27 Best Free WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins are software components that help to enhance the functionality of WordPress.
There are hundreds of plugins that have been designed to improve the effectiveness of sites that run on this platform.
It could be security, SEO, performance, and lead generation, etc. In this article review, we discuss the 27 best free WordPress plugins available currently.
Best WordPress Plugins for SEO Optimization and Marketing
If you want to optimize your site, there are WordPress plugins that have been designed to facilitate this. They help to improve ranking on search engines. Hence, this feature makes them ideal for marketing as well.
They include:
1.MailChimp For WordPress
It’s ideal for building a good mailing list. MailChimp for WordPress is one of the best plugins for SEO and marketing. The plugin is active on millions of sites and has raked good reviews among thousands of users.
Its comprehensive mailing list allows bloggers to market their products/services to their target audience easily.
2. Yoast SEO
Just like its name suggests, Yoast SEO is ideal for SEO optimization. Yoast has an impressive rating of 4.9 stars from reviews from thousands of users. It helps to improve SEO ranking on search engines.
The SEO WordPress plugin is a free plugin; it allows you to efficiently control Meta descriptions and titles by creating important XML sitemaps.
Besides that, Yoast SEO also facilitates easy analysis of SEO content by enhancing readability and keyword optimization. It’s currently used by over five million sites.
Its ease of use, efficiency, and free access have made it the default SEO plugin for most sites on WordPress.
3.MonsterInsights
It’s currently rated as the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. MonsterInsights is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that can help to improve your marketing analytics.
Its ability to seamlessly work with Google, the most popular search engine, means that it delivers stellar marketing results.
MonsterInsights has a Google analytics dashboard where you can see actionable insights. Also, it provides an option for universal tracking across multiple devices as well as campaigns.
Besides that, it provides users with real-time stats. This is an important feature in helping to track your performance.
Best Lead Generation plugins
Lead generation is important for the faster and more organic growth of a website. There are plugins that can help you generate more leads and they include:
4.WPForms
It’s a drag-and-drop WordPress form builder that features multiple lead generation templates such as:
- Contest entry form
- Content download form
- Newsletter signup form
- Request a quote form and
- Online event registration form
5.LiveChat
It’s the best plugin to connect with customers. Livechat plugin promotes lead generation by integrating with several other marketing services. Visitors can easily connect and chat with your team in a real-time environment.
6.OneSignal
This program promotes lead generation by ensuring that your push notifications are delivered. It’s an effective plugin that can help you convert visitors into loyal followers and then customers.
For efficiency, visitors can just opt-in to receive push notifications by simply clicking a button.
7. Thrive Leads
Thrive leads is an efficient lead generation plugin that helps to convert visitors to loyal customers. The plugin is used to build a comprehensive mailing list in a faster way.
It also comes with multiple variations for personalization. This helps to ensure that you customize content that targets specific visitors.
Best WordPress plugins for E-commerce
There is no doubt that WordPress and e-commerce go hand-in-hand. Many bloggers are using their sites to now sell products and services.
8.WooCommerce
It’s a popular WordPress plugin that enhances the efficiency of e-commerce sites. WooCommerce can help you add basically anything you sell to your website.
It’s simple and highly effective. Some of its e-commerce features include flat rates, local pickups, and shipping.
9. Easy Digital Downloads
It enhances the effectiveness of selling digital products on WordPress. Its effectiveness in supporting e-commerce is based on features such as advanced download tracking, shopping cart, discount codes, and customer account page among others.
Best Backup WordPress Plugins
If you are using WordPress, you definitely need to back up your site from time to time. There are times you will want to implement new changes and do away with some parts.
But before you design and launch something new, it’s always important to ensure that your data is backed up. The best plugins for backup while using WordPress include:
10. Updraft Plus
It’s considered to be the World’s top backup and migration plugin for WordPress. Updraft is an efficient and versatile plugin that’s used to restore content.
It’s currently being used by millions of WordPress websites. So, you can definitely rely on it.
User reviews indicate that UpdraftPlus is quite powerful. It’s simple to use since it was specifically designed with the basic needs of users in mind. With just a few clicks, users are able to effectively backup, restore, and clone their content.
11.VaultPress
Even though premium VaultPress is subscription-based, it offers some of the best backup services for WordPress sites. The plugin is designed with an automated security feature for scanning and offers real-time data backup.
Every time you are making a change on your website, the VaultPress plugin will automatically go ahead and create a backup.
This program is powered by Jetpack. so normally syncs up content easily including media files, posts, and comments.
While users love its backup feature, this theme also offers excellent security protection. It’s a security-oriented plugin that also protects sites against web attacks.
For optimized results, you can sign up for multiple subscriptions. This way, you can access a single dashboard to manage multiple websites, backup, and monitor content from one place.
12. Duplicator
It’s one of the best WordPress plugins backup for data and migrations. Duplicator makes everything easy when you want to clone content or move your WordPress website.
At some point, you will definitely change or move your site. This could be due to the following reasons:
- You want to create your hosted-staging site
- or want to upload your website to your live host from the local development site
- You need to move your WordPress site to a new host
Regardless of the reason, this is the best plugin that can come in handy when you want to export your site and need backup.
Generally, Duplicator provides ease of use as you create your content backup and move your files to a new location.
Best WordPress Plugins for Performance Enhancement
Speed is an important aspect of website optimization. Sites that have slow loading speeds or frequently lag when loading content usually rank the lowest.
All bloggers definitely want sites that have faster loading speeds. So, a powerful plugin that facilitates speed optimization is something worth considering. Some of the best plugins that can help enhance website speed include:
13.Autoptimize
This program makes it easy to optimize your site and enhance its speed performance. Autoptimize can quickly minify, aggregate, and even cache scripts as well as styles.
Besides that, it can effectively inject CSS components into any page head by default.
Overall, it works by optimizing your website’s JavaScript, HTML, and CSS codes. This usually happens by concatenation, a process that involves combining several separate files and making them one.
There is also minification that involves the removal of unwanted files from your website’s code.
14. WP Rocket
It’s another premium WordPress plugin that enhances better performance and faster load speeds. WP Rocket uses caching that leads to the development of ultra-fast load times.
This feature makes it ideal for improving SEO content as well as conversion rates.
Even though it has clean and simple features, the functionality is top-notch. Other additional features that enhance speed and performance include Cloudflare integration, caching, and LazyLoad.
15.WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a free WordPress plugin that makes sites faster and more efficient. It’s considered to be a revolutionary tool that provides an all-in-one solution for WordPress performance.
It works in a unique way and this involves compressing larger images while still maintaining the quality.
Besides that, WP-Optimize helps to clean your database and cashes your website.
Its functionality is based on offering extended features and a broad range of existing enhancements for better performance.
Some of the useless data that can slow down your site include trashy or unapproved comments, unwanted posts, and spam links among others.
This plugin, however, keeps everything clean by removing all the unnecessary data automatically.
WordPress plugins Best For Image Optimization
One of the main reasons why websites slow down or lag is due to images. While images are great for producing visual content, they consume lots of storage space.
As a result, they have a significant impact on the speed of a website. To ensure that your site runs effectively, you can use an image optimizer such as:
16.Smush
It’s a blogger’s favorite image compressor and optimizer. Smush plugin for WordPress helps to reduce the bulk in images while still retaining their quality.
The free plugin will automatically resize and compress your images once you upload them.
Based on the lossless compression feature, Smush doesn’t interfere with the quality of the images. It simply makes their file size smaller.
17.A3 Lazy Load
It’s another free and mobile-oriented WordPress plugin that helps to compress images. Installing it allows you to conveniently add images to your site without worrying about it slowing down.
It should be noted that A3 Lazy Load doesn’t work only with images but also with embedded videos.
Additionally, this WordPress plugin is super responsive and it’s even designed to offer AMP support.
This makes it ideal for photography sites that have lots of images.
Best Word press Security Plugins
While you are publishing your content on WordPress, it’s also important to consider security features. The web has some dark users who are always ready to attack and steal vital information from unsuspecting users.
To protect your site as well as those accessing it, it’s important to use security plugins.
18. Sucuri
This is a free plugin that offers complete website security and protection. Sucuri is a secure platform that allows you to run your site with peace of mind. Using it means you no longer have to worry about security threats.
It’s considered to be an all-in-one solution thanks to its versatility. You can use Sucuri for malware scanning, security hardening, file integrity monitoring, and activity auditing.
You can do all these things right from your dashboard. For premium results, there are even some plans that provide users with advanced DDoS protection.
19.WordFence
WordFence for WordPress security plugin provides website users with free enterprise-class access to security. It’s designed to help protect sites against threats from malware and hacks.
It comes with an endpoint firewall in addition to a malware scanner. Besides that, the plugin also provides live traffic monitoring, login security, and blocking among other things.
Using it means that you can monitor all your traffic sources in real-time. This includes logouts, 404 errors, logins, and logouts among others.
For secure use, WordFence comes with two-factor authentication for enhanced login security.
Best WordPress plugins for Affiliate Marketing
A lot of affiliate marketers usually WordPress and it’s only right that they use the right affiliate plugins. This is vital in ensuring that they can effectively monetize their sites.
The best plugins for affiliate marketing while using WordPress include:
20. Pretty Links
This is a WordPress plugin that facilitates content marketing. Pretty Links can be used to cloak, organize, shrink, and track content. Besides that, you can use it to test and share all your content links found in the server and domain.
The plugin has been specifically designed for those who do affiliate marketing. The most annoying thing about affiliate marketing is that affiliate links can get really difficult to use.
To enhance their usability, this plugin allows you to change them by using your own domain to cloak them. For efficiency, you can use this plugin to track the clicks received on each link.
21.ThirstyAffiliates
This program lets you cloak your affiliate lets and quickly get organized while sharing the content of your affiliate marketing. It’s an effective tool that gives bloggers the chance to monetize their sites with affiliate marketing.
ThirstyAffiliates is super easy to use and it provides a better way to create and manage your affiliate links. It’s a beginner-friendly tool that has been designed to meet the needs of every affiliate marketer.
Not only does it allow you to cloak those long and ugly affiliate links but you can also use it to protect your commissions. Lastly, it facilitates easier insertion of affiliate links into your blog posts.
Best Plugins for Showcasing Ads and Listing
When it comes to plugins, WordPress has got you covered in nearly all areas. If you want to perfectly showcase your listings and ads on your WordPress site, there are several plugins that can help enhance your performance. They include:
22. Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro
This plugin allows you to easily build any type of directory site. This may include classified vehicles, yellow pages, and estate portals among others. Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro is an efficient and flexible plugin that accommodates all types of classified listings.
It also provides users with several viewing options so that they can have an overview of the front end.
It can also enhance how you generate income. This is because you can use it to charge users who want to submit their items to your premium website listings.
23.WPAdverts
Even though it has a simple design, WPAdverts offers an easier way to create attractive classifieds for listing in just a few minutes.
It should be noted that it’s lightweight in nature and as a result, it normally offers premium performance. Your site will be able to run efficiently without lagging or slowing down.
It perfectly fits on any device and you can use it with any theme. It basically gives you the freedom you need to build your classified listings.
Generally, it’s a beginner-friendly plugin that provides one of the best ways to monetize your website.
Best Social Media Plugins
Looking for the best WordPress Plugins for social media? Well, here are some of the top picks currently:
24.MashShare Social Media Share Buttons
MashShare is a free and highly customizable WordPress plugin that helps to promote content optimization. It’s ideal for use on social media platforms since it comes with three integration buttons for Twitter, Facebook, and Subscribe.
25. Kiwi Social Share
This plugin takes pride in its functionality as well as ease of use. It provides users with the social media content sharing option on sites such as Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest among others.
26. Social Auto Poster
It’s a premium plugin that allows you to share content on a broad range of social media platforms. With just a few clicks, you can share your custom posts including products to social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
Besides that, Social Auto Poster allows you to schedule your posts to configured social platforms.
27. Social Icons
It’s a free plugin and undoubtedly one of the best to use with WordPress. Social Icons is quite easy to use and its efficiency is based on the fact that it has a drag and drops icon used for setting.
It also has multiple layouts and can support over 100 icons. Some of the sites where you can share your content include Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and others.
Conclusion: The Best Plugins For WordPress
The above-reviewed plugins are currently the best in supporting different WordPress functionalities. Whether it’s security, image compression, or e-commerce, these plugins offer specialized and improved performance.
Related post:How do you start a Blog
Also Read: Best WorPress Themes to start a Blog
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About Ross
Ross is the founder of Hostingwhich, a free resource site where you can learn about Starting your own Blog & also find out about Web Host Services. Click here to learn more if you want to start a blog.