Top WordPress Plugins for Your Website Stretch Your Creativity
Are you looking for the top WordPress plugins to take your site to the next level?
Our users often comment to know the top WordPress plugins for SEO, google analytics, Backup, Security, Contact us Form, Pop-ups, Social Media, etc., that help them grow their WordPress site.
There are more than 60000 plugins that live in the WordPress directory. So it can be challenging to try every Plugin and use that in their blog or site.
Besides, to select the best plugins, you also need technical information about the requirements of places and the parameters of the Plugin’s test. We have written this blog to help you find the best free WordPress plugins for your website or blog.
What is a plugin?
A plugin adds new features to a WordPress site without any coding. There are two ways to access the thousands of plugins for free:
Firstly, you can explore and install from the official WordPress Directory plugins section.
And, Secondly, from the dashboard of your WordPress website. Just log in to the Admin panel, then go to Plugins/Add New Plugins.
Whichever option you choose, the same plugins will appear. However, some plugins are more advanced than others. So you need to see the number of active installations in your plugin list.
But, before adding any WordPress plugin, you need to check their feedback and reviews. When the feedback is good, it’s a good sign. On the other hand, if a plugin faces criticism, think twice before installing it.
Note:- Beware of free plugins not listed in the official directory, as they might have bugs or viruses that destroy your website security.
In addition, if you want to know why you need to use WordPress website build for your website, then this WordPress guide will help you. Now let’s move on to the best WordPress Plugins for WordPress Websites.
The Best Free WordPress Plugins for Every Website in 2023
WordPress is the Best CMS Website for building websites or blogs. It runs more than 63% of the site from all CMS users. With this outstanding achievement, this CMS provides you with many options to add plugins and widgets to upgrade your website.
So, here are some of the best free WordPress Plugins reviews that you must try at once on your WordPress website.
#1. Best SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO
This Plugin does not need any introduction. Yoast SEO plugin is used by many WordPress users (almost everyone). The first time this Plugin was active was in 2008 in WordPress Library.
When we talk about features, this Plugin provides you with everything required for a website, and its premium version gives advanced SEO features to your site.
Their Automated Technical SEO features like Canonical URLs, Meta Tags, Advance XML site, Schema Integration, Site Breadcrumbs, etc., help you optimize the website’s technical aspects. And the best part is you don’t need any technical knowledge to implement these optimizations on your site.
Apart from this technical SEO, It makes your on-page SEO process smooth. You can customize your title and description, check your content credibility, alt attributes of your images, keywords, etc., on the blog writing page. So, if you want to see how these features work, you should use this WordPress plugin now for your website’s SEO.
Key Features of Yoast WordPress SEO:
- Create SEO-friendly content
- Save time and discover opportunities with Yoast SEO exercises
- Create a strong internal connecting structure
- Prevent your visitors from ending up on dead links
- Automatically adds structured data to help Google understand your website
- Be confident in visually appealing posts in search results and on social media
- Get integration with powerful platforms
- 24/7 premium support
- SEO training for beginners
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 5+ million
- Rating: 4.8/5
- Price: freemium
#2. Best Google Analytics Integration Plugin – ShareThis Dashboard for Google Analytics
When you have a good team for your website, you can handle your Google Analytics report, and WordPress reports separately. But if you are a single owner and worker of a WordPress website or blog, you need a helping hand to manage everything in one place.
ShareThis Dashboard for Google Analytics is the perfect match for you. It is an open-source software plugin. This software is 100% free for connecting your WordPress Dashboard and Google Analytics.
This tool helps connect your WordPress website Dashboard and Google Analytics Dashboard so that you can monitor your website performance. Moreover, you can also analyze and measure visitors’ engagement from your site.
Key Features:
- Visitor trends (compared to the previous 7 days)
- Traffic sources
- Stay updated on your 10 most viewed pages
- Demographics
- GDPR Compliance Tool
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 200,000+
- Rating: 3.6/5
- Price: free
#3. Best Backups plugins ever – Jetpacks
If you want to increase your website features and security, you will hear about Jetpacks Plugins. This Plugin is made by Automattic company.
When talking about the Backup features of Jetpack, it has Auto real-time backups and store features. This feature helps you create backup files of your website and store them in the database.
It gives you unlimited storage for your WordPress website backup. The best part of this feature is that this Plugin creates automatic backup files for your website.
Apart from the backups, this Plugin is also the perfect match for your WordPress site security, site performance optimizer, Stats, design tools, integration support, and many more.
This Plugin offers both plans, one is free, and 3 are paid. So you have to pay to get some of these plugins’ features.
Key Features:
- Auto real-time backups
- Monitor your site uptime/downtime
- Peak Speed And Performance
- Free CDN
- Lazy load Image
- Custom Site Search
- XML site Generator
- Available on both platforms Apple IOS and Google Android
- Easy design tools
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 5+ million
- Rating: 4/5
- Price: Freemium
#4. Caching – W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache Plugins help you provide instant page views to your repeated users using browser caching. These features increase the website’s speed and reduce the loading time; as a result, your web pages start rendering quickly.
Apart from these features, W3TC has Accelerated Mobile Pages support, SSL Support, Caching of minified and compressed web pages or posts, caching feeds, search result pages, and many more.
Key Features:
- Only web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization
- Improvements in search engine result page rankings
- Optimized progressive render
- Improved web server performance
- Transparent content delivery network Management
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
- Secure Socket Layer (SSL/TLS) support
- Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML with granular control
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 1+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Price: Freemium
#5. Security – iThemes Security
Do you know, When you are running your website, there is someone far from you trying to hack your website? According to CheckPoint Research, each organization faces an average of 925 cyberattacks per week worldwide.
That’s why a security plugin is not an option anymore. So, to secure your WordPress Website, you need a security plugin on your site.
iThemes Security Plugin is one of the best security plugins for your WordPress business website. It provides a plugin set up and runs on the live website in less than 10 min, and also, you don’t need any professional knowledge about Cybersecurity.
This Security Plugin has six types of Security templates: eCommerce, Network, Non-Profit, Blog, Portfolio, and Brochure. A real-time website security Dashboard allows you to monitor your website-related events and security.
Key Features:
- Two Factor Authentication
- Password Requirements
- reCAPTCHA
- Passwordless secure logins
- Trusted devices facility
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 1+ million
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Price: Freemium
#6. Best Forms Plugin- Contact Form 7
This WordPress form plugin is one of the best Form Plugins for the WordPress website. There are hardly any people who do not know about this Plugin. When we count the list of best plugins in their domain, we forget about Contact Form 7.
Takayuki Miyoshi is the developer of this all-time best form Plugin. If you are a beginner and want a simple and attractive form plugin, this is the best match for your website or blog.
This form plugin has Ajax-powered submitting support, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, and many other features at zero cost. Additionally, Contact Form 7 can manage and save multiple forms. And also, you can customize your contact form and mail details according to your requirements. So, try this Plugin to create the most convenient and effective Plugin.
Key Features:
- reCAPTCHA (Google)
- Akismet (Automattic)
- Constant Contact
- Sendinblue
- Stripe
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 5+ million
- Rating: 4/5
- Price: Free
#7. Pop-Ups – Popup Maker
You need a popup form builder to add some popups for your website events or lead generation. The Popup Maker plugin is the best Popups Plugin in the WordPress plugin library. It has more than seven hundred thousand installations with 4.9 review rates from 4326 reviews.
This best Popup Plugin is a good match for creating conversion-based campaigns or slide-ins, banners, popup mail lists on your WordPress website, and many more.
The Pop-ups Maker offers flexible and incredibly versatile features to create various popups for your WordPress website. There are options for the following popup for your website; Email opt-in popups, Ecommerce popups, Lead gen popups, Contact form popups, Content upgrade popups, Coronavirus/COVID-19 announcements, and many more.
Key Features:
- Email opt-in popups
- Lead gen popups
- Contact form popups
- Ecommerce popups
- EU cookie notices
- Content upgrade popups
- Coronavirus/COVID-19 announcements
- Popups to greet visitors from ProductHunt (Premium)
- WooCommerce upsell popups (Premium)
- WooCommerce cross-sell popups (Premium)
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 700,000+
- Rating: 5/5
- Price: freemium
#8. Best Galleries plugin – WordPress Book Gallery
If you are looking for a plugin to showcase your books or display your affiliate products on your WordPress site, then WordPress Books Gallery is the best match for your requirement.
The WordPress Book Gallery is used to build a beautiful mobile-friendly Books Gallery, Book Store, or Books Library within some time. This Plugin is simple, and you can easily create your desired bookshelf on your website.
This Plugin helps in publishing and selling your books online. It is easy to integrate with WooCommerce. In short, this is one of the best free plugins for creating a showcase for your online Books.
Key Features:
- Easy Affiliate Marketing
- Sell Books Directly
- Online Digital Library
- Lots of customization options
- Display books in catalog/showcase style
- Various searching filters
- It can be used as an Amazon Affiliate Plugin
- Book Reviews & Ratings
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 2,000+
- Rating: 5/5
- Price: Freemium
#9. Social media – Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons
Do you want people to read your blog and share that with their friends on social media? So, you need to provide sharing options for your visitors for posts on social media platforms. You can use Social media share buttons, which are best for plugins to share your content in just one click.
You can add share icons for Twitter, RSS, LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Email, and many other platforms. To make your blog reach more people, try the Plugin now on your website.
Key Features:
- 16 different designs for your social media share icons
- Animated Social Media Icons
- Add ‘counts’ to your social media buttons
- Make your social media icons something creative, like ‘float’ or ‘sticky.’
- Make it possible for visitors to subscribe to your blog by email
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 200,000+
- Rating: 5/5
- Price: Freemium
#10. Calendar – The Events Calendar
Suppose you want to add an event calendar that shows every important date on your website. Then you need a calendar plugin.
The Event Calendar plugin is the best Plugin for every type of website. That doesn’t matter whether you are a big business or a small professional; you can use this Plugin to publish and promote your virtual and in-person events.
With this Plugin creating and managing your events on your WordPress site becomes so easy. Additionally, professional features of this Plugin, like recurring events, user-submitted events, automatic imports, ticket sales, completely customizable, and many more, Make it easy to use.
Key Features:
- Rapidly create events
- Calendar month view with tooltips
- Block Editor support
- Widget: Upcoming events list
- Internationalized & translated
- Hooks & filters galore
- WP REST API endpoints
- Events Taxonomies (Categories & Tags)
- Event Search
- Event List view
- Saved venues & organizers
Plugin Stats:
- Downloads: 800,000+
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Price: Freemium
#11. LiteSpeed Cache – The best WordPress caching Plugin
Caching your website is essential to ensure peak website performance, and LiteSpeed Cache is one of the must-have WordPress plugins.
This free WordPress plugin is easy to use and offers an intuitive interface for managing site cache and advanced caching features.
For example, several caching controls can be turned on or off for specific aspects of the site, PHP resources, such as logged-in users, and the login page. There are even options to clear the cache from specific URLs.
In addition to caching tools to speed up your website, the Plugin has an optimization feature to minify CSS and Javascript files. Its CDN settings allow you to enable QUIC.cloud CDN on the website.
Key Features:-
- Free QUIC.cloud CDN Cache
- Object Cache (Memcached/LSMCD/Redis) Support+
- Image Optimization (Lossless/Lossy)
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Improved Cache engine with POST caching
- WebP image format support
- Browser Cache Support+
- Minify inline & external CSS/JS
- PageSpeed score (including Core Web Vitals) optimization
Plugin Stats:-
- Downloads: 100,000+
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Price: free
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
As a good design and development inspiration gallery and blogging guide, we have helped so many business owners in designing and developing their websites.
Additionally, we got so many emails from our readers who ask many questions about WordPress Plugins. Here we have answered some frequently asked questions.
What is a WordPress plugin, and how do they work?
WordPress plugins are apps for your website that allow you to add custom features and functionality like a contact form, eCommerce, Social Media Sharing, etc. The concept is similar to apps on your smartphone.
Do WordPress plugins affect a website speed?
It depends on the Plugin, but WordPress plugins can affect your website speed if coded poorly.
WordPress plugins that run exclusively in the admin area, such as WP Mail SMTP, Uncanny Automator, etc., will keep your site running smoothly because they are not loaded on the front end.
However, when the Plugin loads resources like images, scripts, and other files when your site is loading to users (frontend), they can affect the overall speed of your site.
What are the differences between a paid and a free plugin?
Do many people think, why a need to spend money on a plugin when tens of thousands are available for free?
Right?
Even though premium plugins have a financial cost, they also have benefits that their free counterparts don’t, such as dedicated support.
If you are a beginner, it can help you set up your Plugin properly. Regular updates often go hand in hand with new versions of WordPress. With a free plugin, the developer is not required to make updates.
Many good plugins are available for free in the official WordPress plugin directory, and to get more options, you need to upgrade to their paid version.
And above all, premium means supporting and encouraging the team to continue to care about the product they are developing.
How many plugins do you need to install on your website?
This is a question that comes up rapidly often among WordPress users: how many plugins do you need to install, at most?
There isn’t a specific number of plugins that shouldn’t be exceeded, although, as Alex says, “a large number of plugins means high chances of having bad plugins.”
The most important thing is the quality of the plugins, which matters greatly in the WordPress Website development process. In other words, it’s better to have 10 well-coded plugins than 40 plugins that cause incompatibilities and bugs.
What is the value of WordPress plugins?
Yes, premium WordPress plugins are worth every penny as they help you save thousands of dollars in custom development costs. You’ll also get regular access to expert support and new features.
WordPress plugins are also much cheaper than SaaS alternatives because most are self-hosted on your site. With this technology, you get full control over your data.
For example, building a custom PopUps solution for enhancing your potential customers’ experience, like PopUp Maker, is a meaningful investment for your business.
Do professional developers use WordPress plugins over their code?
Professional developers always use WordPress plugins to speed up their workflow to earn more on their client projects. It is fine to reinvent the wheel when the existing tool does the job much better.
For example, when you ask a professional development agency to build an e-commerce website, they may offer you $15,000 per project. Still, behind the scenes, they will use plugins to make the project more profitable and affordable for you.
They can use ShareThis Dashboard for Google Analytics to set up all their performance tracking, The Events Calendar for adding calendars on websites, Yoast to set up their SEO scheme properly, iThemes for boosting security, Jetpack for backups, and so on.
This is why most WordPress plugin companies offer agency licenses for developers to use on client projects.
What is the best free WordPress plugin?
Some of the best free WordPress plugins include Litespeed Cache, Contact form 7 for basic content forms, ShareThis DashBoard for Google Analytics, etc.
Conclusion:
In a nutshell, The Plugin is essential for every WordPress site. More than that, using the excellent Plugin that helps create your unique online space greatly matters.
While selecting any WordPress Plugin, you have to analyze your requirements first.
For example, suppose you are running a blog website. In that case, a newsletter benefits your site or a services-based business.
A well-organized Contact form can enhance your communication with your potential clients. So, be wise and select the top-notch features and functionality plugins for your WordPress website.
Creating a website takes work; you have to plan many things, like how your website looks, what kind of features you want, and how you get those features on your website.
For this reason, you can explore the best web design gallery and get inspiring tips and tricks for developing your WordPress websites
