WordPress is one of the most popular website-building platforms in the world, and for a good reason. It’s easy to use, versatile and packed full of features that make it an excellent choice for any website.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at 10 Popular WordPress plugins that have been heavily used for many years. These plugins are essential to enhance any WordPress site, and they’ll help you create a website that looks and functions amazingly.
1. GA Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great way to track website traffic and see what’s working and what’s not. It’s a free tool that most websites should have installed. By tracking the website’s traffic and noting what content is working and what isn’t, you can make changes quickly and improve your website’s overall performance.
The service also lets you see which keywords are driving traffic to your website and whether those keywords are performing as you’d expect. This is a valuable tool for SEO as you can see which keywords are bringing in traffic and which ones are generating leads.
You also can see where your customers are coming from and what devices they’re using to access your website. This is valuable information for creating targeted marketing campaigns.
This is all great right? But we need a WordPress plugin that can bridge Google Analytics to your WordPress-powered website. That is where GA Google Analytics comes in as a helper. GA Google Analytics is a lightweight tool to help you get Google Analytics tracking up and running within your website.
Features:
- Enter your tracking ID and you are done
- No coding required
- Custom Tracking – (Configure multiple tracking codes)
- Visitors can opt-out of being tracked
- SSL can be forced
Price: Free | Premium Options: $15 – $180 a year across 4 plans or get a Lifetime license between $25 – $280 forever**
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a great plugin that was originally created by Joost de Valk in 2006 for SEO purposes. It does a great job of helping you with your SEO efforts by giving you some great tools to help you with your content, keywords, and placement. Plus, it’s very user-friendly and can be used by anyone regardless of experience level.
Features:
- XML sitemap creation
- Automated Meta tags, canonical URLs, and more.
- SEO analysis (Readability and SEO suggestions in real-time)
- Constantly updated for best SEO results and plugin optimizations
- Breadcrumb Control
Price: Free | Premium Options: $99 a year**
3. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a great plugin that’s been used by many bloggers since the beginning. It’s a plugin that lets you easily create forms, and then easily add fields and buttons to your posts and pages. You can also easily create and manage your forms from a single location.
Features:
- Custom post types
- Populate a dropdown with posts
- UI support for single-line text fields
- Map post to custom taxonomies
Price: Premium Options: $59 – $259 a year across 3 plans**
4. WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is one of the oldest and most popular WordPress plugins. It’s a caching plugin that speeds up your website by caching static files, including images, CSS, and JavaScript. This speeds up your website by reducing the number of requests made to your server.
Additionally, WP Super Cache keeps your site up to date, meaning that if there are any changes made to the files that are cached, the plugin will automatically update them on your site. This is great for keeping your site looking fresh and avoiding any potential issues.
Features:
- Preloading
- CDN Support
- Custom Caching
- Rest API
- Garbage collection
Price: Free | Premium Options: None
5. CloudFlare
CloudFlare is a plugin that was originally created by MaxCDN and is now maintained by the WordPress.com team. Cloudflare is a free and open-source plugin that helps protect your website against a wide range of attacks. Attacks can come in the form of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks, brute force attacks, or even SQL injections.
The plugin works by caching your website’s content and then sending requests to the server only if the content has changed. This reduces the load on your server and makes your site faster.
Features:
- WAF (Web Application firewall)
- Analytics
- Free DNS
- Free automated SSL certificates
- Free DDOS mitigation
Price: Free | Premium Options: $20 – $200 a month across 2 plans and a custom plan for your situational needs**
6. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is a popular WordPress plugin that has been around since the beginning of WordPress. It allows you to easily create and manage contact forms on your website. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and allows you to track the contact forms you’ve created and the responses you’ve received. It’s also a great way to keep track of your email marketing campaigns.
This is a popular plugin that has been around since the beginning of WordPress. It allows you to easily create and manage contact forms on your website. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and allows you to track the contact forms you’ve created and the responses you’ve received. It’s also a great way to keep track of your email marketing campaigns.
Features:
- Manage multiple contact forms
- Simple Markup
- Ajax form submitting
- CAPTCHA support
- Akismet spam filtering
Price: Free | Premium Options: Some 3rd-parties offer add-ons for a price**
7. Jetpack
Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin that gives you everything you need to create a great website. It includes features like a blog, social media integration, a contact form, and more. It’s been around for a long time and continues to be one of the most popular plugins on WordPress.
Features:
- Auto website backup in real time
- Migration options to a new web host
- Activity log that monitors your website
- Block Spam comments with Akismet
- Brute force attack protection
- 2FA (two-factor authentication)
- Auto update plugins
Price: Free | Premium Options: $5 to $50 a month across 3 plans and billed yearly**
8. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free and open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It can be used to create fully functional online stores selling anything.
Features:
- Create amazing storefronts
- Decide how you get paid
- Scalable platform
- Easy Sales tax settings
- Configurable Shipping options
Price: Free | Premium Options: 3rd party extensions that are priced differently**
9. Smush
Smush is a plugin that has been used by millions of WordPress users. It’s a plugin that helps you compress your images so they’re stored more efficiently on your server and it can also help you speed up your website.
Since it was created, Smush has helped WordPress users save bandwidth and it’s also helped them save time since they can compress their images faster.
If you’re looking for a plugin that can help you save bandwidth and time, Smush is a great plugin to consider.
Features:
- Optimize images with multi-pass loss compression
- Lossless compression
- Image resizing
- Multi-site compatible
- Gutenberg integration
- Background optimization
Price: Free | Premium Options: 7-day free trial and then $7.50 a month**
10. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is a WordPress plugin that lets you create beautiful, user-friendly forms. It was designed to be a no-coding, no-techie solution for creating forms without having to rely on a developer. With Ninja Forms, you can design beautiful, complex forms like a pro.
Features:
- Beginner friendly
- Drag and drop form designer
- Accept payments and donations
- 27+ field types
- Unlimited forms
- GDPR Compliance
Price: Free | Premium Options: On sale as of this post for $50 – $300 a year across 4 plans. The normal price is $99 – $600 a year**
Honorable Mention: Wordfence Security
Wordfence is a WordPress security plugin that includes a firewall and malware scanner. It was built to protect WordPress websites. Their Threat Defense Feed provides new firewall rules, malware signatures, and malicious IP addresses to keep your website safe. They also offer a suite of extra security features.
Features:
- Real-time threat blocking
- Signature updates
- 2FA (two-factor authentication)
- Brute force protection
- Visitor activity is scanned for malicious behavior
Price: Free | Premium Options: $119 – $950 a year across 3 different plans**
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this article about 10 popular WordPress plugins. WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world, and that’s because it’s incredibly customizable and extensible. I highlighted some of the most popular plugins and showed you how they can help you with your website. I hope that this article has given you some new ideas and that you’ll be able to put them to use on your website soon! Good Luck!
**Prices listed in this blog are subject to change by the respected developer.
