Top 10 Best Plugins Every WordPress Site Needs

Are you confused about the best WordPress plugins for your site? Get in here, let’s have a quick chat!

WordPress plugins are {without a doubt} the heart of any WordPress website or blog. These plugins are expertly designed to help improve both the features and functionality of your website, thus creating a better experience for you and your target audience.

Today, every business or blog who wishes to excel must have some of these plugins installed at the backend.

Unarguably, tools that wield such power can either make or break your website. One wrong move and your stunning sleek website could be turned into a jumbled mess.

This makes it even more critical to keep an eye out for only the best plugins that are sure to suit your needs.

As simple as that may sound, choosing the best plugins for your WordPress site can be an extremely daunting task. WordPress currently boasts over 55,000 plugins. Man, how do I navigate my way through this crowd of plugins?!

Well, you do not have to worry. We have tested a few thousands of these plugins, and we can unabashedly state the Top 10 best plugins every WordPress site needs.

Enjoy the read!

Essential Tips to Help You Choose the Best Plugins for Your WordPress Site

Before you dive into picking the top WordPress plugins right away, we will like to show you some of the steps that made it easy to handpick these best 10 plugins.

Be sure to keep an eye out for these tips as you compare different WordPress plugins.

• Do Your Homework

The first and most critical step when it comes to choosing the best plugin for your website is to determine what your needs are. Why do you need a plugin? To boost your SEO ranking? To help with security issues? For better visibility? Your email marketing campaign?

You have to take the time and answer this important question so that you won’t end up wasting your time and hard-earned money on plugins that cannot deliver.

• Take Note of The Red Flags

To ensure you are, indeed, choosing the best plugins for your site or blog, you should totally pay attention to the red flags. The red flags in this context refer to the average user rating. Every plugin has the user’s rating boldly displayed on its page. Do not be in a hurry. Take the time and analyze the average user’s rating. Typically, users are allowed to give a rating within the range of 1 to 5 stars. Common sense indicates that a plugin with an average of 4 or 5 stars rating should be better than one that is barely 2 or 3 stars. Always pay attention to this red flag!

• Is the Plugin Vetted?

This is yet another crucial question to answer before paying or downloading a WordPress plugin. While downloading just about any plugin on the web may seem like the easiest way out, you will end up exposing your blog or website to a ton of issues. This is why we advise users to only go for plugins that are vetted by WordPress. Every free plugin must be vetted by WordPress as a form of assurance. The only exception to this rule are paid plugins. In this case, we advise you to find a reputable company to patronize. At least, the credibility of the company will serve as vetting for the plugin. Shop smartly!

• Last Update

Examining the last update date of a plugin is an essential step everyone must follow. I can’t stress this enough. Time and time again, we hear of one site or the other that was lost to hackers. Hackers are smart. They study your website, looking for loopholes to leverage. This is why WordPress constantly updates these plugins to ensure every noticeable breach is fixed in due time.

Therefore, while choosing a plugin, you have to keep an eye out for those which were recently updated – say in the last month or 2. This gives a certain level of confidence that the plugin is safe to use.

• Majority Wins the Vote

Another easy way to tell whether or not a plugin is safe and active is by checking the number of downloads. Just like any other app, the higher the number of downloads the better the app. A crowd would not continuously download an app that isn’t providing the desired result. As a matter of fact, I trust this rating system more than reviews and ratings, as they can be easily manipulated.

Now, we are sure of what we want. Let’s dive in already!

1. Builder Plugin – Elementor

Like Bob the builder, Elementor can fix anything – okay, anything that has to do with building a website. To gain an edge over competitors, every business – both small and large – are compelled to create an official website. Besides allowing for easy communication and advertisement, creating your own website also helps to draw huge traffic from the global customer base.

While that is important, you do not want to spend a fortune creating a website, yes? Or go take coding classes to start designing yours? Not at all!

The Elementor is a builder plugin that allows users to design and customize any website of their taste. Yes, you read right. You can totally create your website from scratch with this WordPress plugin.

Elementor comes packed with powerful features such as Theme builder, popup builder, widgets, and lots more. Making it absolutely possible – and ridiculously – easy to create a website that matches your unique taste and style. Just the one for you!

What’s more?

This world-leading WordPress page builder has both free and paid versions. What that means is that you can totally take advantage of these great features without paying a dime. For more features, you can easily upgrade to the paid version, which costs only $49/year.

2. UpdraftPlus

Like every other thing in life, WordPress poise some drawbacks which could be a hack, glitch, failed the installation, server crash, etc. Imagine losing all of your content and important info to a crash. Scary? Frustrating? I get it!

 Well, you do not have to worry about that anymore, as UpdraftPlus provides a one-stop scheduled backup for all the important info on your WordPress site or blog. Without breaking any sweat, this plugin helps you to safely secure your contents and data to the cloud. Come what may – a glitch, hack, server crash, or what have you,– you rest assured your data is safe.

Thanks to the advanced features of this WordPress backup plugin, you can now backup your data to other cloud-based services – not just UpdraftVault. You can totally backup your data to Amazon S3, DreamObjects, Dropbox, Google, Drive, Rackspace Cloud, email, Openstack Swift, and FTP. Even better, the paid version of this backup plugin gives you the opportunity to backup your data to Microsoft OneDrive, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, WebDAV, SFTP, Backblaze B2, and SCP. Whatever rocks your boat!

Oh, did I mention the plugin has over 2 million active installations and 2000+ 5 star rating? It does! And it was last updated just three weeks ago. Checks all the boxes, right?

3. SEO Plugin – SEO Framework

With over 100,000 active installations and a truckload of powerful SEO features, we can say unabashedly that this WordPress plugin deserves a seat at the table of the best plugins for every WordPress site. Although it holds only a 200+ 5 star rating, SEO Framework boasts the only feature-complete SEO plugin on the planet. It expertly helps you to skyrocket your website or blog using white-hat guidelines. If you want to improve your traffic on organic search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, then this is the guy for the job.

Besides the standard SEO feature, SEO Framework provides users with the opportunity to tweak the system via extensions.

Upon installing this WordPress SEO plugin, you are sure to enjoy easy optimization of your metadata, a beautiful overview, exceptional support, genuine SEO practices, increased visibility, easy social sharing, enhanced content visibility, etc. Why struggle with SEO when there is an easy Framework?!

4. Sucuri

Are you tired of worrying about the safety of your website or blog? You should give this the security plugin a try. Sucuri can seamlessly pass for the best-paid security plugin for WordPress sites and blogs. This easy to use tool was crafted by professionals who know their onion in the industry. The cloud-based platform boasts all the necessary tools you need to keep your website out of harm’s way. Sucuri ensures your website stays clean and protected at all times, giving you the long sought after peace of mind you need to focus on other important matters.

Whether you are looking to fix a hack or prevent a future hack, Sucuri promises to deliver at all times. This security plugin offers WAF protection, SSL support, Real-time monitoring, Load balancing, Performance boost, SIEM integration,  Incident response, Hack removal, and a host of other security features. You can enjoy these and more for as low as $199.99 for basic websites and $299.99 for professional websites. Get the peace you need today!

5. WP SMUSH

We can both agree that images are the number 1 booster of any content marketing strategy today. Research shows that contents with embedded images or videos attract a larger pool of viewers, thus increasing your page views, clicks, and dwell time. But how do you get all of those images into your WordPress site or blog?

It is simple – use an image compressor plugin such as WP Smush.

Designed by one of the best teams in the industry, this plugin is incredibly easy to use and performs so much more than allowing you to create lose compression images in any directory. Both the paid and free versions of SMUSH are compatible with your favorite media library and helps you to fix your google page speed image opportunities, detect incorrect size during upload, defer offscreen images, optimize all the images across your entire network, resize your images, and so much more. It even comes with a Directory Smush that allows you to optimize images even if they are not located in the media library.

You also have nothing to worry about trust as it was last updated a month ago and holds over 1 million active installations and about 4,000 five star rating. You are good to go!

6. WP Rocket

WP Rocket offers a caching plugin features for both beginners and pros alike. The caching plugin makes it possible to make WordPress load fast in just a few clicks. It comes equipped with a ton of features that can be easily tweaked to make your site load faster and better, making your visitors happy to stay and even visit again. Of course, no one wants to stick with a website or blog that takes forever to load.

This easy to use plugin helps you enjoy the benefit without dealing with backend coding gibberish. With only a minimal configuration, you are sure to get immediate results.

From page caching to cache preloading, gzip compression, static files compression, and images on request, WP Rocket offers everything you need a little more. You also get the option to tweak settings such as lazy loading images, DNS pre-fetching, CDN support, minification, etc. Skyrocket your website without dealing with rocket science coding!

7. Contact Form 7

Every website needs a contact form plugin. Instead of spending hours on end joggling through a mess of codes,  Contact Form 7 swears it can help you achieve your goal without asking for a dime. The WordPress plugin currently boasts an average user rating of over a thousand 5 stars and it was last updated 2 months ago, making it safe to use. Another striking feature of this plugin is that it has over 5 million active installations. Without a doubt, one can definitely give this a try.

Even more, the plugin supports Ajax-powered submitting, Akismet spam filtering, and CAPTCHA verification. So, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

If you are looking for an active secure contact form plugin, you should totally try this out.

8. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is arguably the best email marketing plugin out there. With a plethora of features and promised benefits, rest assured this is the guy you want in your marketing team. Why lose customers to your competitor when you can easily convert visitors to loyal, happy customers?! Yes, Optinmonster makes that possible.

With this plugin, you can enjoy more leads and increase your sales without breaking a sweat. Simply install the plugin and start leveraging the astounding features that come with it. Optinmonster promises to help you grow your email list, increase sales conversion, capture more leads, show targeted offers, get more pageviews, and reduce cart abandonment.

Some of the astounding features incorporated into this powerful plugin include Drag-and-drop builder, Multiple form types, Exit intent technology, Onsite retargeting, Page-level targeting, Onsite follow up campaign, A/B splitting test, conversion analytics, and lots more. Sure, it will cost you some money, but it is totally worth it. Give it a try!

9. Akismet Anti-Spam

Although this security plugin was last updated 5 months ago, you can be sure it is, undoubtedly, one of the best security plugins for every WordPress site as it was carefully designed by the WordPress team. Akismet functions as a spam filter, protecting your website or blog from malicious links and contents. It does this by checking each link their database of spams. Should a link be flagged, this anti-spam plugin ensures that link or comment does not appear on your website, thus keeping your site free from spammers.

Typically, this plugin is installed in every WordPress site as the default security measure, however, you can also download and install it if your site doesn’t have one.

Another alluring feature of this plugin is that it collects all the filtered spams and display them on your Moderator dashboard. Also, it comes equipped with a discard feature that immediately blocks terrible spams, freeing up your disk space and speeding up your site too. It is amazing! And also free for personal blogs and websites. Check it out!

10. Monster Insight

Are you looking for the best SEO plugin to boost your business website or eCommerce store? Look no further than Google’s number 1 analytical tool Monster Insight. As the name rightly puts it, this plugin gives you an in-depth insight into how your website or blog is ranking against your competitor. From the comfort of your dashboard, you can tell how visitors get to your website and what they search most for, making it easy to tweak your site for success.

No wonder the plugin has garnered over 2 million active installations and more than a thousand 5 star ratings. If you are concerned about security then you will be happy to learn that this WordPress SEO plugin was last updated 2 days ago. Yes, all fresh and active!

Furthermore, the plugin is packed full with amazing analytic features, customized to help you quickly and easily interpret your stats. You are sure to find Google analytic tools such as Behavior Report, Audience Report, Search Console Report, Forms Report, Content Report, Ecommerce Report, and a ton of others. Even more, you can totally enjoy this for free. There is the paid version, though. For those who need large companies who need more features. You don’t want to be left out on this!

Conclusion

Plugins are the life wire of every website. As such, you’ve got to take the time to choose the best option for your website. Instead of wallowing through over 55,000 plugins on WordPress, we have simplified the process by handpicking the top 10 best plugins that every website needs. Try them out and thank us later!