WordPress is the most popular and used open-source platform for developing and managing websites. The major contributing factors are the flexibility of development and the availability of more than enough plugins. There are more than 55,000 plugins and thousands of third-party website plugins available for users. With such a large number of plugins, it can be daunting for store owners to find a suitable plugin for your WordPress website.
Choosing the right plugin is crucial as it significantly affects the performance, speed, user-friendliness, and
security of your WordPress website. Much to users' relief, there are more than a few plugins that can benefit any WordPress website.
Why WordPress Plugins are Important for your Website?
Plugins are the foundation and building blocks of any website not just WordPress. They help store owners add functionalities to their websites ad improve their performance. Adding a contact form, increasing website speed, SEO optimization, email opt-ins, or online store, whatever you require WordPress plugins can do it for you.
In this pool of WordPress plugins, it can be hard to find the plugins that are useful and essential for your website. To save you from spending time and money searching for the ideal
plugins for optimizing your online store, we have gathered a detailed list of all the essential WordPress plugins for your WordPress website.
Yoast Plugin Overview
- Installs: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Salient Features: Content optimization, meta title, and description optimization, and web page optimization.
- Pricing: Base version free/ Premium version $89
Yoast SEO is undoubtedly one of the most popular and widely used WordPress plugins. Yoast SEO is synonymous with WordPress, even if you haven’t used WordPress, chances are that you have heard about the Yoast SEO plugin. It is a must-have plugin for any WordPress website, would be an understatement.
With more than 5 million installs, and the distinct red, orange, and green traffic lights theme, Yoast SEO stands out.
Yoast not only improves the SEO of your website but also helps you to improve content readability. Both these factors are crucial to ranking higher on the search engine result pages. Since SEO and content are integral to the success of any WordPress website, the Yoast SEO plugin is more than important.
Download Yoast SEO Plugin
WPForms Key Features
- Installs: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.9/5
- Salient Features: Pre-built contact form templates, drag-and-drop form builder, and shortcode embedding.
- Pricing: Basic version free/premium version starts from $39
Contact form and other forms are a basic requirement of any WordPress website, as it makes it easy for your customers to get in contact with you. WPForms is the most powerful and comprehensive plugin for building forms (especially contact forms). The WPForms plugin offers multiple features and is easy to use.
It is a drag-and-drop form builder with more than 300 built-in contact form templates. You can easily create contact forms, online order forms, payment forms, and email subscription forms. Moreover, WPForms can be easily integrated with the most common marketing and payment platforms to create attractive forms in less than 5 minutes.
WPForm plugin also allows you the ability to create forms from scratch. With powerful form features that are not available in most plugins such as conversational forms, abandonment forms, user journey, geo-tracking, and custom WordPress login and registration forms. To sum it all up, the WPForms plugin provides you with a user-friendly interface to create interactive and customized forms for different requirements of your website.
Download WPForms plugin
Modern Events Calendar key features
- Installs: 120,000+
- Rating: 4/5
- Salient features: easily setup events, 50+ design layouts, multiple payment gateways, and booking features.
- Pricing: Basic version is free/the premium version starts at $79.
Modern events calendar enables you to Manage your events quickly, easily, and in a modern way. The Modern Events calendar helps event coordinators to organize events for a variety of industries, including education, dining, communities, etc. And you can easily sell tickets, make money, and expand your business.
The Modern events calendar has an elegant and useful design. The MEC plugin features more than 50 layouts with various skins, and its lovely layouts work well together in terms of both aesthetics and usefulness.
Elementor Key Features
- Installs: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Key Features: Drag-and-drop page builder, Multiple free widgets, and 150+ templates library.
- Pricing: Basic version free/premium version starts at $49
From amateur to veteran web developers, everyone has used the Elementor plugin at some level. Even those who know nothing about web development also must have heard about Elemetor. This speaks volumes about the popularity and wide usage of the plugin alongside its 5+ million installs.
Elementor is a drag-and-drop plugin that allows you to create customized pages and posts. The best part about this plugin is that to build a web page, you don’t need to know about web development. Since you don’t need to write a single line of code to design creative landing pages. Another plus point is that the Elementor plugin is compatible with most WordPress plugins and editors such as Gutenberg.
Download Elementor plugin
WooCommerce Key Features
- Installs: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: WooCommerce Dashboard, Easy and quick setup, Multiple payment gateway support.
- Pricing: Basic version free/add-ons start from $6.
Most people confuse WordPress and WooCommerce with each other, as they both go hand-in-hand. WooCommerce is without a doubt the most popular and the best WordPress eCommerce plugin. If you are want to build an online store and looking for a powerful plugin, WooCommerce is the right choice for you. As it offers you all the features that you need to create an online store.
Over the years, WooCommerce has established itself as the leading eCommerce plugin for WordPress users. New users can easily add WooCommerce to WordPress in just a few minutes. Some of the main features of WooCommerce are as follows:
- Complete control over the creation and functionality of your online store.
- Quick and easy setup.
- Support multiple payment gateways.
- Accept credit cards, online transfers, and cash on delivery.
- Limitless customization by a wide range of extensions.
- Extensive support and documentation.
WooCommerce is a powerful plugin that gives you complete command on every aspect of your online store. From the sales process to checkout, theme management to plugin installation every aspect of your online store is at your fingertips. There are many useful plugins for WooCommerce that extend the standard functions and are easy to integrate. For example,
Calcurates allows you to display the most accurate shipping rates on the checkout
Download WooCommerce plugin
MonsterInsights Key Features
- Installs: 3+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: Real-time tracking, dashboard reports, performance statistics, and user tracking.
- Pricing: Basic version free/premium version starts at $99.
Once your website is developed, you want to measure and analyze different statistics to measure performance. The best way to measure website performance is to use Google Analytics. The best plugin to connect Google Analytics with WordPress is to use the MonsterInsights plugin.
To grow your website and business, you need to understand sources of traffic and how people find your website. There is no other better way than installing the MonsterInsights plugin on your WordPress website. The integrated dashboard provides you with real-time analytics. You will have access to data such as:
- Number of visitors
- Most visited pages
- Origins of traffic (geolocation)
- Sources/channels of traffic
- Actions carried out by visitors
Download the MonsterInsights plugin
WP Rocket Key Features
- Installs: 1+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: Improve page speed, reduce website loading time, and enable page caching for your website.
- Pricing: The basic plan starts at $49.
As discussed earlier, website speed is one of the if not the most important aspect of a website. Website cache plays an important role in website speed and overall performance. The only plugin you need for things related to website cache is WP Rocket. It is an effective caching plugin that helps you boost your loading times. The plugin creates a copy of all the dynamic pages on your website. This reduces the workload on your server hence increasing website performance and speed.
Rather than optimizing all images on your website, you can save pages in the cache which has proven much more efficient.
Besides caching web pages, WP Rocket enhances website performance with functionalities such as deferred image loading, minification of HTML code, concatenation of Javascript and CSS files, and database optimization.
Download the WP Rocket plugin
AIOSEO key features
- Installs: 3+ million
- Rating: 4.6/5.0
- Salient features: On-Page SEO analysis, sitemap generation, redirect manager, and built-in schema markups.
- Pricing: Basic plan starts at $49.
SEO helps businesses to drive traffic and increase conversions. Though WordPress is considered SEO friendly, there is much more that needs to be done. AIOSEO is the perfect choice for any WordPress website owner who is looking to improve SEO. It gives you complete control over every aspect of your website’s SEO. More than 3 million websites are using it to optimize their pages, posts, and products.
The most widely used feature is TruSEO. It analyzes your keywords, meta titles, meta descriptions, and content length and quality. Based on the analysis it gives you an SEO score and suggestions to improve your score. The plugin generates automated sitemaps which you can then customize. It also informs search engines including Google and Bing about the changes.
Download the AIOSEO plugin
WPML key features
- Installs: 1+ million
- Rating: 4/5
- Salient features: Multilingual translations, automatic translations, and human translations.
- Pricing: Multilingual CMS price starts at $99.
It is hard to create a multilingual website in WordPress. This can be daunting for businesses that offer services in different geographic locations. This problem can be solved by using the WPML plugin. WPML is a premium tool that emperors you to translate posts or pages into multiple languages. WPML is compatible with most WordPress themes and plugins, so you don’t have to patch your theme with the plugin. It is easy to use, SEO friendly, and can easily create or translate content in multiple languages.
Download the WPML plugin
- Install: 10,000+
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: Import and export products, WordPress users, WooCommercce customers, Support CSV, XML
- Pricing: Basic plan starts from $129
WooCommerce import export suite enables you to import and export WooCommerce products,reviews, orders, customers and coupons. You can import and export in different file formats such as CSV, XML and Excel. It facilitates the import/export of multiple product types ranging from Simple Products, Variable Products, Group Products, etc.
This plugin is compatible with multiple WooCommerce plugins such as the WooCommerce product bundle. You can schedule the import/export with dedicated FTP setting.You can make changes to existing products before or during the import/export.
Sucuri key features
- Installs: 8+ million
- Rating: 4/5
- Salient features: Audit security activity, lightning fast speed, and remote malware scanning and detection.
- Pricing: Limited version is free/the paid plans start at $199.
Security should be and is a top priority for all online business owners. To secure your website, you can’t find anything better than Sucuri. Sucuri is a comprehensive website security solution that gives your protection against malware, brute force attacks, and multiple other threats.
Once you turn on the Sucuri firewall, all traffic to your website passes through their CloudProxy servers, where each request is checked to weed out potentially harmful ones. Sucuri can lessen server strain and boost the functionality of your website by preventing all harmful traffic from entering your server. Sucuri also has the additional benefit of automatically adding a CDN layer, which greatly accelerates your website.
Download the Sucuri plugin
Akismet key features
- Installs: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient features: Block spam comments, comments history, and comment discard.
- Pricing: Akismet is free for personal use/Plans for commercial users start at $8.
No one likes spam comments whether it's on social media, blog posts, or personal websites. It is a reoccurring concern for most website owners and it can be easily dealt with by using the Akismet plugin. Akismet is one of the top WordPress plugins for preventing spam comments on your posts. The plugin filters potentially spammy comments and adds them to a queue for your review.
The worst spam mails are immediately permanently deleted by its discard feature, saving you disc space. Alternately, you can configure the plugin to temporarily hold spam messages in the spam folder for 15 days before permanently deleting them.
Download the Akismet plugin
UpdraftPlus key features
- Installs: 3+ million
- Rating: 5/5
- Salient features: Creating and storing website backup data.
- Pricing: Basic version free/premium version starts at $70.
Your WordPress site needs to be backed up to avoid data loss in the event of a system crash, hard drive failure, or security compromise. One of the top WordPress plugins for managing backups is UpdraftPlus.
You can set up automatic backups and save your data securely on a variety of cloud services, including Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Rackspace, FTP, and more. The plugin's remote storage,
UpdraftPlus Vault, is accessible with the premium version. The process of backing up and restoring website data is seamless. Database encryption is another fantastic premium feature that helps to protect the data on your website.
Download the UpdraftPlus plugin
WP All Import key features
- Installs: 1+ million
- Rating: 4.7/5
- Salient Features: Import XML or CSV files to WordPress
- Pricing: The price starts at $149
WP All Import streamlines and expedites challenging import processes with its four-step import procedure and a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. WP All Import can be used for a variety of tasks, including moving content from a legacy content management system to WordPress, creating an affiliate data feed-enabled store, showing real-time stock quotations or sports scores, or even creating a real estate portal. Moreover, there are no specific guidelines as to how the components in your file must be organized. Any XML or CSV file can be imported with WP All Import.
Download the WP All Import plugin
Add Featured Videos in Product Gallery key features
- Installs: 600+
- Rating: 4.2/5
- Salient features: Replace product image with a video, embed videos from different sources, and display videos on the product page.
- Pricing: price starts at $49.
WooCommerce product video gallery plugin enables admin to display product videos in place of product images. A video can either be added to the product gallery or substituted for the product image by the admin. Your customer won't be taken to another website in order to watch the video because it will play on the same page.
You can upload videos to the media gallery or source embed them from popular streaming websites such as:
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Dailymotion
You can upload videos in common formats including MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, FLV, and WMV.
Download the Add Featured Videos in Product Gallery plugin
Conditional Checkout Fields key features
- Installs: 10,000+
- Rating: 4.9/5
- Salient features: Create conditional checkout fields, edit or hide default checkout fields, and add fields to specific pages.
- Pricing: price starts at $49.
WooCommerce conditional checkout fields let you add new fields to your checkout page in order to collect useful data from your consumers. Edit, hide, or create your own custom checkout fields. Field label, placeholder, maximum length, and field validations are all included in the custom field option.
Display these fields on the order page, my account page, and the invoice email by using WooCommerce custom checkout fields. On the checkout page, you may define which fields are required and which are optional as well as change the pre-set choices. If the cart-condition requirements are not satisfied, the user won't be allowed to checkout.
Download the conditional checkout fields plugin
Poptin Features
- Install: 5,000+
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: Smart popups, Increase visitors’ engagement, Reduce shopping cart abandonment, and Generate more leads and sales.
- Pricing: Basic plan is Free and Premium Plan costs $59
With Poptin, you can carry out surveys, gather comments, and present visitors with more relevant material. It enables you to Increase subscription rates with the help of several pop-ups that are presented at the appropriate time. With the help of this plugin display an offer customer cannot refuse to reduce cart abandonment.
Create individualized popups with the help of the drag and drop feature and display the proper message when it is appropriate. Gather website leads with the assistance of embedded forms that are simple to integrate. Poptin allows you to send a welcome email or a coupon to your new subscribers.
WP All Export key features
- Installs: 90,000+
- Rating: 4.2/5
- Salient features: Choose data to export, export custom post type and fields, and easy integration with WordPress.
- Pricing: Minimum plan starts at $99.
You may export data for basic editing, move WordPress content to another website, establish a WooCommerce affiliate feed, generate filtered lists of WooCommerce orders, export new customer email addresses, and create and publish customized WordPress RSS feeds, and do a lot more with WP All Export.
The drag and drop interface of WP All Export makes it simple to choose precisely which data you want to export. CSV columns and XML elements can both be renamed
and rearranged as needed.
Download the WP All Export plugin
Product Feed Manager for WooCommerce key features
- Installs: 10,000+
- Rating: 4.4/5
- Salient features: auto-sync your WooCommerce store with Google merchant, schedule your product feed, and dynamic pricing feature
- Pricing: Basic version starts from $79
Product feed manager for WooCommerce enables you to export your WooCommerce product feed promote them on marketplaces to increase sales. This plugin provides advanced filters and pre-made merchant templates to generate XML feed in minutes. It also allows you to replace any attribute value with static text or different value according to preference.
Product Feed Manager for WooCommerce allows you to schedule your product feed to update automatically. With category mapping feature merge WooCommerce and google categories. It lets you include all required attributes to create accurate product feed.
Peach Pay key features
- Installs: 1k+ active installs
- Rating: 5/5
- Salient features: Conversion-optimized, fully configurable checkout window; payment method usage analytics; built-in field editor; product recommendation builder; multicurrency/multilingual options
- Pricing: free (no base cost and no transactional fee)
Supercharge your WooCommerce store's checkout & payment experience with PeachPay. PeachPay lets your customers check out straight from any and every page on your store using any number of payment options, including Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Afterpay, Google/Apple Pay, Affirm, Square, and more.
Every aspect of PeachPay is customizable, from the button to the window. And when we say configurable, we really mean it: product recommendation configuration, supporting multicurrency/multilingual set-ups, and field editing are all things you can do with PeachPay.
Did we mention that you get all of this for free? It's because PeachPay collects a percentage from the payment provider (i.e. Stripe or PayPal) instead of the merchant.#
Ochatbot key features
- Installs: 3,000+
- Rating: 5/5
- Salient features: True AI for eCommerce, ability to switch topics mid-conversation mimicking a real life conversation, email-less abandoned cart, order status & tracking, search for products and add to cart right from the chatbot window, page targeting, up-sell & cross-sell, Zapier connections, built-in or third party live chat, AI sentiment analysis
- Pricing: 45-day free trial, Free plan, Basic plan $29, Plus plan (eCommerce) $99, Pro plan (fully managed) $495.
Ochatbot engages shoppers in a conversation, helping them find the right products as well as answering their questions which overcomes sales obstacles and reduces support tickets. When shoppers engage Ochatbot in a conversation revenue lifts 20% - 40%. Ochatbot also reduces support tickets from 25% to 45% or more.
Instead of scrolling through static web pages, shoppers can now receive a more personalized shopping experience simply by chatting with Ochatbot. Provide personalized product recommendations, present up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, answer shopper questions immediately, and much more all while Ochatbot is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The 45-day Free Trial includes all of the eCommerce features that help boost revenue and reduce the load on customer support teams so WooCommerce stores have plenty of time to see the results
Colibri key features
- Install: 10,000+
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Salient Features: Video, Slideshows, Image collage, Shape dividers, Section overlap
- Pricing: Basic plan starts from $79
It is one of the most popular page builder plugin. With Colibri, you can fully personalise every element of your website. This covers the headers, page content, footers, menus, and both overall and specific styling. Make a great first impression with features like video, slideshow background and image collage.
To create genuinely exceptional and remarkable websites, you can combine different design elements like background, overlay, graphic separator, spacings, header style, and media type. Colibri can help you make a website that stands out and is simple for visitors to remember by using graphic elements like form dividers and overlap sections.
