50+ Best WordPress Plugins Free & Premium

WordPress is a fantastic platform for building and managing websites. It’s user friendly and has seemingly endless functionality. But everything can’t just be built into your WordPress theme. No worries – in many cases there’s a plugin for the capability you need. And we’ve put together a list of the best WordPress plugins for your website.

Built-in functionality within a WordPress theme isn’t always a bad thing, but having every feature plus the kitchen sink built-in can cause some headaches. This makes the code ridiculously long and complex, which can slow down your site, and you often end up with many unused features that you never needed in the first place. Also, if you ever decide to switch to a new theme you could run into some problems such as losing content for features not supported by your new theme. This is where the best WordPress plugins come in.

Have no fear, the plugins are here.

Plugins make it easy to pick and choose the features you need. Plus you can take the plugin (and any related content) with you if you ever decide to update to a new WordPress theme.

We’ve put together a list of the best WordPress plugins for a variety of needs based on questions we get asked at WPExplorer. We receive a lot of requests to add built-in features to our themes, but in many cases there’s a plugin for that.

So here’s our list of the best WordPress plugins grouped by feature (but in no particular order). You can use the table of contents below to quickly jump to a specific group of plugins.

Table of Contents

• SEO
• E-Commerce
• Social Sharing
• CSS Editing
• Page Builders
• Caching & Optimization
• Notification & Opt-in
• Sliders
• Advanced Menus
• Contact Forms
• Backups
• Security
• Link Cloaking
• Custom Fonts
• Related Posts
• Author Box
• Events
• Lightbox
• Coming Soon & Landing Pages
• Post Ratings
• Restricted Content

SEO Plugins

When it comes to the best WordPress plugins for a website adding one for SEO is almost always a must. First off, SEO options should never be built into your theme (if you ever switch themes you’ll lose all of your settings – yikes!). Second, unless you happen to be a SEO expert, installing a SEO plugin makes creating sitemaps, managing page titles and other wise optimizing your website so much easier. Here are our top picks.

Yoast SEO (Free)

One of the most popular free plugins, Yoast SEO is a great free alternative for setting up your onsite WordPress SEO. This plugin adds an SEO tab to your WordPress dashboard so you can make quick changes to your sitemap, titles & meta, breadcrumbs, RSS and more. While the free version of the plugin is a powerful tool for most blog, upgrading to pro adds even more on site optimization settings plus priority support.

All in One SEO Pack (Free)

Another freemium style plugin to consider is All in One SEO. While there is the option to upgrade for premium features and support, the free version of the plugin is an awesome way to start bettering your SEO. The plugin includes options for AMP, Google Analytics, sitemaps, WooCommerce SEO settings and more.

SmartCrawl SEO by WPMU (Freemium)

SmartCrawl SEO makes SEO easy, and even includes a setup wizard to help you get started. Just install, set your options, and customize. SmartCrawl SEO also has a Moz SEO Tools panel built right in so you can keep track of how your rankings are doing. For more features (and access to 100+ other plugins) upgrade to pro via a WPMU membership (affiliate link).

E-Commerce Plugins

If you want to build an online store WordPress is a fantastic option, and there are quite a few awesome e-commerce plugins to choose from. Depending on how many products you have, what your selling and what theme(s) you like these best WordPress plugins for e-commerce should fit the bill.

Easy Digital Downloads (Free)

Get the awesome Easy Digital Downloads plugin for free. There are even a handful of helpful extensions available on WordPress.org. This is a quick and professional way to add a payment gateway (with cart, discount options, and user data) for digital goods on your website.

WooCommerce (Free)

With over a million downloads, WooCommerce is a solid and free option for creating your own online store. With many supporting WordPress themes this plugin is easy to install, use and manage. Plus there are extensions for purchase that add features.

Give Donations (Free)

Give is a free way to collect donations for your charity or event. Simply install, design your donation forms, add goals and donor levels plus more. The plugin also supports multiple payment gateways and integrates seamlessly with most themes. Want to give back to the developers behind Give? Consider a purchasing a premium extension (affiliate link) which helps to support the completely free core plugin.

Social Sharing Plugins

While many people focus on search engines for traffic, one audience you won’t want to forget is on social media. These users are often extremely engaged and a great way to connect with them is by adding social links to you website with one of these best WordPress plugins for social media.

 JetPack Social Sharing (Free)

JetPack is a beast of a plugin with many useful features – one of them being social sharing. Add icon or text social sharing links to your posts so visitors to your site can easily share your work with their friends and followers.

Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons (Free)

Promote your social links with Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons. This free plugin will allow you to easily add social sharing buttons to your site for all the top platforms. The plugin looks beautiful and has tons of options. This is one of the most widely used and best rated plugins out there for social sharing.

CSS Editing Plugins

Need to change a button color? Tweak your page margins? Edit the font size? These are all things you could code with CSS, or you could use one of these CSS editor plugin. Just point, click and use built-in options to tweak your website styling.

Yellow Pencil (Freemium)

While you can try Visual CSS Lite for free to have access to CSS selectors, 50+ properties, margins, paddings, live previews and an undo/redo function, you’ll need to upgrade to Yellow Pencil (affiliate link) pro to for ultimate editing options. The pro version of the plugin adds even more properties like 800+ fonts, 300+ background patterns, 50+ animations and trendy color palettes.

CSS Hero (Premium)

CSS Hero (affiliate link) gives you full control over design aspects of your WordPress website. Use CSS Hero to edit fonts, colors, adjust layouts (padding, margin, etc), and even insert images with the built-in Unsplash integration. The plugin also features device specific editing and previewing so you can customize your site for every device.

Page Builder Plugins

To completely change the look of your website and build custom page layouts then you’ll want to consider a page builder. There are many page builders available, and for the most part the way they work is similar. You have “blocks” that can be inserted, arranged and customized on a post or page to create new layouts. But not all builders are  created the same – here are our two favorites.

Elementor Page Builder (Free)

If you’re looking for an affordable yet powerful page builder we’d recommend Elementor. With this plugin you can easily create custom pages with no coding required. Compatible with most themes, Elementor includes tons of page builder blocks for sections, columns, headings, text, buttons, videos and more plus pre-made templates for faster page building.

WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) (Premium)

For full control over your posts and pages, the WPBakery Page Builder is the way to go. Included with most top tier premium themes (like our top selling Total WordPress theme), this page builder includes an easy to use drag and drop builder (front and back end), custom colors options, paddings, margins, backgrounds, icons, images, and more. Plus there are tons of extensions and add-ons available to make creating websites on the fly easy.

Caching & Optimization Plugins

Caching is an important part of website speed. If your not already using a CDN, installing a plugin is a great idea. Here are our favorites.

WP Super Cache (Free)

This plugin has more downloads than there are people in Costa Rica. Why? Because WP Super Cache can make your WordPress website super fast by displaying static HTML pages to most users (using Mod_Rewrite, PHP, and legacy caching to peed things up).

W3 Total Cache (Free)

W3 Total Cache can improve your page speed by increasing server performance and reducing download times. It does such a good job that it’s even recommended by well known companies such as DreamHost, MediaTemple, Go Daddy and Host Gator.

WP Rocket (Premium)

When it comes to caching an optimizing our site, look no further than WPRocket (affiliate link). This is one of the best solutions out there and it’s used by tons of people. Even if your WordPress hosting already has built-in caching this plugin will take things to a whole new level for super fast speeds and high page speed scores.

Notification & Opt-in Plugins

While perhaps not an absolute necessity, adding a notification or an opt-in form is a great way to get your readers to focus on new content, promote special promotions or to gain newsletter subscribers. Whatever you need these plugins are sure to help.

Sumo (Free)

With the free Sumo plugin you can create notice bars, popups, scroller boxes, welcome mat and more. The plugin is compatible with more than 25+ email services, plus Sumo also includes heatmaps to see what folks are clicking plus a highlight to tweet feature. You do need a SumoMe account, but it’s free for small websites just starting out.

OptinMonster (Premium)

OptinMonster (affiliate link) is one of the leading opt-in form and lead generation software options on the web. Create fully custom opt-in including welcome mats, exit intent popups, time regulated opt-in and more. Plus you can even create targeted “follow up” messages or onsite retargeting to boost your conversions and newsletter signups even more.

Bloom (Premium)

Bloom (affiliate link) is a premium pop-up and opt-in from builder from Elegant themes. Included with your Elegant Theme’s membership, this handy plugin is a huge asset for any blog or e-commerce website. Build stunning opt-in forms to grow your subscriber list, server readers custom content (based on location or even user interaction on your website), and watch your business grow.

HelloBar (Premium)

Hello Bar is a popular premium option for creating and adding notice bars to WordPress. Plans start at $4.95 per month but HelloBar makes it so easy to create your bars. Just sign up for an account, add your website and create a hello bar. To use your bar you can manually add it to your website, or simply download the custom WordPress plugin for your Hello Bar.

FooBar (Premium)

Foobar (affiliate link) is a great plugin for adding customized notification bars to your website(s). You can choose options including but not limited to top, bottom, inline, social buttons, RSS feed, tweets, scrolling messages, custom HTML, unlimited bars and much more.

Easy Notification Bar (Free)

The Easy Notification Bar is a very simple and straight to the point notice bar. Created by yours truly WPExplorer. We made this plugin to be un-bloated without any upsells and to do just what it needs. Add a notice to the top of your site. You can enable sticky, add a button, select from a few layout options and enable a close button.

WordPress Notification Bar (Free)

If all you want is a basic notification bar, you might want to give WordPress Notification Bar a try. This plugin lets you add a simple notification bar to the top of your website with options for text, callout button and color customization.

Slider Plugins

Sliders are an easy way to add visual interest or pack in more content (via post slider) on your website. There are tons of great free and premium slider options, but in our humble opinion these are the absolute best.

Slider Revolution (Freemium)

The Depicer plugin is a free plugin available on WordPress.org that has become our go-to plugin for creating sliders. Although generally we don’t recommend sliders, if your client is begging you for one then this is the plugin you should choose. They have tons of options and a premium version, but the free version should be good enough for most of your needs.

Soliloquy (Freemium)

Soliloquy is an awesome responsive slider plugin. You can get the lovely Soliloquy slider plugin for free by trying out the lite version. The slider is responsive, has drag & drop image uploading, and if you ever want more you can purchase the full premium version (affiliate link) or a support license for extra help. For those who need or want more features addons are available for slider themes, thumbnail navigation, Instagram integration, featured content slides, dynamic cropping, carousel, lightbox, edit screen preview and image filters.

SlideDeck (Free)

Create neat and tidy sliders using SlideDeck. The plugin supports image, text, videos and HTML and includes a side-by-side editor so you can see your changes in action as you make them. Plus Soliloquy features a drag & drop slide order and supports 14 different content sources.

Advanced Menus Plugins

Most WordPress theme include basic menu functionality. This means a simple menu with dropdown and a few set menu locations. If you want to add post excerpts, include images, add custom layouts, etc then a plugin is definitely the perfect solution.

UberMenu – Premium

If you want more in your navigation, Ubermenu (affiliate link) is a mega menu plugin you need to checkout. Add images, shortcodes, descriptions, use drag & drop widgets, choose sub-menu effects, create vertical or horizontal menus, and customize just about everything.

Mega Main Menu – Premium

Another great menu option is the premium Mega Main Menu plugin (affiliate link). Choose from 10+ dropdown styles, pick any color (even gradients), select a custom Google font, choose from 1600+ built-in icons and more. Mega Main Menu is full of features – it’s even compatible with WPML for easy language translations.

Contact Form Plugins

Whether you’ve built a blog or a business website offering users an easy way to contact you might be helpful. Most themes won’t include this feature built in since there are already many powerful form plugins available, which is why we simply had to include contact forms in our best WordPress plugins list.

Gravity Forms (Premium)

There is no end to the magic Gravity Forms (affiliate link) can create. You can make forms with multiple pages, entry confirmations, addresses, check-boxes, drop-downs, radio buttons, pricing fields, etc. You can also schedule your forms and enable form-to-post features.

WPForms (Freemium)

WP Forms is a powerful form builder plugin with tons of options for building contact forms, booking forms, quote requests, subscription forms and more. You can get WPForms Lite for free from WordPress.org to start building your own responsive forms, with the option to upgrade later on if you want more features.

Contact Form 7 (Free)

This plugin does just what it says. Contact Form 7 creates lovely and straightforward contact forms with fields like name, subject, and message. You can enable email confirmations and install the Really Simple Captcha to prevent spam.

Backup Plugins

You should be taking regular backups of your website as a part of your standard WordPress security process. Doing this manually can be time consuming (and easy to forget), which is why using a plugin is such a great option.

VaultPress (Premium)

We love VaultPress – it is a great level of protection to have just in case disaster strikes. It takes daily backups (or real-time ones if you upgrade), keeps an archive of them, and VaultPress will even help you if you need to restore your site.

BackupBuddy (Premium)

BackupBuddy (affiliate link) is a great solution to backup your entire WordPress installation, plugins, widgets, content and more. Need to do a full restore? No problem – upload your backup file and importbuddy.php and you’re back on track!

BackUpWordPress (Free)

Easily backup your WordPress website everyday using the BackUpWordPress plugin. The plugin uses mysqldump and zip functions to backup your installation, and you even have the option to have the backup files emailed to you.

Security Plugins

Keeping your WordPress website secure can be a stressful process. There’s all kinds of Malware to worry about, brute force attacks to prevent and backups to take. Which is why it much simpler (and safer) to put your trust in one of these best WordPress plugins for security instead of trying to DIY.

Security Ninja (Free)

Security Ninja uses over 50+ security tests to make sure your website stays safe. The plugin reviews your site for weaknesses, helps you take preventative measures, has a debug mode and even has its own code snippets to make fixes easy. And if you just want even more protection the developers offer a pro version to offer even more help in keeping your WordPress website safe.

iThemes Security Pro – Premium

Now brought to you by iThemes, Security Pro (affiliate link) will help you keep your site safe with measures such as site scans, trouble bot/user bans, obscured sensitive data, file change detection, two factor authentication and more. Best of all, you can give it a test run with the free lite version of the plugin.

Link Cloaking Plugins

For affiliates using a link cloaking plugin can be super helpful. This way you can not only create more appealing links for readers to click on, but you can also keep track of which custom links are converting thanks to the help of a plugin.

PrettyLink Lite (Free)

If you want simple link cloaking with basic hit tracking, PrettyLink Lite is a great option. This plugin allows you to created custom links, nofollow links, link groups, forward parameters and redirection links. The plugin also tracks the hits on each link. Plus they do offer a pro version if you want more features like Google Analytics, the ability to generate QR codes, automated elements like URL replacement, etc.

Custom Font Plugins

Many themes includes custom styling options via the live theme Customizer. However, there are just as many themes that don’t. So if you want to change your fonts you’ll either have to do so manually (the hard way) or via a plugin (the easy way).

Important: If you are using a block theme – WordPress now has a font manager built-in! Or if you are using our Total theme it also has a font manager.

Use Any Font (Free)

Use Any Font is a quick and simple way to add custom fonts on your WordPress website. Simply upload your custom font file (ttf, otf, woff) right in the WordPress editor, or embed them using @font-face css. The plugin works great with most page builders and is a fast way to add any custom font (not just Google).

Easy Google Fonts (Free)

The free Easy Google Fonts plugin does exactly what it says – makes adding and using Google Fonts easy. The plugin enables you to choose from more than 600+ custom Google fonts, preview font changes live in the Customizer, create your own font rules (admins) and more. Best of all – no coding required. All the controls are easy and intuitive.

Related Posts Plugins

One of the simplest ways to increase the time a reader is on your website is to include links to articles that are similar to whatever it is they’re reading on your website. How do you do this? One easy way is with a related posts plugin.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (Free)

YARPP is probably the most popular related posts plugin on WordPress.org. With well over 2 million downloads, this plugin is a great way to add thumbnails for related posts, pages and custom post types to keep readers on your website.

Author Box Plugins

Give your authors a bit of credit for articles that they write on your blog with an author box. This way you can display their bio, social links and even image at the end of posts so your readers to learn more about them (bonus: it also gives guest bloggers/authors and incentive to write for you fore free since they’ll be able to link to themselves).

Simple Author Box (Free)

Consider giving your authors’ a bit more credit with the Simple Author Box plugin. This adds a section to each of your posts with an author bio, social links, and Gravatar image. It’s also RTL ready and fairly easy to customize with a little CSS coding knowhow.

Event Plugins

Just Events (Free)

We actually created the Just Events plugin because we wanted something that was super simple and un-bloated. Our plugin only includes the bare essentials to add and display Events on your site. It works beautifully with block themes and of course it’s fully integrated with our Total theme as well.

Events Manager (Free)

For any nonprofit, restaurant, theater, or even corporation having an events calendar can be useful to show what’s coming up and what has already happened. Whether you want to post employee schedules, happy hour times or upcoming fun raisers these events management plugins are the best for the job.

Events Calendar (Freemium)

Events Manager is a popular (and free) options for managing events through your WordPress website. The plugin has lot of features including (but not limited to) event registration, recurring events, BuddyPress support, Google maps, event submissions and more.

If you’re looking for a great online calendar and events management system checkout the Events Calendar by Modern Tribe. The plugin supports events creation options such as venues, organizers, month/list/day views, events search, Google maps embed, custom widget, event taxonomies, and tons more (especially in the pro version of the plugin). Plus it’s compatible with most popular themes and frameworks.

Event Espresso (Premium)

Serve up some piping hot events to your readers with the Event Espresso WordPress plugin (affiliate link). Manage the events from beginning to end, including a calendar, invites, registration, wait lists, billing, coupons, confirmation emails, social sharing, multiple languages and so much more.

Lightbox Plugins

Add impressive image lightboxes to your website with any of these plugins. They’re easy to install and use, and make it possible for your to showcase the full glory of your photos in full size.

Foobox (Premium)

This fully responsive and mobile ready lightbox plugin is the perfect addition to portfolios and galleries. Foobox (affiliate link) has built-in social sharing, a slideshow function, and automatically works with WordPress Galleries upon installation.

Lightbox Gallery (Free)

Lightbox Gallery is a free plugin that is a great way to add lightbox functionality to your galleries. Plus the plugin has been localized for a variety of languages, has a tooltip caption option, includes pagination, and your can choose a Highslide JS display option.

Coming Soon & Landing Page Plugins

Still working on your website? Easy – try one of these coming soon plugins in our best WordPress plugins list. With one of these installed you can still tease that your site is coming on social media, collect newsletter subscribers or even add a countdown while still having the flexible to work on your website (on the backend).

Under Construction (Free)

As the name would imply, the Under Construction plugin will allow you to “hide” your site while you work on it and display a temporary page. This plugin has TONS of users and a near perfect rating. It’s a great solution.

Thrive Landing Pages (Premium)

With Thrive Landing Pages (affiliate link) you can easily turn any WordPress website into a well oiled marketing machine. Simply install the plugin and use the included customizable templates (225+ of them) to quickly create targeted pages for your products, services, online courses, etc.

The plugin is also translation ready, utilizes a drag and drop builder for an easy/intuitive interface and is fully responsive so your pages always look great.

Post Rating Plugins

One feature often not included in themes is a post rating or review option. It’s a great way to get feedback from your readers, or to allow “voting” on user submitted posts (sort of like Buzzfeed). In any case, this is simple to add with a plugin.

WP Post Ratings – Free

If you just want a traditional 5-star rating system, WP Post Ratings is a popular and well tested plugin that will get the job done. Readers can submit their vote for content, the plugin takes an average and then it displays the rating (however you can always upload a custom image).

Restricted Content Plugins

Keep parts of your website private for subscribed users or create premium memberships with these powerful restricted content plugins. With the help of one of these plugins you can easily start a premium blog full of exclusive tips, create a “customers only” support section on your e-commerce website, or any else.

Restrict Content – Free & Pro

Easily restrict content in pages, posts or blocks of content to registered members only with the Restrict Content free WordPress plugin. Just active the plugin and restrict content by simply selecting the user level to restrict by, or by using the shortcode for a block of content. Upgrade to Restrict Content Pro (affiliate link) to add an unlimited number of membership levels, manage subscriptions, record payments, issue discounts, and of course restrict content.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it – a list of some of the very best WordPress plugins that should address most of your WordPress wants and needs. If we missed a functionality your clients often ask for, or if there is a plugin you’re constantly recommending, leave a comment below and let us know about it!

So next time you want to ask a theme developer to add some extra functionality to a theme or are wondering why it isn’t there in the first place…ask yourself…is there a plugin for that? Almost always the answer is YES!