Having WordPress as a content management system is a blessing for beginners. Its friendly UI and thousands of functional themes and plugins make it straightforward for newcomers to design professional sites without any coding expertise.
However, unleashing the ultimate potential of WordPress CMS completely depends on the tool you use. By leveraging the right set of tools, you can not only improve website performance but also stay ahead in this competitive market. But, since WordPress has thousands of solutions, making a curated list of the best WordPress plugins is not easy.
So, the purpose of writing this blog is to save you from this confusion and hand you the tools that are generally needed for a site. Along with it, we’ll also disclose the key factors that you must check before picking the right WordPress plugin. Let’s dive in to take a closer look at the must have WordPress plugins…
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Points to Consider Before Selecting the Best WordPress Plugins
While selecting the best WordPress plugins, you should focus on some key points to get your hands on the right solution. Here are the main factors that you must double-check before picking a WordPress solution:
- Your selected plugin should be lightweight and fully responsive.
- It must bring continuous updates, fixing all issues and bugs.
- The plugin should be compatible with your WordPress version and other popular solutions.
- It should contain positive reviews and ratings, reflecting a satisfied and happy user base.
- The plugin must provide instant assistance for customer queries and problems.
- Site loading speed should be unaffected.
- Plugins should be free from all security concerns.
- It should promote a friendly, clear, and intuitive interface.
- The plugin needs to be supported with good documentation and guides so that you can understand how it functions.
20+ Must Have WordPress Plugins to Look For in 2024
Here are the names and brief descriptions of 20+ top WordPress plugins you should consider for your site:
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is an ultimate SEO solution designed to enhance website visibility and optimization. This comprehensive SEO plugin outperforms your ranking strategies with an AI title and meta description generator. From adding canonical links to getting advanced XML sitemaps, Yoast SEO has every feature to strengthen your SEO game.
This best WordPress plugin also shows the scope of improvements in optimizing your web pages and content. Moreover, its Semrush integration suggests focus and relevant keywords for your posts and pages, resulting in a high ranking in SERP. Simply put, Yoast SEO includes every feature needed to optimize your website and boost site traffic.
Jetpack
Jetpack is a security and backup plugin that keeps your website safe and tracks traffic with real-time data-driven stats. Through its activity log, you can monitor every change made on your site. You can also block spam comments and form submissions using this essential WordPress backup plugin. In addition to this, you can even keep your login page safe with its brute force attack functionality.
Jetpack can automatically publish blogs and posts on different social channels to enhance your site traffic and performance. It also handles customer relationships for you with its Jetpack CRM solution.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
ShortPixel Image Optimizer is a powerful and user-friendly WordPress plugin designed to compress and optimize images on websites to improve performance, enhance user experience, and boost SEO rankings. It achieves this by reducing the size of image files without compromising on quality. The tool supports various image formats including JPEG, PNG, GIF, HEIC, PDF, as well as WebP/AVIF conversion.
WPForms
WPForms is a WordPress form builder that includes 1500+ pre-built templates for prompt form creation and customization. Whether you want to create a subscription or multi-step form, everything is possible using this WordPress form solution. Besides, your created form will be 100% device-responsive and mobile-friendly. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about how it looks.
Moreover, 17+ payment, newsletter, and marketing integrations are available in this form solution. Apart from creating forms, you can translate them into 30+ languages using this best and free WordPress form builder.
Elementor
Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder, recognized for its friendly and codeless website building functionalities. It has built-in templates, sections, and blocks that you can further customize as per your preferences. Also, you can do everything from scratch with its 100+ widgets, features, and tools.
Because of its vast website-building opportunities, 5+ million websites are actively using this solution. Again, you can restore the previous version of your site with a single click. Thus, it’s counted as one of the top WordPress plugins for its compatibility, lightweight functionality, user-friendliness, and responsiveness.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that creates an eCommerce platform while having complete ownership of the store’s content and data. This eCommerce solution is compatible with all popular WordPress plugins and themes. By creating a store using WooCommerce, you can receive payments from your audiences in 100+ payment gateways.
Besides its compatibility with marketing and social tools such as HubSpot, Google Analytics, etc. will disclose your marketing gaps and let you work on those. Using its 68+ supported languages, you can establish a scalable eCommerce site.
EchoRewards
EchoRewards is a WordPress referral plugin that lets your customers share custom referral links and enjoy discounts with friends and families. Not only generating custom links but also tracking the referral program is possible with this best free WordPress plugin. It contributes to word-of-mouth marketing and boosts customer acquisition to increase conversions and sales.
This plugin has a floating referral widget that displays a custom referral popup on any page of your site. Also, you can set the highest discount and minimum purchase amount to avail of the referral programs using this solution.
Jitsi Meet
Jitsi Meet is a short code and builder-supported video conference or webinar plugin. It lets you sit in on live conferences from your WordPress websites. Its LMS, Calendar, and WooCommerce integration make launching a live webinar even more fruitful. Besides these, you can also create custom URLs for your meeting that reflect your brand.
Jitsi Meet gives you the flexibility to customize the video resolutions according to different devices. Also, it’s looking forward to bringing integrations with handy email marketing tools.
Imagify
Imagify is an image compression plugin that resizes images and reduces the weight of your media files. The optimized media files ensure your website speed remains super smooth. Besides, it can restore the original media file with a single click.
Also, you can optimize images in bulk and convert them into Webp and AVIF formats in minutes. Due to fast website speed and higher SEO outcomes, Imagify should be on the list of recommended WordPress plugins for your site.
Easy Video Reviews
The significance of reviews and testimonials for a business should never be underestimated. Rather than text, video testimonials are more impactful. And, Easy Video Reviews ensures you leave no stone unturned sharing reviews and boosting credibility for your virtual stores. This must-have and robust WordPress plugin lets you create personalized video testimonials and share them on your site.
Over and above that, it helps you manage all reviews on a single dashboard with a responsive and friendly interface. Easy Video Reviews also has support for popular builders like Elementor, Beaver, Gutenberg, Divi, etc. Additionally, its language support can reinforce outcomes for your word-of-mouth marketing.
Monsterinsights
MonsterInsights is another best and recommended WordPress plugin that is actively used by over 3 million users. It comes with the simplest Google Analytics setup that benefits WordPress beginners as well as experts. Also, its data-driven insightful WordPress analytics dashboard will allow you to make prompt marketing decisions for your businesses.
On top of it, HubSpot creates reports by highlighting the points that need your focus. By working on these takeaways, you can be competitive and reach new heights.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform that strategizes your email campaigns, lead management, and analytics to enjoy the best business outcome. Using this tool, you can create custom forms for collecting and nurturing leads that you have never done before. Besides, it provides a dashboard with in-depth data analytics. This insightful analytics will let you plan new business strategies for your brand.
Further, HubSpot has live chat and chatbot support for flawless customer relationship management. It is also well-known for its template support, 1000+ integrations, and drag-and-drop newsletter creation.
Stock Sync with Google Sheet
This WooCommerce solution integrates with Google Sheets and manages all stocks in one dashboard. You don’t need to go back and forth to ensure smooth stock management. Stock Sync for WooCommerce allows you to connect Google Sheets with your eCommerce store via sharing URLs and managing stocks there. On top of that, you can give editorial access to your team members to edit that spreadsheet.
Again, managing product variations using this plugin is super easy to ensure transparent stock management. Also, it automatically updates all stocks and saves you from tiring and tedious manual stock updating tasks. Overall, it handles everything needed for your eCommerce stock management.
Stock Notifier for WooCommerce
Stock Notifier for WooCommerce is a tool specially created for eCommerce websites to manage stockout products. Thanks to this tool, you can notify your audience regarding stock unavailability via WhatsApp and SMS. Also, using the restocking requests, you can assume market demand and restock products accordingly.
In addition to this, it supports 200+ SMS and WhatsApp gateways. While using this plugin, you don’t need to think about compatibility with popular multivendor plugins like WooCommerce, Dokan, WCFM, etc. Thus, if your concern is stock management then, Stock Notifier is a powerful solution to rely on.
WP Mail SMTP
If you’re worried about your email deliverability and looking for a tool then WP Mail SMTP is a WordPress plugin you can count on. It makes sure your emails land right in your audience’s inboxes by using a proper SMTP provider. Moreover, this plugin comes with email stats, backup connections, smart conditional routing, email alerts, etc functionalities to boost your email deliverability.
Apart from these, WP Mail SMTP supports more than 11+ email providers to increase email deliverability. You can also keep a record of all your sent emails using this SMTP and Email Log plugin. Further, email tracking, resending, reporting, optimizing, and many more exclusive features are available in this WordPress plugin.
AddToAny Share Buttons
Social media should be your main focus in business promotion and marketing. Because you will hardly find a customer who doesn’t use social channels. This AddToAny Share Buttons ensures your business is in every social platform by facilitating social sharing options. It supports sharing your posts on all the popular social channels including Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Threads, WeChat, Reddit, etc.
Moreover, you can display custom and responsive social share buttons on your site using this best WordPress plugin. Again, its Google Analytics integration provides sharing analytics and lets you adopt more strategies for your business growth and success. It also overcomes the communication barriers with 28+ supported languages.
MailPoet
MailPoet simplifies running email campaigns right inside the WordPress dashboard. With this WordPress plugin, you can build custom subscription forms and collect leads for your businesses. You can perform this customization with built-in newsletter and form templates. Additionally, it introduces automation in newsletter and email marketing that boosts lead collection.
MailPoet also ensures your emails don’t end up in spam boxes by improving authentication with SPF and DKIM. Moreover, its support for delivering welcome, abandon cart, and criteria-based targeted emails such as location, purchase, etc. boost conversion rates. Because of these functionalities, you can outperform your email marketing campaigns.
FormyChat
FormyChat is good for providing a personalized and tailored experience that your audience loves to have. It can instantly send contact form information to WhatsApp and let you manually handle your customers. Additionally, you can customize the fields of your contact forms and display a custom floating WhatsApp icon on your site.
This helps you to nurture leads and convert them into sales. Further, you can easily export leads in CSV files for future use. This facilitates overall conversions and revenue of your site, allowing you to open the locked doors in customer support and relationship management.
Link Whisper
Link Whisper is another essential plugin for WordPress, allowing you to link your relevant pages or posts with your blogs in the shortest possible time. You don’t have to manually check and link pages. It will automatically suggest linking relevant pages and posts with anchor texts. As a result, you have to spend minimal time building internal links to unlock Google ranking opportunities.
Again, you will get in-depth reports on broken links, 404 errors, and so on. This lets you quickly fix link-building errors. Also, it has a cross-site linking feature that eases linking relevant posts among different sites.
TranslatePress
TranslatePress is a WordPress translation plugin that can translate the entire site with a single click. Besides, since it’s a GPL and self-hosted plugin, you will have rights to all your translations. Also, you can edit and preview your translated sites simultaneously. Its additional compatibility with WooCommerce opens the door to vast opportunities while creating eCommerce sites.
Moreover, you can even translate images, slides, and other files from your WordPress sites. Not only images but also Gutenberg blocks can be translated using this translation plugin. Its manual and automatic translation support makes the complete translation process a breeze. Thus, it lets you seamlessly create multilingual sites and expands your business at a large scale.
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is specially designed to boost SEO, website performance, and loading speed through the Content Delivery Network. This plugin promises to bring 10x improvements in your site performance and ranking. Also, it saves up to 80% bandwidth through HTML, CSS, and JS file minification. By implementing this WordPress cache solution, you can experience website performance that you have never seen before.
Spectra
Spectra is a WordPress Gutenberg Editor that reinforces website creation with 30+ fully customizable blocks. It offers 100+ pre-built templates for pages and websites to experience a flawless website-building experience. Besides, using this block plugin, you can design and rank sites without coding expertise.
Additionally, it offers endless customization options through blocks, modules, and templates. Also, Spectra includes an image and icon-rich library, making website designing with proper branding even more feasible. Moreover, this Gutenberg plugin is completely device-responsive and user-friendly. Thus, Spectra should deserve your attention while creating and launching your WordPress websites.
Wrapping up
Your website performance and functionality greatly influence the plugin you use. Each and every plugin comes with some features that can be used to introduce the same set of functionalities in your site. So, you have to pick the essential plugins for WordPress very cautiously for smooth website performance and function.
Above we’ve gone through the most prominent and useful plugins for any WordPress website. According to your website niche, the list might vary. Still, this can be considered a general plugin list for any site. So, go through the above-listed plugins and their features and find out the best WordPress plugins that fit the needs of your site.
