What are the best WordPress plugins?

Among the best solutions for creating websites, WordPress is a popular content management system, offering a wide range of features thanks to its many plugins. With around 60,000 extensions available in the official directory and on platforms like Code Canyon, it’s essential to choose the right plugins for your customization and security needs. This article explores the best WordPress plugins, essential for optimizing your site to suit your specific goals, while highlighting the importance and impact of plugins in the WordPress ecosystem.

What is a WordPress Plugin ?

A plugin, also called an addon or extension, is software that contains a set of functions that can be added to a WordPress site. Plugins can add new features or extend functionality to your WordPress websites.

Written in the PHP programming language, plugins can integrate seamlessly with WordPress. Without any knowledge in terms of code, users can easily add features to their website thanks to Plugins.

As mentioned above, the official WordPress plugin directory contains thousands of available WordPress plugins. Apart from the plugins offered free of charge, countless paid WordPress extensions are also available from third-party companies and developers.

In most cases, several plugins can meet your expectations and needs on the task you want them to do. The difference between these plugins lies in their quality. Some WordPress plugins are of much higher quality than others. Would you like to know which are the best WordPress plugins ? You’re about to find out.

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What are the best WordPress Plugins ?

To perfect your WordPress site so that it’s as attractive and complete as possible, it’s essential to use Plugins that are reliable, well-secured, stable and easy to use. They come in both free and paid versions.

We’ll take a look at the best WordPress Plugins : their features, their advantages, their disadvantages (because all Plugins always have areas for improvement) as well as their cost.

1. WooCommerce

With over 5 million active users, WooCommerce is undoubtedly the most popular WordPress e-commerce solution for creating an online store.

If you want to sell products online, WooCommerce is a better solution.

Features

Considered one of the best wordpress plugins, the WooCommerce WordPress Plugin notably offers you the ability to:

Design your e-commerce site from a simple WordPress site
Create beautiful, user-friendly and attractive storefronts based on themes adaptable to your brand
Manage a greater number of payment methods
Add a wide variety of items using numerous parameters
Set up an efficient delivery system

Benefits

Quick and easy set-up of an online shop
Large community

Disadvantages

Legally secured sales in France (EU) only possible with a special extension
Customer service perfectible in French

How much does WooCommerce cost ?

Free
Adding certain add-ons : paid

2. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress extension, which allows you to sell all types of digital content (eBooks, software, videos, audio files, courses or anything else) on your website. For e-commerce novices, powerful free features, a setup process in minutes and no transaction fees make this WordPress Plugin an excellent choice. For businesses of all sizes, the hundreds of integrations, proven track record and advanced features also make this plugin a perfect solution.

Features

Mobile access
Order management
Data security
Inventory management
Website management
Categorization/cataloging
Shopping cart
Shipping management
E-mail marketing

Benefits

Ease of use
Easy configuration
Simple and secure access
Numerous add-ons
Ability to create data reports
Integrated discount code functionality

Disadvantages

Number of extensions available a little daunting
Some extensions lack documentation and explanation of what they can do

How much does Easy Digital Downloads cost?

Free version
Paid version at $99.00 /year

3. Yoast SEO

With over 5 million active installations, Yoast is emerging as one of the best SEO plugins on WordPress. The Yoast SEO plugin can provide information on how well your WordPress site is optimized for search engines. This Plugin WordPress also lets you configure the SEO settings of your web pages.

Yoast allows you to fill in certain standard SEO parameters, such as the title, targeted search terms and metadescription of your content in WordPress. It also offers various parameters such as configuration options for search engine robots, redirects and canonical URLs. Before content goes live, page analysis shows whether all SEO requirements have been met or not.

Features

XML sitemap
Bulk processing of meta titles and meta descriptions for multiple articles
Connection to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing
Editable robots.txt and .htaccess files
A breadcrumb trail with various display options (code integration required later)
Connection to social networks including Twitter Cards and Open Graph metadata
Redirection assistant (premium version)
Assistance (version premium)
Internal linking capability with link proposals (premium)

Benefits

User-friendly interface offering intuitive operation
Large community
High compatibility with other themes and WordPress plugins
WordPress SEO plugin regularly updated in case of Google algorithm changes

Disadvantages

Some features, such as the layout of multiple keywords and synonyms, are only available in the premium

version.

Lightly loaded code : increases the loading time of the SEO plugin WordPress and implies a certain vulnerability to security vulnerabilities
No 404 page monitoring

How much does Yoast SEO cost?

Free version
premium version: €99/year

4. MonsterInsights

With over 2 million active installations, MonsterInsights is one of the best WordPress Plugins allowing you to connect your WordPress with your Google Analytics account.

Features

Conversion tracking
Activity dashboard

Benefits

Consult some of the statistics provided by Google Analytics directly from your WordPress administration panel (pages visited, geographical origin of visits, number of visits, what actions visitors performed, etc.

The well-designed dashboard
Fluid, easy-to-navigate interface
Easy installation and configuration

Disadvantages

The interface with Google is difficult

How much does MonsterInsights cost?

199.00 $US/year

5. WPForms

WPForms is, without doubt, one of the best WordPress plugins for creating subscription forms. You can download the Lite version if you’d like to test out some of the features of this WordPress extension on your blog.

Features

Form creation and design
Third-party integration
Drag and Drop function
File storage
Electronic signature

Benefits

Powerful form generator
Existence of numerous integrations
Possibility of creating forms quickly

Disadvantages

The free version offers too much less
Support is a bit slow

How much does WPForms cost?

Paid version at US$299.50/year

6. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is a Backup Management Plugin for WordPress websites. It allows users to streamline backup, restore, migration and cloning operations.

Features

Cloud Backup
Backup planning

Benefits

Easy-to-use backup process
very responsive customer service
Affordable price

Disadvantages

Additional migration plugin to migrate a site to another server

How much does UpdraftPlus cost?

Paid version at US$70.00 /year

7. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is one of the Best WordPress Plugins that helps businesses reduce, redirect and track links. It’s especially handy for affiliate links.

Features

Creating simple, clear URLs
Generates random 3-4 character slugs for your URL
Allows you to name a custom slug for your URL
Tracks number of clicks per link and unique clicks per link
Intuitive Javascript / AJAX administration interface

Benefits

Create permanent (301) AND temporary (307)redirects
Tracking the number of clicks and unique visits
Reporting interface on a configurable graph
Creation of link groups
Creating nofollow/noindex links
Add a bookmark to your browser to add any web page to your pretty links.

Disadvantages

Contextual windows to be improved

How much does Pretty Links cost?*

Free version
Pro version from $79.00 US$/year

8. W3 Total Cache

Every website needs optimal cache management. For this, W3 Total Cache is the best plugin WordPress for cache management.

Features

Improved web server performance
Improved ranking in search engine results pages
A minimum 10-fold improvement in overall site performance
Improved conversion rates and “site performance”
Image management
File compression (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
Page display management

Advantages

All the features of this WordPress extension are available in the free version
Optimized progressive rendering
Reducing page load times
Up to 80% bandwidth savings when you reduce HTML, CSS and JS files.

Disadvantages

The configuration of the plugin WordPress on the back-end could be simplified
No Lazy-Loading option, which is only available for Google Maps in the Pro version.

How much does W3 Total Cache cost?

Free

9. Loco Translate

Currently installed on over 1 million sites, Loco Translate is a WordPress extension that lets you quickly translate a WordPress site/theme.

Features

Compilation of native MO files without installing Gettext on your system
Possibility of creating custom backups of PO files with difference management and restoring them
Integrated WordPress locale codes
Translation editor integrated into your WordPress admin interface
Creating and updating language files directly in your theme or extension
Extracting translatable strings from source code
Support for PO features including comments, references and plural forms.
Integration with translation solutions such as APIs, DeepL, Google, Microsoft and Lecto AI
Visualization of PO source with clickable source code references
Protected language directory to save custom translations

Benefits

Easy to use
Very good user feedback
Allows you to see the percentage of untranslated content by language
Translate all untranslated elements (from theme and plugins)
Extract files to be localized in various formats

Disadvantages

No language menu

How much does Loco Translate cost?

Free

10. Redirection

Redirection is the most popular redirection extension for WordPress. With this Plugin, you can keep track of 404 errors, manage 301 redirects, and generally fix all your site’s problems. It helps you reduce errors and optimize the ranking of your website.

Features

Simple URL matching
Creating different types of redirects
Importing or exporting redirects
Create groups to organize them
Manage 404 errors present on your site

Benefits

Free and easy to use

Disadvantages

Filling the .htaccess file without ever cleaning up deleted re-directions in WP admin

How much does Redirection cost?

Free

11. Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg

Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg is the most widely used Gutenberg block library plugin. Created by the people behind the popular Astra theme, this plugin is actively installed on over 100,000 websites.

Features

Includes over 15 Gutenberg blocks
26 additional blocks
Somewhat advanced customization options to control margins, background, spacing, colors or even typography.