocking tech to prevent bots from spamming you without blocking visitors from engaging. Google CAPTCHA makes installing and adjusting settings a breeze.
Other
- No Self Pings
No Self Pings turns off trackbacks from your own site whenever you link your comment, leaving you with ping lists that are more accurate.
- WP-Sweep
WP-Sweep cleans up revisions, drafts, and other data that are clogging up your WordPress database and slowing down your site. You can choose which data the plugin looks for and removes.
Plugins we would NOT recommend
Backup Plugins
- All-In-One WP Migration
- Backup Buddy
- BackWPup
- Snapshot
- Updraft
- WP DB Backup
- WP DB Backup Made
Cache
- Litespeed Cache
- WP Optimize
Ecommerce
- CodistoConnect
Image Optimiser
- Ewww Image Optimizer (although Cloud version is ok)
- RVG Optimize Database
Performance
- Better WordPress Minify
- Jch Optimize
- P3
- P3-Profiler
- WordPress GZIP Compression
PHP Snippets
- Allow PHP Execute
- Exec-PHP
Security
- LoginWall
- Pagefrog
- Wonderm00ns Simple Facebook Open Graph Tags
Other
- Dynamic Widgets
- Inactive User Deleter
- WordPress Popular Posts
- WordPress RSS Multi Importer
If you think we’ve missed a plugin on this list, please let us know!