A plugin is a software application that increases the functionality of a website to improve its features and functions. Plugins are essential when creating fantastic websites with WordPress; they make it possible to increase website performance without developers. Plugins enable websites to be more than just text; for example, you can add a plugin to rank your posts higher in search results, display YouTube videos on your website, or even customize fonts.
In the Plugins tab of the WordPress admin sidebar, you can activate, deactivate, install, and uninstall the plugins as per your usage. There are thousands of free plugins in the WordPress.org plugin directory and thousands more premium WordPress plugins created by third-party developers. Because of how many plugins there are to choose from, new users might find it hard to find the right one for their website.
It’s easy to grow your online business with the help of the right set of WordPress plugins and tools. Read on to learn all about the WordPress plugins essential for business websites, as recommended by experts.
WPForms
A website contact form makes it simple for visitors to fill in their details and get in touch with your business. Among the many WordPress contact form plugins, WPForms is the most user-friendly.
Features
WPForms integrates with all of the most popular marketing and payment platforms, allowing you to create powerful forms in less than five minutes. This plugin comes with powerful features unavailable in other form builders, such as conversational forms, landing page forms, user journey tracking, abandonment cart form, custom WordPress user registration, login forms, and so on.
With this drag-and-drop online form builder, it’s easy to create forms, including contact, subscription, online order, etc., with just a few clicks. In addition, their over 300 pre-built form templates will make your life easier.
Pros
- Drag and drop feature
- User-friendly interface
- Built-in form templates
- Powerpack premium addon
- Documented articles
Cons
- Costly annual pricing (up to $599 a year)
- No user guide
- Entry notification issues
- Inability to upload multiple files
Pricing
WPForms Pro has four packages:
- Basic – $79/ Year
- Plus – $199/year
- Pro – $399/year
- Elite – $599 / Year
MonsterInsights
Developers consider MonsterInsights the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. When you connect your website to Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see exactly how people find and use your website, which can be extremely useful. The plugin displays all essential statistics inside your WordPress dashboard and helps you optimize your site to increase traffic, subscribers, and revenue on your website.
Features
Integrating Google Analytics into your website can be hectic, but with MonsterInsights, all you have to do is follow along with an interactive setup wizard to get everything set up in less than three minutes. There’s no need to muck around with code or hire a developer to take care of it.
MonsterInsights shares real-time data from your WordPress dashboard, thanks to MonsterInsights. You could use this information to track campaign performance, determine the best time to post an article, and segregate your users by timezone. You can even see how far your audience has scrolled down each article using MonsterInsights without installing Google Tag Manager.
MonsterInsights’ pre-built point-and-click method for setting up eCommerce Analytics doesn’t require tracking code. You can view information about your store’s revenue, transactions, average order value, and conversion rate directly from your dashboard.
Pros
- Makes it easy to set up Google Analytics
- Advance audience tracking
- Reports available in the dashboard
- Helps in analyzing and traffic growth
- Helps increasing conversions
Cons
- The free version is limited
- Expensive premium package
Pricing
MonsterInsights has three packages:
- Plus Package: $199/year
- Pro Package: $399/year
- Agency Package: $799/year
All-in-One SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps attract more visitors to your website. While WordPress is SEO-friendly out of the box, you can do a lot more to increase traffic to your website by implementing SEO best practices.
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is used by more than 3 million websites worldwide, making it one of the most popular plugins of all time. It’s one of the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugins available, providing you with all the features you need to improve on-page SEO.
Features
In addition to helping you add SEO titles, meta descriptions, and keywords to your website, AIOSEO also helps generate XML sitemaps, connect your site to Google Search Console, and optimize for social media. You can use the automatic meta tag generator to create meta tags and write meta titles and meta descriptions.
With AIOSEO’s Semrush integration, you can discover and rank for additional key phrases in a single click. AIOSEO also comes with a WooCommerce SEO feature that helps you optimize product listings and category pages for your eCommerce store. In addition, you can easily keep your XML Sitemaps up-to-date, optimize different post types with the correct schema markup, allowing search engines to rank your content.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Better SEO audit feature
- Customize your meta titles and descriptions
- More sitemap options
Cons
- No features on content analysis
- Navigation and importing data from Google Search Console are missing
- No expert support in the free version
Pricing
All in One SEO plugin has four packages:
- Basic – $99/year
- Plus – $199/year
- Pro – $399/year
- Elite – $599/year
OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most widely used conversion rate optimization plugin available. It allows you to convert website visitors who’ve abandoned their carts into email subscribers and potential customers.
Features
Cart abandonment by website visitors is a common problem for any eCommerce site. By using time-sensitive behaviour provided by OptinMonster, you can reduce cart abandonment rates and increase revenue. The plugin has smart targeting features that display personalized messages based on behaviour automation to increase engagement and sales.
Additionally, OptinMonster adds a Full-Screen Welcome Mat to go along with exit-intent pop-ups. The pop-up takes up the entire screen, and your visitors see it immediately after entering your website.
Pros
- User-friendly
- Powerpack features
- Multiple templates
- Integrations options
- Expert support
Cons
- Do not show complete stats without Google Analytics
- Fees to be paid monthly instead of a one-off fee
Pricing
OptinMonster has four packages, each of which comes with a money-back guarantee:
- Basic – $14/month
- Plus – $30/month
- Pro – $47/month
- Growth – $49/month
MemberPress
Creating and maintaining a membership website is not as simple as it seems. A membership-based webpage could be the lifeblood of your company, organization, or community, so it needs to be done correctly. Otherwise, you risk losing all recurring revenue associated with clubs and other similar membership-based organizations. MemberPress simplifies the entire process, making it much more likely for your website to succeed.
Features
The MemberPress WordPress membership plugin is the best plugin to use if you’re planning to create a membership site to generate additional revenue from recurring sales. With the plugin, you can restrict traffic to specific content on your site and provide access to paying members with ease. Amazingly, the work is automated, resulting in passive income that just keeps coming in.
You can accept payments with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net with relative ease. You can also monetize your membership site by selling digital downloads and more. You can easily integrate MemberPress with various other plugins, many of which are already bundled in as part of your purchase, allowing you to create a truly one-of-a-kind membership website that functions exactly the way you want.
Pros
- Easy setup options for beginners
- Easily customize the membership
- Create unlimited memberships
- Easily integrate with multiple email marketing tools
- Detail reporting option
Cons
- Less customizing options for registration forms
- You have to pay fees again – no one-off fee
- Multiple essentials feature billed as add-ons
Pricing
MemberPress offers three packages to its customers:
- Basic – $279/year
- Plus – $449/year
- Pro – $599/year
SeedProd
Are you looking for a plugin to help you design landing pages? SeedProd, which has thousands of 5-star reviews on WordPress.org, simplifies the design and customization process.
Features
SeedProd is the most powerful drag-and-drop page builder for the WordPress platform. It helps you quickly customize your website design and create custom page layouts without writing programming code.
You can choose from over 100+ beautifully designed templates, or you can create a custom layout from scratch using their simple drag and drop WordPress page builder. The templates include pre-built templates for landing pages, sales pages, thank-you pages, webinar registration pages, coming soon pages, maintenance mode pages, 404 pages, frontend login pages, and more.
SeedProd has a smart design system that helps you to save time by reusing elements rather than performing repetitive tasks. Colour schemes, saved font combinations, page templates, custom blocks, sections, and other features are all available to you.
You’ll find all of the blocks, widgets, and features you’d expect from a powerful page builder, such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers, and contact forms. It also includes pricing page blocks, various content blocks, and more.
SeedProd includes built-in subscriber management and seamless integration with third-party email marketing services and customer relationship management software. It’s compatible with all WordPress themes.
Pros
- Easy to use with no coding skills required
- Landing pages templates are available with a high conversion rate
- Experts available for customer support
- Easy to customize the header, footer, landing pages, etc.
Cons
- Limited features in the free version
- Only compatible with WordPress
Pricing
This plugin has a free version with limited features and four paid plans:
- Basic – $39.50/year
- Plus – $99.50/year
- Pro – $100.50/year
- Elite – $239.60/year
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant
For digital marketing professionals and business owners, SEMRush is a one-stop-shop for all of their marketing needs. It includes powerful tools to assist you in optimizing your SEO, paid traffic strategy, social media, and content and public relations strategies. Using the SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant, any writer can instantly assess a piece of content’s SEO potential and originality, without having to rewrite it. It’s also possible to determine how easy it is for users to read a particular piece of text. SEMRush helps you gather competitive intelligence on your competitors, allowing you to outrank them and take the lead in your industry.
Features
With this plugin, you can attach SEO Content to a Google document or a WordPress draft. The SEO Writing Assistant tool will analyze the text to determine whether it complies with our SEO recommendations based on the top 10 ranking pages for your given keywords in a specific location.
By communicating with your audience in the appropriate manner and creating a memorable image of your brand, a consistent tone of voice helps you build trust with them. The companies that maintain a consistent tone of voice across all of their content marketing channels are more likely to stand out from their competitors and to build trust with their target audiences.
SEO Writing Assistant assists you in ensuring that every piece of content adheres to your overall brand voice, measured on a scale of casualness, fairness, and formality.
In addition to being easily searchable online, SEO-friendly content also drives relevant traffic, adds value to your audience’s experience and, as a result, increases the overall visibility of your website.
You’ll get actionable recommendations for your writers on how to create optimized content from scratch using the tools, and you’ll save time as well: a brief is generated automatically and presented on a single Doc page when exported, and you can check how optimized copy is in a Google Doc and receive tips on how to adjust it step by step, all without leaving your desk.
Have you ever been concerned about the quality of an article you’re putting together for a client? Fortunately for you, by following the steps outlined in this workflow, you can now determine the overall quality of an article. You’ll be able to see how well an article is performing, as well as receive suggestions on how to improve it.
Pros
- Easy to install and configure
- Immediate readability assessment and recommendations for improving the content’s readability
- Under the recommended keywords tab, you’ll find a list of contextually related terms that you can use in your SEO copywriting efforts
- The software includes built-in plagiarism detection to help you avoid duplicate content issues
- Completely free to try, with the option of a quick upgrade.
Cons
- No way to import keywords directly from the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
- No recommendations for links or link placements under the SEO Writing Assistant’s direct supervision
- The subscription limits are extremely strict, particularly for plagiarism checks and other similar services
Pricing
It is necessary to have a SEMRush account in order to use the SEO Writing Assistant. A free or Pro SEMrush account allows you to create one recommendation set (tied to a document) for the duration of your account. According to the subscription plan, higher-tier accounts have a different keyword budget than lower-tier accounts, as well as access to the full power of the Semrush Content Marketing Platform.
SEMRush is not a cheap service. The most affordable plan is Pro, which costs $99.95/month and includes only the most basic features. It’s particularly well suited for marketing newcomers and small in-house teams. Save up to 17% if you pay annually.
- Pro – $99.50 / Month
- Guru – $191.62 / Month
- Business – $374.95 / Month
WooCommerce
More than 5 million websites use WooCommerce – it’s the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress with over 500,000 active installations. It comes pre-loaded with all of the powerful features you’ll need to start your own e-store.
Features
WooCommerce Admin is a powerful, customizable central dashboard that allows you to keep track of the performance metrics that most matter to you. With Google Ads, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Facebook integrations, you can reach a broader audience than ever before across marketing and social channels. You can always refer to the Marketing Hub, located within the dashboard, for new ideas and tips to help you succeed.
Hundreds of free and paid extensions are available on the official WooCommerce Marketplace Developers thoroughly test each new extension and conduct regular inventory reviews to ensure that the Marketplace maintains its high-quality standards. With the free WooCommerce mobile app, you can manage your store from anywhere (Android and iOS).
Pros
- Hundreds of thousands of extensions and themes available
- Complete support from experts
- Built-in payment and shipping options
- Inventory management tools available
Cons
- Multiple add-ons available, making it difficult to select the right one
- WooCommerce will only work if WordPress themes are compatible with it
Pricing
Like WordPress, WooCommerce is free, open-source software. If you want optional add-ons and extensions, you’ll have to pay for them.
UpdraftPlus
It’s frustrating when something goes wrong on your website, but with WordPress, accidents are almost unavoidable. To recover lost data or revert to a previous version of your WordPress site, you need to create regular backups.
UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular WordPress backup plugins available, with over 3 million downloads to date. In addition, the plugin allows users to create and restore backups, schedule routine backups, and push backups to cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.
Features
You can perform complete, manual, or scheduled backups quickly and easily with UpdraftPlus. The plugin also lets you specify the maximum number of scheduled backups that can be retained.
With the Migrator add-on, you can migrate your WordPress site. The migrator add-on performs a site-to-site migration from one server to another. The add-on includes several useful functions for the site migration process, such as search and replace.
If you’re currently using a free backup plugin without a restore option, you can use UpdraftPlus in conjunction with its Importer add-on. The Importer helps restore your website from any other backup plugins you may have installed.
A sophisticated reporting tool is also provided by UpdraftPlus, which displays the status of backups currently in progress and notifies you of any errors or warnings.
Pros
- Best all-in-one backup plugin for your WordPress website
- User-friendly interface
- Backup is highly secured
- Easily clone your website
- Compatible with multiple sites
Cons
- Conflicts with auto-updating plugins
- Pro version required you don’t want to miss any updates
Pricing
UpdraftPlus is the most appropriate solution for websites of all sizes, regardless of their budgetary constraints. A free LITE version of UpdraftPlus can be downloaded from the WordPress repository.
WPML
WordPress does not, by default, make it easy to create a website available in multiple languages. This is a challenge for businesses that cater to a multilingual customer base in a variety of geographic locations. This is where WPML, a WordPress multilingual plugin that makes it simple to create multilingual websites, comes in handy.
Features
A single WordPress installation can be used to run multiple language websites thanks to WPML’s ease of use. Select the languages that will be used on your site and begin translating content.
WPML is available in more than 40 languages. Using WPML’s languages editor, you can also create your own language variants (such as Canadian French, or Mexican Spanish) for your website.
With WPML, you can create and manage multilingual and multi-currency e-Commerce websites with WooCommerce Multilingual. Complete support is available for simple and variable products, related products, sales and promotions, and more.
Directly from the WPML’s String Translation interface, you can translate texts in other plugins and administration screens. You’ll be able to see where the texts come from both in the code and on the website.
WPML makes it possible to optimize your websites for searches in multiple languages. You’ll have the freedom to arrange languages however you want (TLDs, subdomains, folders, and language arguments) and be able to translate page slugs, SEO meta tags, and title tags.
Because of WPML’s modular design, you can use only the components you require for each site. Developers test every release to ensure performance remains excellent, both in the administration area and on the site’s front end.
Pros
- Higher accuracy than other plugins
- Easy installation process – no need for developers
- Customer support available
- Provides in-depth translation for everything
Cons
- Customer support may lag
- Addition of code bloat to your WordPress website
- May need experts to set up after installation
Pricing
WPML provides a simple pricing structure for businesses and web agencies creating multilingual WordPress sites. For the first year, all account types are covered by a money-back guarantee as well as a year’s worth of support and updates.
- Multilingual Blog – $39/year
- Multilingual CMS – $99/year
- Multilingual Agency – $199/year
W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a widely used caching plugin. Caching is the process of storing website content in a user’s browser in order to deliver that data more quickly the next time they visit your site.
W3 Total Cache speeds up the loading time of your website, resulting in improved search engine rankings and user experience, and possibly even increased conversion rates.
Features
W3 Total Cache’s Page cache feature creates a static copy of each new webpage, which is then stored in the cache. The copies are used each time a subsequent request is made, allowing content to be displayed more quickly. It’s possible to run a test to see how much faster the page loads, and in particular, how much faster the Time To First Byte is.
Every time a page on your site is accessed, queries to the database are made on your behalf. The database caching options in W3 Total Cache allow you to save the results of database queries so that you don’t have to repeat them.
With this plugin, you can reduce the total number of database queries by using the object cache. Even though WordPress has its own built-in object cache, it only works for a single page load, and data is not saved for use on subsequent page loads.
With W3 Total Cache, the browser cache is enabled by default. The plugin establishes a time limit to determine how long site resources will be cached before it expires and is replaced with new ones.
When a page is opened, the lazy load is enabled, which means that only images visible on the screen are loaded, reducing the initial loading time, which is especially important for longer and more image-rich pages. Keep in mind that WordPress already makes use of the lazy load function, which is supported by default by most browsers, including Firefox and Chrome.
Pros
- Improves website performance
- Reduces website load time
- Multiple caching options available
- Extensive CDN integration available
Cons
- Users may find it expensive if they have multiple sites
- Delays in the customer support
- Lack of documentation
Pricing
W3 Total Cache is a free tool, but you do need to pay $99 to upgrade to W3 Total Cache Pro.
Sucuri
Security is a high concern topic for all business owners – big or small. Experts recommend Sucuri as the best security plugin for your WordPress website.
Features
Securi keeps an eye on your site and protects it from DDoS attacks, malware threats, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, brute force attacks, spam comment attacks, and virtually every other type of attack. If your website doesn’t already have a firewall, you should consider installing one right away.
Another feature of Sucuri is that it automatically adds a content delivery network (CDN) layer, which significantly speeds up your website. Even though there are other security plugins available, like WordFence, WP Activity Log, and others, no other plugin can compete with Sucuri’s features.
The plugin offers security hardening options that are preventative measures that can be used to increase the security of areas of your website that may be vulnerable to attack in the future. You can achieve this through a set of rules to the website’s .htaccess file and the verification of secure configuration settings.
The scanning feature is both fast and lightweight, making it suitable for use in any environment. SiteCheck remote scanners are updated on a regular basis to address the spread of malicious content, blocklisted status, website errors, and out-of-date software, among other issues.
A number of tools are included in the Sucuri WordPress plugin, including those that check the integrity of the core WordPress files – PHP, JavaScript, and CSS – as well as other files included with your original WordPress installation.
Standard settings include the option to receive email alerts. All notifications generated by the plugin can have the email and recipients customized. If any suspicious activity is detected on your website, you’ll be notified via these alerts.
For advanced protection, you can connect the Sucuri Firewall to the WordPress plugin through the Firewall (WAF). However, customers who have purchased one of Sucuri’s platform plans have access to premium features.
Pros
- The plugin provides extensive security solutions
- Experts offer instant support
- Best at data saving from attacks
- Plugin with core functionality is free
Cons
- Limited functions available
- Pricing may be expensive for the small business owners
Pricing
Sucuri offers three different pricing plans for various websites, ranging from personal to business. All three plans have different pricing depending upon the features they have. The three plans are classified into three categories:
- Basic – $199.99/year
- Professional – $299.99/year
- Business – $499.99/year
Summing It Up
An important factor in WordPress’s rise to become the most popular website engine on the internet is the plugin ecosystem that has developed alongside it. There are hundreds of thousands of plugins, but not all WordPress plugins can fulfill your business needs. While a certain plugin can simplify your online business or enhance the functionality of your website, there can be disadvantages as well.