This page has a list of some of the best WordPress Plugins out there. Check out this list of top WordPress plugins and find out which plugins you should be using to improve your blogging efficiency.
Comment Spam Prevention
- Akismet – Best guard against comment spam for WordPress blog!
Database and File Backup Plugins
- BackWPup – BackWPup will back up your entire site including your database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- WordPress SEO by Yoast – Yoast’s all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
- All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Install the all in one seo pack or the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin (you don’t need to install both).
Blog Security Plugin
- All In One WP Security & Firewall – The All In One WordPress Security and Firewall is the ultimate security plugin that will take your WordPress site’s security to a whole new level.
- BulletProof Security – BulletProof security plugin offers website security protection against: XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection.
- Wordfence Security – The Wordfence WordPress security plugin provides free enterprise-class WordPress security.
Blog Statistics Related
- Google Analytics Dashboard -Â Displays Google Analytics reports in your WordPress Dashboard. Inserts the latest Google Analytics tracking code in your pages.
- Google Analytics - Enables Google Analytics on all pages. This one seems to be simple and does the job. However, the developer doesn’t seem to be very responsive.
- Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin used to be really good but since the original developer sold this plugin, it has gone downhill (many users have reported to us that it doesn’t work well anymore). So I would recommend you to use one of the other alternatives listed above.
- WP Statistics -Â A comprehensive plugin for your WordPress visitor statistics (doesn’t use Google Analytics).
Caching Plugin
- W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to using WP Super Cache.
- WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
Contact Forms Related
- Contact Form 7 – Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
- Contact Form – The Contact Form plugin allows you to implement a feedback form to a web-page or a post in no time.
- Gravity Forms – Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building.
RSS Subscription Related
- Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader.
- Category Specific RSS Menu – A simple WordPress plugin to add category specific RSS subscription menu into your posts, pages, sidebars. Very handy when your blog covers multiple topic from non related subjects. This plugin was developed by me.
Social Networking
- Social Media and Share Icons – Social media plugin which adds social media icons to your website with tons of customization features
- Sassy Social Share – This is a useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page with others.
- Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons Plugin – This is a very simple and FAT FREE share button plugin that adds Google plus one, Facebook and Twitter share buttons to your blog posts.
For Google Adsense
- Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar.
- Google Adsense Plugin – Google AdSense Plugin allows you to set parameters of the ads displaying, such as format (text ad, image, text with an image or link), size, color of the elements in the ad block, rounded corners and the ad block position on the website.
- Google Adsense – The AdSense Plugin enables you to easily use Google’s products – including Webmaster Tools – with your WordPress site.
Photo Gallery Plugin
- NextGen Gallery – The most popular WordPress photo gallery plugin.
- Gallery – Gallery is an advanced plugin with a list of tools and options for adding and editing images for different views.
E-commerce, Paypal, Stripe, Donation and Payment Related
- WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart – is a very easy to use plugin that allows you to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. Very useful when you want to sell eBooks or digital products from various posts and pages and need a WordPress Shopping Cart solution.
- Stripe Payments – A simple and lightweight plugin to accept payment on your site (for a product or service) via the Stripe payment gateway.
- WP Easy Paypal Payment Accept – This is a very easy to use WordPress plugin to Accept donation or Paypal payment for a service or a product in one click. Handy when you are trying to put a customized payment widget on your site (you can add it to the sidebar or a page or a post of your blog).
- WordPress eStore – This plugin provides a complete solution to sell products from your site. It is really good for selling digital products securely from your WordPress blog.
- WordPress Donations Widget Plugin – The WordPress Donations Widget Plugin allows you to collect donation for a cause from your WordPress powered site.
- WP Express Checkout – This plugin allows you to use the PayPal Express Checkout Gateway to accept payment for goods and services. Provides and overlay checkout experience for fast and easy checkout.
Membership Plugin
- Simple Membership Plugin – The simple membership plugin lets you protect your posts and pages so only your members (free or paid) can view the protected content.
- WP eMember – WP eMember is a feature rich membership plugin that can turn your existing or new WordPress site into a powerful membership site.
Affiliates Management
- WP Affiliate Platform – WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows you to reward (pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales.
Software License Management
- Software License Manager – This plugin allows you to create a software license management solution for your web applications (WordPress plugins, Themes, PHP based membership script etc.)
Other Very Useful Plugins
- Download Monitor – This plugin is very useful for managing and tracking your digital file downloads. You can track which file is being downloaded how many times and who is downloading them.
- Executable PHP Widget – Like the Text widget, but it will take PHP code as well. Very handy for inserting custom ‘php’, ‘html’, ‘javascript’ in the sidebar.
- Crayon Syntax Highlighter – A plugin to highlight any code in your posts or pages. very handy if you use example codes in your Blog.
- Mailpoet Newsletters – Send newsletters, post notifications or autoresponders from WordPress easily, and beautifully.
- WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. Allows you to easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.
- EWWW Image Optimizer – The EWWW Image Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that will automatically and losslessly optimize your images as you upload them to your blog.
- WP Video Lightbox – The WordPress Video Lightbox plugin allows you to embed videos on a page using lightbox overlay display. This plugin can be used to display images, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, iFrame etc in a nice lightbox overlay.
This page will be regularly updated to keep the plugin list up to date and relevant. Please suggest your favorite plugins through the comment area below so I can check them out and possibly add them to this useful plugins list.
Don’t forget to checkout the Plugins to Speed Up Your WordPress Site article too.
Awesome list. Thank you. I am already using many of them, but there are some new I will definitely try out.
SEO Yoast in one of my favorites. It really helps to streamline my blog posts for SEO and readability, and I always edit my posts according to their suggestions.
I use BetterClick2Tweet as alternative for Click2Tweet for its easier usability.
Thank you for pointing to Yet another related Post and BackupWordpress. I will definitely give them a try.
I use WP Faster Cache instead of WP Super Cache and I use Blog2Social of corse.
@Richard, I currently use all in one. I haven’t used the other ones you mentioned.
Great list! Most of these “best wordpress plugins” lists do not put up alternatives for the plugin category (e.g. SEO, social media etc.)
I’m currently torn between All-in-One and Yoast, but a friend also recommended Squirrly’s SEO plugin and SEO Ultimate as alternatives.
Have you guys tried those two out?
One of the best and must use wordpress include atabase backup amazon s3 which creates database backup for web page and upload them to amazon s3 cloud.
@Baljeet, The following tutorial should be a good starting point for you:
https://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/wordpress-optimization-tips-and-tricks-for-better-performance-and-speed-1435
I am using many of the above-listed plugins and very well satisfied with the performance of everyone. I am searching for a plugin that can boost up my website as it takes more loading time. Would you or anyone recommend me any plugin?
Great list of wordpress plugins. As we all know that plugins are the real power of wordpress and every wordpress blogs are incomplete without plugins but choosing the right plugin for a blog is the toughest thing……Thanks a lot for the great list of wordpress plugins.
@Frank, Jetpack plugin has an option for that. There is another plugin called subscribe2 which will do the job too. I personally use the solution from Google Feedburnder (it has an email option).
I really enjoyed the list of plugins and I’m already using many of them. Currently I’m looking for a really good plugin that will allow people to subscribe to the blog and also get e-mail updates when new content is posted. Do you or anyone else have a recommendation(s) for this?
superb plugins …. ilike most of them , these plugins have made my WP cool and sexy
All in one seo is my favorite and i would like to also suggest you contact form.
Thank you for sharing.
This list of plugins is awesome, i am using many of these plugins on my blog and now will use more from this list. Thanks for this plugin list.
I have looked at several “best wordpress plugins” lists and this one is pretty good because it narrows things down to a few best plugins for every type of functionality.
This a great collection of plugins. Keep up the fantastic work! Thanks for the list! I been looking for some good plugins to add to my site.
This is one of the best list of essential WordPress plugins that I found on the web so far. I love how you categorized them and give us the top plugins for that functionality.
My favorite SEO plugin is Yoast it makes easier to put the meta tags in the post so it’s good for both search engine and user engagement
Very good article. All the plugins shown in this article are really useful. every wordpress bloggers should use these plugins…
Great article! I’m going to checkout some of these plugins and see how they work on my site. Thanks for the suggestions!
This is a Complete list of plugins which anyone needs to make his blog Awesome. You have covered all the points Thanks a lot buddy
@WebTechGlobal, are you referring to this one?
http://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-csv-importer-2/
Pretty much the list of plugins most of us install monthly right.
Any chance of getting Easy CSV Importer in the list of Affiliate plugins as it imports affiliate data?
Thanks.
Wow, marvelous blog format! How long have you been running a blog for?
you made blogging look easy. The total look of your site is excellent,
let alone the content material!
Yoast SEO, Thumbs up. Love your list boss.
Thank You.
Perfect list of plugins. I use so many of these and have to agree with you, they are great. I am headed to go check out those I don’t have. Remember everyone to keep these plugins updated, I have heard of some wordpress security issues when you don’t have them all up to date.
Wooh! Perfect list of plugins!! Thanks for sharing!
Good plugins and nice review.
I use some of them and I’ll use some more after reading this post. Nice
Hi Tips & Tricks HQ,
This is a really awesome list of plugin essentials.
Nicely formatted too.
Regards,
Damian
Hey thanks a lot for this list, looking for something like this to setup my upcoming wordpress site!
Great plugin list. I use about 80% of those plugins on most of my WP sites. There is one plugin that I think does deserve some credit and was not on this list.
Broken Link Checker – This plugin checks for any broken links on your entire site and it is very handy.
Thanks.
Great Site! It contains a great collection of plugins. Keep up the fantastic work! Congratulations.
I like to use Squirrly SEO Plugin
Great tip! Thanks for sharing
It is always good to have list like this for newbie like me to learn different categories of wordpress plugins and install them appropriately.
Thanks for your share.
Outstanding sort out from the thousands of plugins, love it.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! I’m totally new with this web thing but with your detail instruction was able to place the WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart and it works.
thank you for this list.i have searched alot before but haven’t seen such a good list of plugins to use.
Thank You For Good Suggetion. I use some of them like Yaost SEO, Share This, Google XML sitemap etc and those are really amazing.
Very solid and great list! You have put a Lot of work on this list. I will use some of the pluigns that you listed… Thanks
We have recently updated our web site to Word Press (from cold fusion). The web site designer installed the Yoast Plug-in. But our SEO consultant wants to use the All in One SEO Pack. I am clueless and heretofore had not even heard of an SEO plug-in, though I am somewhat familiar with SEO best practices. But now I find myself having to referee between the designer and the person who will be responsible for our day to day SEO. Who’s right? And how do I resolve? Thanks so much for your help. rmk
Wow! Thank you so much. Starting blogger and I needed the info.
Hi let me add one more plugin to your WordPress plugins collection .
This plugin is for adding form in your pages or posts .
WordPress Form Maker allows you To add contact form with Google map and File upload (with other functionality of standard contact forms).
It’s very helpful and easy tool specially for beginners.
Here is the website where you can download the plugin – http://web-dorado.com/products/wordpress-form.html.
Very helpull for beginners in WordPress……..thank you
Thanks for sharing this . Currently looking at the best technique for a members site so very useful for me.
Thank you very much for the nice overview, information like this is hard to find on the web – you should add a Donation Button like ‘Buy me a beer’ somewhere to enable us to say thank you with more than just words !
thanks for this great article.I was searching in google from the
last couple of days about wordpress plugins.But unfortunately i
din’t find any great way.But now my journey comes to an end.Thanks
a lot for your great and informative article.If you post some more
interested articles like this in future.Please suggest me.
I will surely gonna read it
Nali
If you want to use a spam prevention plugin that is amazingly good, then don’t look beyond Akismet. It has the best guard that removes spam comments. I have personally been using it for quite some time now.
Great list and some good examples – these along with your paid plugins will really cover most options – using many of your plugins i must say it makes wordpress so powerful and easy to build sites …thanks again.