Discover the 24 essential WordPress plugins for business websites in 2023

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Are you searching for the top-notch WordPress plugins to elevate your business in 2023?

With an overwhelming amount of over 60,000 WordPress plugins to choose from, it can be daunting for new users to pinpoint the perfect plugin for their website.

Our readers frequently ask about the best WordPress plugin recommendations for various functionalities such as SEO, social media, backups, and speed.

As the most extensive WordPress resource site, our team of experts rigorously tests thousands of free and paid WordPress plugins annually to assist our users (you) in discovering the most suitable solutions.

Utilizing the proper set of WordPress plugins and tools can contribute to the growth of your online business. In this article, we have compiled our expert selection of essential WordPress plugins for business websites in 2023.



1. WPForms



Having a contact form on your website is essential to enable visitors to reach out to you easily. Among the contact form plugins for WordPress, WPForms is the most user-friendly.

This online form builder allows you to create various types of online forms, such as contact forms, email subscription forms, payment forms, online order forms, surveys, polls, and others, using a drag-and-drop interface with over 500 pre-built templates.

WPForms integrates with popular marketing and payment platforms, enabling you to build powerful forms quickly, typically in less than five minutes.

It offers unique features that are not available in other form builders, such as conversational forms, lead forms, form landing pages, user journey tracking, form abandonment, geolocation tracking, GDPR compliance, and custom WordPress user registration and login forms.

We use WPForms on the WPBeginner website and all our other websites, and it has consistently maintained a high rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars for over five years. Over 5 million websites use WPForms.

WPForms offers a free WPForms Lite version for those who need a simple solution. However, if you are looking to grow your business, we recommend getting the Pro version, which includes all the powerful features necessary to boost your lead generation efforts. Use this WPForms coupon to get a 50% discount on your purchase.

Alternatively, Formidable Forms is an excellent alternative for creating advanced solution-focused WordPress forms.


2. All in One SEO



Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for driving more traffic to your website through search engines. While WordPress is SEO-friendly by default, implementing SEO best practices can help you improve your website's search engine ranking.

One of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO is All in One SEO (AIOSEO), with over 3 million websites using it.

AIOSEO provides a comprehensive solution with all the necessary features and tools to enhance your website's on-page SEO. It enables you to add SEO titles, meta descriptions, keywords, generate XML sitemaps, connect your website to Google Search Console, optimize it for social media, and more.

The AIOSEO team continues to innovate and add new SEO features to improve your website's ranking. For example, the content optimizer with TruSEO score, headline analyzer, and custom schema generator for adding FAQ schema, review schema, and other schema markup.

To set up AIOSEO on your website, follow our complete AIOSEO setup guide, then check out our ultimate WordPress SEO tutorial for beginners.

While a free version of AIOSEO is available, the pro version includes more powerful features like WooCommerce SEO, local SEO, smart schema, video sitemap, news sitemap, smart redirection manager, 404 error detection and fixing, advanced breadcrumbs, and an internal link assistant feature that automates the internal linking process to boost SEO.

To get a 50% discount on the pro version, check out our All in One SEO coupon.

Alternatively, Yoast SEO is another good alternative to AIOSEO.



3. MonsterInsights



If you want to track your website's performance and see how people interact with it, integrating Google Analytics is essential. MonsterInsights is a top-rated Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that lets you easily connect your site with Google Analytics to gain valuable insights.

One of the best things about MonsterInsights is that it offers an intuitive dashboard that displays all the key stats and metrics right inside your WordPress admin area.

Using this information, you can improve your website and increase your traffic, subscribers, and revenue. We have a range of detailed guides on how to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site, track user engagement, and enable eCommerce tracking.

While MonsterInsights has a free version, upgrading to the premium version unlocks even more features and functionality. You can use our exclusive MonsterInsights coupon to receive a 50% discount on your purchase.

Trusted by over 3 million websites, MonsterInsights is the perfect solution for anyone looking to gain deeper insights into their website's performance.


4. Constant Contact



As a business owner, email can be one of the most effective and reliable marketing tools at your disposal. It allows you to stay in touch with your customers even after they leave your website. That's why we recommend building an email list as soon as possible.

Constant Contact is a world-renowned email marketing service provider. Their platform allows you to build an email list and send beautifully designed email newsletters to your subscribers.

Their setup process is quick and easy, making it perfect for non-technical users. It also integrates well with popular lead generation plugins for WordPress like OptinMonster and WPForms.

If you're looking for more advanced options, HubSpot, Omnisend, Sendinblue, and ConvertKit are all great alternatives, but they come at a higher price point.



5. OptinMonster



OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software in the market. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers.

This WordPress plugin and application helps you get more email subscribers and sales, fast.

You can use their hundreds of high-converting templates to create WordPress popups, slide-ins, announcement bars, gamified spin a wheel, and full-screen welcome mats to capture users’ attention.

Each opt-in form or campaign template can be easily customized with their drag & drop builder.

OptinMonster’s powerful display targeting features allow you to personalize the campaigns for each user, so you can show the right message at the right time.

It’s a great solution for bloggers, business websites, and eCommerce websites. Basically, if you want to make more money from your website traffic, then you need OptinMonster.

It helps you recover abandoned cart sales, convert website visitors, and grow your email list. Read these case studies to see how much success other businesses are having by using OptinMonster.

We use OptinMonster on WPBeginner and our other websites.

There’s a free version of OptinMonster available if you signup from inside the WordPress plugin.

Alternatives: Thrive Leads is a popular alternative for creating popups in WordPress.


6. SeedProd



SeedProd is a highly acclaimed page builder for WordPress, offering a simple drag and drop interface that enables you to customize your website design and create custom page layouts without any coding.

Business owners love SeedProd for its ability to create entirely custom landing pages within minutes, saving them the time and cost of hiring a developer.

The recent update has added an exciting new feature, allowing you to create custom WordPress themes with the SeedProd builder without any code.

With over 200 beautifully designed templates to choose from or the option to create your own custom layout, SeedProd's easy-to-use drag and drop page builder is a powerful tool that requires no coding knowledge.

SeedProd provides pre-made templates for various types of pages, including landing pages, sales pages, thank you pages, webinar registration pages, coming soon pages, maintenance mode pages, 404 pages, frontend login pages, and more.

The tool's smart design system allows you to save time by re-using elements, defining color schemes, saving font combinations, page templates, custom blocks, sections, and more.

SeedProd offers all the blocks, widgets, and features expected of a robust page builder, such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers, contact forms, buttons, pricing page blocks, various content blocks, and more.

The tool also comes with built-in subscriber management and seamless integration with third-party email marketing services and CRM software.

One of the best aspects of SeedProd is its ability to work with all WordPress themes, meaning you won't have to change your current theme to create a custom design.

If you're looking for an alternative, Thrive Architect, Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi page builder plugins are excellent options with robust features. You can also try CSS Hero for theme customization.


7. MemberPress



MemberPress is a powerful WordPress membership plugin that enables you to create online courses, communities, and membership sites with ease. It is widely considered the best WordPress membership plugin available in the market.

With MemberPress, you can create subscriptions and restrict content access to users based on their subscription plans. The plugin works seamlessly with all popular payment solutions such as Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more.

As a premium plugin, MemberPress comes with several powerful features, including drip content, course management (LMS), quizzes, certifications, group memberships, paid forums, powerful access rules, automation features, and more.

For detailed instructions, you can refer to our guide on how to make a membership website in WordPress. You can also connect MemberPress with all popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and others to communicate with your customers.

MemberPress has helped creators generate over $600 million dollars in revenue each year.

If you're looking for alternatives, Thrive Apprentice and LearnDash are other good WordPress LMS plugins that enable you to create and sell online courses. Easy Digital Downloads is a great alternative for selling digital downloads such as eBooks, software, music, and more.



8. UpdraftPlus



UpdraftPlus is a highly popular WordPress backup plugin that enables you to configure automated backups and securely store them on remote locations such as Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Rackspace, FTP, email, and more. In addition, restoring your website from a backup is made incredibly easy with this plugin. While the basic version of UpdraftPlus is free, a paid plan with extra features and priority support is also available.

This plugin is an absolute necessity for every WordPress blog and website because backups are an indispensable tool to have.

Alternatively, Duplicator, BackupBuddy, and VaultPress (Jetpack Backups) are also excellent backup solutions, but they are only available for a fee.



9. WP Rocket



WP Rocket is a leading caching plugin for WordPress, delivering an effortless way to boost the speed and performance of your website without requiring any technical expertise.

By automatically activating recommended caching settings such as page cache, gzip compression, and cache pre-loading, WP Rocket ensures immediate improvements to your site's speed. Moreover, optional features like DNS pre-fetching, CDN support, minification, and lazy loading images further optimize page load times.

One of the best features of WP Rocket is its automatic crawling and caching of your website. It doesn't wait for page requests before saving them in the cache, resulting in a significant performance boost.

The plugin also offers Imagify, a free image optimization service, for additional speed optimization. Additionally, WP Rocket integrates seamlessly with other tools like Cloudflare API and Sucuri to enhance your website caching setup.

WP Rocket is the easiest and most beginner-friendly caching plugin in the market, but it is a paid-only solution. Alternatively, free options like SiteGround Optimizer, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache are available, but they are not as robust or user-friendly.



10. WP Mail SMTP



By default, WordPress relies on the PHP mail function to send emails, which can lead to issues with either improper configuration or blockage of the function by hosting providers. Consequently, critical email notifications from your WordPress site may fail to reach you or your users.

WP Mail SMTP resolves this problem by enabling WordPress to send emails through an SMTP mail server. For more information, check out our guide on how to address the WordPress email delivery issue.

With over 3 million websites using it, WP Mail SMTP is a crucial tool to ensure email delivery. We at WPBeginner also use this plugin.

For optimal support, consider upgrading to WP Mail SMTP Pro. With the paid version, you will receive personalized assistance in setting up the plugin, email logs, and other additional features. Essentially, their support team will configure the plugin to connect with your SMTP service provider.

The free version of WP Mail SMTP, however, can be used to connect with popular SMTP services like Sendlayer, SMTP.com, Mailgun, Gmail, and more.


11. Sucuri



Ensuring the security of your online business is of utmost importance. Sucuri provides an excellent WordPress security plugin and web application firewall that offers top-notch protection for your site.

The plugin actively monitors and safeguards your website from a range of attacks including DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, brute force attacks, spam comment attacks, and many more. If you're without a website firewall, it's crucial to install one immediately.

To learn more about securing your website and protecting your business, take a look at our ultimate WordPress security guide, providing step-by-step instructions for beginners.

Sucuri has been instrumental in blocking hundreds of thousands of attacks on WPBeginner every month.

One of the added benefits of using Sucuri is that it automatically adds a CDN layer, boosting your site's speed significantly.

While other security plugins like WordFence and WP Activity Log exist, none of them offer the comprehensive protection that Sucuri does. The only viable alternative is Cloudflare, which can be quite expensive if you opt for their premium add-ons.



12. PushEngage



PushEngage is an outstanding web push notification plugin for WordPress that allows you to send targeted messages and announcements to your website visitors through browser push notifications.

At WPBeginner, we use push notifications alongside our email newsletter to increase customer engagement and website traffic. It consistently ranks as a top 5 traffic source.

PushEngage boasts powerful features such as drip campaigns, A/B testing, dynamic user segmentation, opt-in reminders, robust analytics, goal tracking, and more.

For eCommerce websites, it can send automatic notifications for cart abandonment, price drops, inventory alerts, and more.

For bloggers and publishers, it can automatically notify subscribers of new blog posts.

PushEngage is compatible with all website builder platforms, including WordPress, Shopify, Bigcommerce, and more. They offer a user-friendly PushEngage WordPress plugin that enables web push notifications on your website with ease.

Moreover, unlike other providers in this space, PushEngage DOES NOT sell your data, making it a highly secure and trustworthy solution.

An alternative to PushEngage is OneSignal, a popular alternative that provides similar features. However, they sell your data on free plans.



13. Uncanny Automator



The WordPress automation plugin, Uncanny Automator, stands out as the top choice for users. Its primary feature is the ability to connect WordPress plugins without coding, enabling the automation of repetitive administrative tasks, saving both time and money.

With seamless integration to popular WordPress plugins and third-party platforms, users can create automation recipes easily and without needing to hire a developer. This is made possible by selecting from over 500 triggers and actions to construct simple "if this then that" recipes on their WordPress site.

In simpler terms, Uncanny Automator enables WordPress plugins and other business tools to communicate and work better together. It's similar to Zapier, but designed specifically for WordPress.

Moreover, the plugin allows users to connect two distinct WordPress sites without coding, which is particularly useful for online stores and membership sites.

Some examples of how Uncanny Automator can be used include linking two WordPress sites to handle product sales and user account creation simultaneously, setting up buttons to automatically create user accounts and trigger actions in WordPress, and adding custom user attributes to profiles based on user behavior. Additionally, users can trigger automation recipes in one plugin based on an action in another, such as using WPForms submissions to create an order in WooCommerce. The plugin can also be integrated with business apps like Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, Zoom, and others.

It's worth noting that a free version of Uncanny Automator with basic automation capabilities is also available.



14. SearchWP



The SearchWP plugin is a highly advanced WordPress search tool that enables you to enhance the search functionality on your website. It empowers your website visitors to effortlessly find what they are looking for on your site.

Compared to the standard WordPress search feature, SearchWP offers more comprehensive indexing capabilities. It indexes everything on your site, including custom fields, ACF fields, text files, PDF document content, custom tables, custom taxonomies, custom post types, WooCommerce product attributes, and much more.

You can also customize your relevance scale and modify the algorithm without requiring any coding knowledge, providing you with ultimate flexibility.

Furthermore, the search metrics feature enables you to track what your visitors are searching for, what they are finding or not finding, and make informed decisions to enhance content discoverability.

The plugin provides a range of powerful features, such as live AJAX search in WordPress. It also seamlessly integrates with other WordPress plugins, including but not limited to WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Meta Box, Toolset, BigCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and bbPress.


15. Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)



Google Workspace, previously known as G Suite, is a collection of web-based applications that includes email, document processing, spreadsheet creation, and more. Developed by Google, this robust suite of office tools is cost-effective, straightforward to implement, and trouble-free.

By using Google Workspace, you can reduce your expenses on software licenses, hardware, IT personnel, backup management, and other related expenses. Additionally, it enables you to use professional email addresses that incorporate your business domain name right within Gmail.

Alternatively, you may also consider obtaining a complimentary business email from your WordPress hosting provider or using Microsoft Office365 as an alternative.


16. SEMRush



SEMRush is an all-encompassing marketing toolkit designed for digital marketing professionals and business owners. It provides a wide range of robust tools that aid in enhancing your SEO, paid traffic strategy, social media, and content & PR strategy.

Moreover, SEMRush facilitates gathering competitive intelligence on your competitors, allowing you to surpass them and establish dominance in your industry.

We use SEMRush for a variety of purposes, such as keyword research, backlink audit, brand mentions tracking, competitor analysis, social media post and page performance evaluation, ad strategy analysis, keyword rank tracking, and more.

It is challenging to fully encapsulate the actual capability of SEMRush in a few paragraphs. It is an essential tool for committed business owners, and it seamlessly integrates with the aforementioned AIOSEO.



17. LiveChat



LiveChat Inc is an exceptional live chat support software, catering to businesses and e-commerce websites. It is incredibly user-friendly and enables you to add live chat functionality to your WordPress site quickly.

It boasts numerous customization options and a mobile app that permits you to deliver real-time support. Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with your existing support software, CRM, email marketing tools, and more. It loads rapidly and delivers an excellent user experience.

The LiveChat team also developed ChatBot.com, which is an outstanding AI-powered chatbot software. When combined with LiveChat, it guarantees that your users receive prompt responses using AI + human assistance.

As an alternative, HubSpot and Sendinblue Chat are other well-known services that allow you to connect chat, CRM, SMS, Facebook, and email in a single platform.


18. Pretty Links Pro



Pretty Links Pro is among the top link management plugins available for WordPress. It simplifies affiliate link management while also making it simple to create short, memorable affiliate links for sharing.

It is ideal for affiliate marketers, podcasters, business owners, and anyone seeking to create short URLs in WordPress with ease.

As an alternative, ThirstyAffiliates is an outstanding option for affiliate marketers, featuring numerous advanced features, including Amazon integration. Additionally, TastyLinks is a superb alternative that caters specifically to the food blogger audience.


19. Shared Counts



Shared Counts is an exceptional WordPress social media plugin that allows you to effortlessly add attractive social sharing buttons to your website. It also displays share counts, which adds social proof to your site.

While there are numerous paid solutions available, this free plugin surpasses them all in code quality and performance. We use SharedCount on many of our websites since it offers a simple out-of-the-box solution for both beginners and developers.

Suppose you want to display more social proof by automatically showcasing your latest Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube content on your site. In that case, we suggest checking out Smash Balloon plugins. They are used by 1.6 million websites and are the top social media feed plugin in WordPress.


20. WPCode



WPCode (previously known as Insert Headers and Footers) is a WordPress plugin that simplifies the process of adding code snippets to your website's header or footer without requiring any coding skills.

This plugin lets you insert custom PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and text code snippets, and it also has a built-in code snippet library with the most commonly used code snippets.

One of the main benefits of WPCode is that it allows you to manage all your code snippets from a single screen and organize them using tags.

The pro version of WPCode provides additional features such as Code Revisions for version control, device-based targeting for code, the ability to add specific code snippets for person posts and pages, and deep integration with WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and other popular WordPress plugins.

WPCode was created by Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner.



21. RafflePress



RafflePress is an exceptional WordPress plugin for giveaways and contests that can significantly enhance your website's traffic, social media following, and email subscribers. With its easy-to-use drag and drop giveaway builder, along with its proven templates, you can create a giveaway that will catch visitors' attention quickly.

To participate in the giveaway, visitors must provide their email address, which can help you grow your email newsletter subscribers. RafflePress encourages users to follow your social profiles and share the contest with their friends to earn more entries. This results in an increase in social media engagement, word-of-mouth marketing, and faster traffic growth, leading to more followers, sales, and revenue.

RafflePress allows for easy integration with popular marketing platforms, CRMs, and WordPress form plugins. You can start with the free version, RafflePress Lite, but for more powerful features to accelerate your growth, RafflePress Pro is the way to go.

If you're a WPBeginner user, you can use our RafflePress coupon code "wpbeginner20" to receive an additional 20% off.


22. WPML



Creating a multilingual website in WordPress can be a daunting task since it doesn't come with that feature by default. This can be particularly challenging for businesses catering to a multilingual customer base in different geographic locations.

This is where WPML comes in handy. It's a WordPress multilingual plugin that makes it easy to create multilingual websites with WordPress. It's user-friendly, SEO-friendly, and enables you to create content effortlessly in various languages.

However, if you're looking for a fast-growing alternative, TranslatePress is an excellent option to consider.



23. WooCommerce



With over 5 million websites using it, WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It provides all the essential features you need to create an online store, making it the dominant plugin for eCommerce on WordPress, built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, and other well-known services.

Nowadays, there's a vast WooCommerce ecosystem, offering dedicated WooCommerce hosting, themes, and plugins that cater to the plugin's growing popularity. If you're planning to start an eCommerce store using WooCommerce, we recommend using SiteGround, or alternatively, Bluehost's new eCommerce plan. This plan comes with premium WooCommerce extensions for free, such as subscriptions and bookings, worth over $1000+.

To grow your WordPress eCommerce site, we suggest some useful plugins like TrustPulse, which helps build customer trust with social proof and FOMO, FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) to help build sales funnels and add eCommerce automation to WordPress, Advanced Coupons, which adds loyalty programs, gift cards, and advanced coupon features to WooCommerce, and Stripe for WooCommerce, a free plugin that helps you easily accept credit card payments, including Google Pay and Apple Pay.

If you're looking to sell digital downloads, Easy Digital Downloads is the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress. However, suppose you need a WordPress payment solution without setting up a shopping cart. In that case, WP Simple Pay is an excellent alternative to WooCommerce.


24. Nextiva



Nextiva is a top-tier business phone service that offers an array of features and is incredibly easy to use. With Nextiva, you can get a business phone number for your website that comes with advanced call routing, unlimited free domestic calling, voicemail to email or text, online faxing, and much more.

What's great about Nextiva is that you can receive calls from your business phone number straight to your cell phone, which is perfect for small businesses. Additionally, you can set business hours so that you are not disturbed during holidays or non-work hours.

Their platform also offers other communication features like CRM, live chat, online surveys, and more. You can manage everything through a simple web-based admin panel, making it easy for small business owners to handle everything like a pro.

At our business, we use Nextiva VOIP because it's one of the most reliable and affordable business phone services that can grow with your business.

If you're looking for alternatives, we highly recommend RingCentral and Ooma as other highly recommended phone service and business VoIP providers.



Bonus Tools



In addition to the previously mentioned top 24 WordPress plugins and tools, there are some other tools that we highly recommend to better manage your WordPress sites:

WP Simple Pay – A simple payment plugin for WordPress that allows you to accept credit card payments without having to set up a complete eCommerce cart. It supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH debit, and more. There's also a free version of the plugin available.

Smash Balloon – This is the top-rated social feed plugin for WordPress, used by 1.6 million websites. You can use their shortcode to display custom Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even a full social wall. The best part is that it's highly customizable, and a free version is available.

Thrive Quiz Builder – A powerful lead generation plugin for WordPress that helps you create viral quizzes to attract more email subscribers and increase user engagement.

Grammarly – A fantastic grammar checking tool that includes a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement, and more.

PublishPress – A plugin that simplifies the editorial workflow management of your WordPress site.

Antispam Bee – An excellent plugin for improving your site's comment section by reducing spam. It works well with Akismet to combat spam comments.

Adobe Photoshop – This tool makes it easier for us to create blog thumbnails and other images for our articles.

AffiliateWP – A plugin we use on some of our eCommerce sites to add a referral program. It works seamlessly with WooCommerce and other eCommerce platforms. (Alternative: Easy Affiliate).

FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) – A sales funnel builder, eCommerce marketing automation, and light-weight CRM for WordPress. It's an excellent alternative to ClickFunnels for WordPress.

Thrive Comments – A powerful WordPress comments plugin that helps boost user engagement with features like upvoting, user badges, subscribing to comments, and more.

Sugar Calendar – A light-weight event management plugin for WordPress. It easily syncs with Google Calendar, allows you to sell tickets, accept payments, and more.

WP 2FA – This plugin adds two-factor authentication to your WordPress sites, enhancing security. It's an excellent plugin developed by the same team behind WP Activity Log.

Envira Gallery – We use this plugin to create better WordPress galleries with features like photo albums, tagging, and other advanced gallery features.

Codeable – This platform connects you with expert WordPress developers who can help you troubleshoot problems and make customizations.


Our compilation of top WordPress plugins for business websites has come to an end. While all the plugins and tools discussed may not be relevant to your business, it's common for our readers to opt for a minimum of 15 to 18 solutions from the list.

We strongly advise you to download the plugins from the official WordPress.org plugin directory or through the links provided in our articles. Stay away from using nulled WordPress plugins and theme websites as they can pose a threat to your website's security.

Now that you've obtained the best WordPress plugins, you might want to check out our article on 27 proven tips to boost your website traffic.





Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)


We have assisted more than 400,000 business owners in building their websites and selecting the best plugins, so we have answered numerous questions. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions regarding WordPress plugins.


What are WordPress plugins and how do they function?

WordPress plugins are similar to applications for your website, enabling you to add custom features and functionality such as eCommerce and contact forms. This concept is comparable to that of apps on your smartphone.

If you want a more detailed explanation, check out our beginner's guide on what WordPress plugins are.



Do WordPress plugins affect site speed?

The effect of WordPress plugins on site speed depends on the person plugin, but poorly coded plugins can indeed slow down your website. However, most well-coded WordPress plugins will not negatively impact your site speed, especially if you employ proper caching and adhere to our WordPress performance best practices.

WordPress plugins that are exclusive to the admin area, such as WP Mail SMTP and Uncanny Automator, will not impede your website speed because they don't load on the frontend.

On the other hand, plugins that load assets such as images, scripts, and other files as your website loads for users (frontend) can have an impact on your website speed. Therefore, it's crucial to select the appropriate WordPress plugins, and the ones we recommend in our list are performance-optimized.

For additional information, please refer to our guide on how WordPress plugins affect your site's load time.


How many plugins should I use in WordPress?


An average WordPress site usually has about 15 to 18 plugins. However, the number of plugins you should use depends on your actual needs - don't go overboard.

The performance of your website is not affected by the number of plugins but rather their quality. The WPBeginner website, for example, has 62 active plugins but still runs smoothly due to the high quality of these plugins. On most of our sites, we have over 30 active plugins to help streamline our workflow.

Some people claim that plugins are what slows down your website, but this assertion is usually made out of frustration by inexperienced people.

If you want to learn more about this topic, please check out our detailed guide on how many WordPress plugins to install and when it's too many.


Are WordPress plugins worth it?


Premium WordPress plugins are definitely worth the investment as they can help you save a substantial amount of money on custom development costs. Additionally, you'll have access to expert support and regular feature updates.

Compared to SaaS alternatives, WordPress plugins are also more cost-effective because they are self-hosted on your site, giving you full control over your data.

For instance, building a custom form solution similar to WPForms with features like drag-and-drop form builder, smart conditional logic, numerous templates, integrations, surveys, polls, payment capability, etc could cost tens of thousands of dollars. However, you can purchase a premium license for WPForms starting at just $39 for the Basic license and $199 for the Pro license.

In contrast, Typeform, a SaaS form building tool that offers only a fraction of WPForms' features, costs $996 per year.


Do professional developers use WordPress plugins over custom code?


Indeed, professional developers often rely on WordPress plugins to increase their efficiency and profitability when working on client projects. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when a pre-existing tool can do the job more effectively.

For instance, if you hire a development agency to create an eCommerce website, they may charge you $15,000 for the project. However, behind the scenes, they might use various plugins to make the project more cost-effective for you and more profitable for them. These could include MonsterInsights for conversion tracking, FunnelKit for customized order forms, All in One SEO for proper SEO schema setup, and many others.

That's why most WordPress plugin companies offer Agency licenses, allowing developers to use their plugins on client projects.


What is the best free plugin for WordPress?


Some of the best free WordPress plugins that are highly recommended include WPForms, All in One SEO, MonsterInsights, SeedProd, WP Mail SMTP, OptinMonster, and WPCode.

When setting up a WordPress website, our team always installs the following top 5 WordPress plugins:

-WPForms - an excellent form builder plugin for contact forms and other types of forms.
-AIOSEO - an all-in-one SEO toolkit to help rank websites higher in search engines.
-MonsterInsights - the #1 analytics plugin for WordPress, essential for measuring and improving website growth.
-SeedProd - a plugin for building custom website designs and landing pages faster.
-WPCode - a code snippets plugin that replaces multiple plugins with a library of expert code snippets.

In addition to these, we always install backup plugins such as UpdraftPlus and caching plugins like WP Rocket or WP Super cache. WP Mail SMTP is also used to ensure website emails are delivered, and OptinMonster is used to unlock maximum revenue potential from each website visitor.

If you need help finding the best WordPress plugin for your specific use-case, please don't hesitate to reach out to us using our contact form. Also, feel free to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.