There are hundreds of WordPress plugins on the market, and they can be extremely useful for customizing and optimizing your blog. Plugins assist with several aspects of your blog, including design, site speed, traffic, monetization, and more.
However, we decided to issue a small warning before we get into our list of top recommended WordPress plugins.
Installing too many plugins can slow your site. It would be best to use only those that significantly change or improve your website in ways that would not be possible manually.
If you run into a problem and discover a solution in the form of a WordPress plugin, make sure you’ve thoroughly searched for other options before deciding to download the plugin.
Having the right plugins and tools for WordPress can help you expand your business and make solid cash online. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the must-have WordPress plugins for business websites in 2022, as recommended by our experts. We’ll also tell you how to add and upload plugins to WordPress.
Top 30 WordPress plugins and tools
1. Yoast
Yoast is a multi-purpose plugin that can help you boost your website’s search engine rankings and increase traffic to your blog attracting visitors from search engines and social media.
It helps you create content that ranks high by using appropriate keywords among other SEO tips. Additionally, Yoast’s on-page SEO analysis provides an actionable checklist for optimizing each post and page on your site.
Pricing:
Freemium.
Alternative: All in One SEO
Yoast Plugin is essential for driving organic traffic you want to profit from. When you put high-paying ads on your website, you’ll need solid number of page visits.
2. OptinMonster
OptinMonster helps you to create attractive opt-in forms that will convert your blog’s lapsed visitors into email subscribers.
On average, 70% of people who visit your website will forget about it and never return. That means you’ve wasted all of the time, money, and effort you put into getting that traffic.
That’s why getting those visitors to sign up for your email list is so crucial. With its beautiful popups, floating bars, and other campaigns, OptinMonster makes this task simple.
Pricing:
The Basic plan starts at $9 per month.
Features & Pros:
- Drag-and-drop opt-in builder.
- Smooth integrations with popular services.
- Detailed insights to help you improve your campaigns.
Alternative:
Thrive Themes – Conversion Focused WordPress Themes
To Contents ↑3. SeedProd
SeedProd allows bloggers to create attractive landing pages like sales pages, webinar landing pages, squeeze pages, coming soon pages, and more. So, whether you want to increase email subscribers or sales, you can use SeedProd to create high-converting landing pages.
Pricing:
SeedProd is free, but you can upgrade to the Pro Version for $39.50 per year.
Features:
- Drag-and-drop builder with real-time preview.
- Pre-designed landing page templates.
- Countdown timers, social sharing buttons, and other landing page blocks.
- Built-in email autoresponder.
- Mobile-friendly and optimized for search engines.
Alternative: WeTransfer
4. MemberPress
MemberPress helps you limit access to specific pages, posts, and custom post types for visitors. It is the simplest way to turn your blog into a membership site, complete with all of the features you’ll need to expand your membership and make more money online.
Pricing:
The Basic plan starts at $179 per year.
Features:
- User access rules with a lot of power.
- A visual course creator.
- Supports payment gateways such as PayPal and Stripe.
- Compatible with popular WordPress plugins.
- Supports MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit, and other email marketing platforms.
Alternative: Wild Apricot
To Contents ↑5. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is a popular backup plugin for WordPress. Making a complete backup before making any significant changes to your blog, such as changing a theme, updating a plugin, or updating WordPress protects you if something goes wrong. You can quickly restore the backup with UpdraftPlus.
Pricing:
The Premium plan starts at $42 per year.
Features:
- Scheduled backups, both manual and automated.
- Supports cloud backup to Google Drive, Amazon S3, DropBox, and other cloud storage services.
- Encrypted database backups.
- Compatible with a multi-site WordPress network.
- Complete backup logs.
Alternative: MSP Backup and Management. Simple. Profitable.
6. WP Rocket
You can use WP Rocket to speed up your blog’s pages. It also includes Imagify, a sophisticated image optimization tool.
A one-second delay in your WordPress website loading time can result in a 7% drop in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% drop in customer satisfaction, according to WPBeginner.
Besides, a slow website can harm your search engine rankings, leading to organic traffic loss. Therefore, it’s vital to ensure that your website loads quickly. You’re missing out on a lot of traffic, subscribers, and sales if it doesn’t.
Pricing:
$42 per year.
Features:
- Webpages and browsers caching.
- Supports Cloudflare.
Alternative: W3 Total Cache By BoldGrid
To Contents ↑7. Sucuri
Sucuri defends your blog against malware, DDoS, and other types of attacks.
Security is something that every blogger should be concerned about. That’s because hackers target many websites to infiltrate and distribute malicious software to your visitors. There are even scams that will take your site access and lock it until you pay a ransom.
Pricing:
$199.99 per year.
Features:
- Protects your blog with a powerful firewall.
- Removes malware automatically.
- Defends against brute force, DDoS, and XSS attacks.
Alternative: Web Application Security
To Contents ↑8. PushEngage
PushEngage allows you to send targeted push notifications to users when they leave your website. You can use it to send personalized messages to users to encourage them to return to your blog.
Even when they’re on a different website, these notifications are delivered directly to users’ web browsers or mobile devices.
Pricing:
Send 120 notifications per month to up to 2500 subscribers on the free plan. You can upgrade your plan for $25 per month.
Features:
- Notifications can be triggered based on the visitor’s actions.
- Track performance via analytics.
- A/B testing.
Alternative: OneSignal
To Contents ↑9. RafflePress
The best way to increase your blog’s traffic and email list is to run a viral giveaway on your blog. But organizing the logistics of a giveaway contest can be difficult.
This is where RafflePress comes in. It’s a simple plugin that asks your visitors to earn entries by liking, following, and sharing your social media pages, such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
Pricing:
You can use RafflePress for free to get started. The Pro version has more advanced features and costs $39.20 per year.
Features:
- Drag-and-drop builder for giveaways.
- Ready-made templates for giveaways.
- Effective social media integrations.
- Well-optimized landing pages for a giveaway.
- Advanced retargeting and tracking.
Alternative: TREMENDOUS
To Contents ↑10. Uncanny Automator
Uncanny Automator is a WordPress automation plugin that automates various WordPress administration tasks, saving you time and money.
There’s a lot to keep track of behind the scenes when it comes to running a blog. You can easily connect your existing WordPress plugins and create automation “recipes” with them. For example, when a user fills out a form, you can automatically enroll them in your course and create a calendar event for it.
Pricing:
Pro version has more advanced features and costs $149 for one website per year.
Features:
- Supports 50+ popular WordPress plugins and over 2,000 apps
- Create recipes with a simple editor.
Alternative: Improvado
To Contents ↑11. Shared Counts
One of the most effective ways to increase blog traffic and keep visitors coming back for more is to use social media.
Shared Counts is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to integrate social media buttons into your blog. It allows your users to share your articles on social media easily. Which boosts your WordPress blog’s traffic and engagement.
Pricing:
Free.
Alternative: SnapShot
12. WP Mail SMTP
WP Mail SMTP is a free e-mail SMTP plugin for WordPress. This free plugin allows you to change the SMTP provider, which the wp_mail() PHP function uses. To put it another way, it ensures that your e-mail reaches its intended recipient.
If you ever had problems with WordPress failing to send emails when someone fills out your contact form or when you attempt to reset your password, that’s because WordPress isn’t set up for email deliverability by default. Fortunately, WP Mail SMTP can easily fix this.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- It fixes all issues with WordPress not sending emails.
- It’s simple to send bulk emails.
- Ensures that emails are delivered.
Alternative: WP Mail Bank
To Contents ↑13. Insert Headers and Footers
Insert Headers and Footers is a free plugin that allows you to add code or scripts like Google Analytics tracking, Facebook pixel code, or custom CSS to your blog’s header and footer.
Many bloggers do not want to mess with their theme files. Fortunately, this plugin provides a single location where you can insert code without fear of breaking your website.
Pricing:
Free.
Alternative: Header and Footer Script Loader Plugin
14. WPML
WPML is a WordPress multilingual plugin that makes it simple to set up and maintain a multilingual blog. WordPress won’t allow you to create a multilingual website by default easily. Fortunately, WPML can assist you. It’s extremely simple to use; download the plugin, select your languages, and begin translating your content so that you can reach more people.
Pricing:
WPML starts from $29 for one website per year.
Features:
- There are over 40 languages available, including dialects.
- It translates pages, custom types, posts, menus, and more.
- Compatible with any WordPress API-enabled theme or plugin.
- You can optimize your website for search engine optimization in multiple languages.
Alternative: POLYLANG
To Contents ↑15. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the ideal plugin for making money online by selling products through your WordPress blog. It comes with both free and paid extensions to help you make your blog more functional.
Creating an online store is one way to monetize your blog. With WooCommerce, you control what you sell, including digital products like ebooks.
Pricing:
WooCommerce starts with $10 for one website per month.
Features:
- Compatible with all WordPress themes.
- Allows products from other stores as affiliates.
- Effective customer management system.
- Compatible with WPML for translations.
Alternative: EasyCart
16. CSS Hero
CSS Hero is a fantastic WordPress plugin that allows you to customize your blog’s appearance. Using a point-and-click interface, you can customize each element on your WordPress blog without editing any code.
Pricing:
CSS Hero starts with $19 for one website per year.
Features:
- Real-time customization.
- For developers, there is a CSS code editor.
Alternative: YellowPencil Editor
17. Smush
Smush is a free image optimization plugin for WordPress.
If your blog images aren’t optimized properly, they can cause your site to slow down. Furthermore, a slow blog can cause visitors to abandon your site before even reading your content. Smush automatically optimizes your blog’s images for speed and performance when you upload a new image to the WordPress Media Library.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- Compress images without sacrificing quality.
- With just one click, you can optimize and compress up to 50 images.
- You can enable lazy loading for offscreen images.
Alternative: ImageOptim
To Contents ↑18. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. This plugin allows you to connect your blog to Google Analytics with a single click.
Successful bloggers use analytics to understand their audience better, generate better blog post ideas, and monetize their blogs. You can see what’s working and make data-driven decisions to grow your blog with actionable analytics.
Pricing:
You can use MonsterInsights for free to get started. The Pro version has more advanced features and costs $99.50 per year.
Features:
- Blog traffic statistics in real-time.
- Custom dashboard reports for WordPress.
- Audience demographics.
Alternative: ExactMetrics
19. Pretty Links
Pretty Links is a popular URL shortener and affiliate marketing plugin for WordPress blogs. It allows you to automatically shorten and customize URLs for your blog links and add affiliate links to your content.
It also helps you generate more affiliate revenue from both old and new content. You only need to add your affiliate links once, and the plugin will intelligently place them throughout your blog’s content.
Pricing:
You can use Pretty Links for free to get started. The Premium version has more advanced features and costs $49 per year.
Alternative: Lasso
20. Redirection
With over 2 million active installs, Redirection is the most popular redirect plugin for WordPress. You don’t need any technical knowledge to create and manage redirects with this free plugin.
You can use a redirection plugin to ensure that any broken links on your site redirect to another relevant live page or post.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- Manage 301 redirects and 404 errors on your website with ease.
- Ability to redirect based on browser, login status, referrer, and other factors.
Alternative: 301 Redirects
21. wpDiscuz
Adding a comment section is one of the simplest ways to increase user interaction. You can simply use a plugin to add the comments section, and wpDiscuz is one of the best WordPress plugins for blogs.
It is extremely fast and responsive, and it comes with a lot of useful features. It also has comment list sorting, allowing readers to see the most recent, oldest, or most popular comments.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- For in-depth discussions, use multilevel comment threads.
- Anonymous comments.
- Fully integrated social media login systems.
- Clean and responsive design.
Alternative: Buddy Press
22. WPForms
WPForms is the easiest and best WordPress contact form plugin for beginners. It helps you create a simple spam-free contact form for connecting with your readers.
Pricing:
Freemium.
Features:
- Simple drag-and-drop form builder.
- Pre-made form templates.
- Integrates with popular email marketing tools.
- Its anti-spam feature helps to keep spam at bay.
Alternative: JotForm
To Contents ↑23. TrustPulse
You can also send users to special landing pages via the TrustPulse social proof notifications. Adding TrustPulse to your site can increase email signups or sales.
Pricing:
Freemium: You can upgrade to the Pro Version for $5 per month.
Alternative: NudGify
24. The Events Calendar
The Events Calendar is the best WordPress event calendar plugin. It allows you to quickly create and manage a frontend calendar on your blog so that visitors can see online events, such as webinars, workshops, coaching sessions, and Q&A coming up.
Pricing:
Freemium. Pro Plan costs $99 per year.
Features:
- You can import and export iCal or Google Calendar events.
- Customize the calendar to match the theme of your website.
Alternative: Amelia
25. TablePress
TablePress uses a simple shortcode to create and insert tables into posts, pages, and widget areas.
You can quickly create simple and attractive tables if you’re reviewing products on your blog. It has a spreadsheet-like interface in the backend that allows you to add and edit data without learning code.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- Create tables with any data, including formulas.
- Sorting, filtering, pagination, and other features are available.
- Import and export tables from Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON files.
Alternative: Ninja Tables Pro
26. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon is a social feed plugin suite that allows you to easily integrate multiple social media feeds such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube into your WordPress site.
Thanks to its seamless integration with various social platforms, you can display social feeds content, customer reviews, and more. Simply authorize the plugin, insert the shortcode into your articles or widgets, and the content will appear instantly.
Pricing:
$49 per year per one plugin.
Features:
- Integrate social media feeds into your website.
- Customize the feed the way you like.
- Automatically filter content by word or hashtag.
Alternative: Blog2Social
27. Simple Author Box
Simple Author Box is a free plugin displays an author profile at the end of the blog post. You can put your name, author gravatar, and bio using this plugin. You can also use it to promote your social media profiles by including social icons.
Pricing:
Free.
Features:
- Customizable to match your theme’s design.
- Support for RTL and AMP for a better user experience.
Alternative: Author Bio Box
28. Easy Affiliate
Set up your self-hosted affiliate program with Easy Affiliate and increase your sales by up to 30%. Referral marketing is a great way to increase traffic. You can pay other bloggers to promote your products/services for a small commission when a visitor converts.
But setting up and running your own affiliate program can be tough, so you need a plugin like Easy Affiliate.
Pricing:
$99.50 per year for one website.
Features:
- Keep track of real-time clicks and affiliate statistics.
29. Broken Link Checker
Manually checking your content for broken internal and external links takes a lot of time, but you can rely on Broken Link Checker to take care of it. It also instantly notifies you of any broken links so that you can fix them.
Pricing:
Broken Link Checker is free.
Features:
- Detects broken links, redirects, and missing images.
- Broken links notification via email or dashboard.
- Instead of manually updating each post, you can edit links via the plugin dashboard.
Alternative: Save Post. Check Links.
30. SearchWP
SearchWP is the most sophisticated WordPress search plugin available. It drastically improves your site search so website visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.
Unlike the default WordPress search functionality, SearchWP indexes everything on your site, including PDF document content, custom fields, custom post types, ACF fields, text files, custom tables, and more.
It also allows you to create your own relevance scale and modify the algorithm without writing any code.
There is a search metrics feature that shows you what your visitors are searching for, what they find or dont find,’ and how you can improve discoverability.
SearchWP also allows you to add powerful features such as live AJAX search to WordPress, and it integrates seamlessly with all major WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce, Meta Box, Toolset, BigCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and bbPress.
To Contents ↑Bonus resources
We recommend the following tools to better manage your WordPress blog in addition to the plugins above:
Grammarly: a fantastic grammar checker that includes a plagiarism detector, thesaurus, and other features.
PublishPress: this plugin makes it easy to manage editorial workflow in WordPress.
Akismet is an excellent plugin for improving your website’s comments section and reducing spam.
Canva – This app helps you create blog thumbnails and other images for your articles.
WP 2FA: Add two-factor authentication to your WordPress sites with this plugin.
Codeable is a platform that allows you to collaborate with vetted WordPress developers on troubleshooting and customizations.
To Contents ↑What are WordPress plugins?
A WP plugin is a software that can be used to add a set of functions to a WordPress website. With plugins, users can enhance their site’s functionality or add new features without writing a single line of code.
Where can I find WordPress plugins?
- Log into your WordPress Dashboard.
- Click the Add New link in the Plugins menu. The Install Plugins page appears.
- Search for any plugins on this page.
How do I enable WordPress plugins?
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins.
- Find the plugin.
- Click Activate.
How do I manually install WordPress plugins?
Do you know how to open and use a Zip (or archive) file? Good. Then you understand how to install a WordPress plugin manually.
- Download the plugin from the official page. It will generate a Zip file/archive for you to download.
- Go to the Plugins section of your WordPress admin site.
- Click on Upload and select the zip file. WordPress unzips everything and places the files where they belong.
- Activate the plugin.
Go back to your WordPress admin menu, scroll down, and look for the plugin settings. Check the default settings and make any necessary changes or additions.
Are WordPress plugins safe?
No plugin is 100% secure. But learning to assess and select quality plugins before installing them can significantly reduce vulnerabilities. Choose plugins from reputable marketplaces such as CodeCanyon, the WordPress Plugin Repository, or trusted third-party stores.
Why can’t I install plugins on WordPress?
- You’re on the WordPress.com website.
WordPress.com provides a limited version of the popular WordPress self-hosted software. Users who do not upgrade to the business plan, which costs around $299 per year, cannot install plugins. You cannot install third-party plugins with a free, personal, or premium plan as well.
- You’re running out of memory
Another scenario is that you can see and access the plugins menu but not install them.
The PHP memory limit is usually the cause of the failure notice. When a process reaches this limit, it will either be terminated or will display an error message similar to this:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted
You can fix this by including the following code in your wp-config.php file:
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);
- User Restrictions
WordPress has a built-in system for managing user roles. On a WordPress site, only administrators can install and activate plugins. If you are the website’s owner, you should check with your developer to see if you have administrator permissions.
- You’re connected to a Multi-Site Network.
Another reason you might not see the plugins menu in WordPress is if your website is part of a WordPress multi-site network, and the network admin has disabled the plugins menu item on network sites. You can ask your network administrator to install plugins for you to solve this problem.
To Contents ↑How many WordPress plugins are too many?
Never use more than 20 plugins as a general rule. If you’re using shared or low-cost cloud hosting, limit yourself to five plugins. Only use plugins that you know you’ll need, and make sure they’re up to date to avoid security flaws.
Conclusion
You don’t have to use all the WordPress plugins and tools on this list, but it’s common for our readers to use at least 5 of them. We recommend downloading plugins from WordPress.org or using the links in our articles to visit the official websites. Downloading nulled WordPress plugins and themes may harm your website.
And when it comes to traffic monetization, you won’t even need a plugin. With Adsterra, you can maximize your income from your WordPress website using top ad formats that are easy to place and manage. Adsterra is a super-friendly ad network for any type of publisher looking to get the most out of their WP site. Sign up today and start earning more!
