The 26 Best WordPress Plugins

Revised January 10, 2022
Revised October 18, 2021
Revised November 30, 2020
Revised November 18 2019

WordPress is far and away the most popular content management system (CMS) for websites. It runs between 25% and 28% of all websites, and nearly 60% of all sites built using any sort of CMS platform.

There are many reasons for this dominance. In its early days, the relative ease of use compared to technical power attracted bloggers to the platform, and its open source nature attracted a broad developer following. That led to web hosts providing one-click install capabilities, and designers creating a vast number of free and low-cost themes.

Certainly another reason though is the universe of WordPress plugins—helpful add-ons for site management, customization, content development and promotion, email list building, connections to other applications and online services, and much more. Even better, most are free, or at least have free versions. And the fee-based plugins are usually worth paying a little extra for.

Here are more than two dozen of the best WordPress plugins to optimize the performance, appearance, and popularity of your website or blog.

1) Publicize
Google Review Count: 312
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Connect your WordPress.com site to various social networking services. Once connected to a service, you can share your posts with that service automatically.

Sample review:  “This convenient feature can save you time when it comes to your social media sharing. Publicize for WordPress allows you to automatically share blogs to Google+ profiles and other platforms you may use.” — Express Writers

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Express Writers

2) Sumo
Google Review Count: 245
WordPress Downloads: 100,000+
WordPress Ratings: 270

Make it easy for your readers to join your email list, share your articles and optimize with analytics. Components include a list builder, sharing, welcome mat (obnoxious full-screen call to action), heat maps, scroll box, Smart Bar, highlighter, and image sharer.

Sample review:  “A lot of people have asked about the social sharing bar we use on Social Media Examiner and why we think it’s special. There are lots of tools out there that do this, but the one we use is called Sumo. What’s special about this particular plugin for WordPress is that it’s mobile-optimized in a really cool way. On a desktop, the share bar floats at the side of the screen. On a mobile device, it appears at the bottom of the screen.” — Social Media Examiner

Pricing: free; three levels from $29 to $119 per month; enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Analytics), Blogging Wizard (Content), Entrepreneur, Hunter & Bard, Marketing Insider Group (Startup), Robbie Richards, SnapApp, Social Media Examiner

3) BluBrry PowerPress
Google Review Count: 243
WordPress Downloads: 50,000+
WordPress Ratings: 104

The most popular Podcasting plugin for WordPress. Features include Simple and Advanced modes, multiple audio/video player options, subscribe to podcast tools, and podcast SEO features. Supports iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn and Blubrry Podcasting directories, as well as all podcast applications and clients.

Sample review:  “BluBrry Powerpress (is) my favorite plugin for podcasting. Makes it easy to setup your podcast inside of WordPress.” — BuzzBlogger

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, RazorSocial (WordPress)

4) Monarch
Google Review Count: 195
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

A floating social sidebar plugin with seven different integration areas that can be mixed, matched, customized and tracked. Includes Popups and Fly-In boxes that can be triggered based on specific user interactions and customized.

Sample review:  “Monarch is a Social Sharing Plugin. With Monarch, your social media buttons don’t have to be static, (they can) scroll along the page. You can even get the sharing buttons to appear on media elements like an image on any of your web pages.” — Cent Muruganandam

Pricing: $69 or $89 per year, or $249 one-time

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content), Cent Muruganandam

5) Jetpack
Google Review Count: 192
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 1,036

A multifunction plugin that provides social sharing,  traffic stats, security, downtime monitoring, image optimization for speed, and plugin management.

Sample review:  “As this plugin continues to add enhancements on a regular basis, it just becomes more and more valuable…JetPack is a single plugin which has the functionality of multiple plugins.” — RazorSocial (WordPress)

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (WordPress)

6) Akismet
Google Review Count: 179
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 574

Automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam. See which comments were caught or cleared by Akismet and the number of approved comments for each user. A discard feature that outright blocks the worst spam, saving you disk space and speeding up your site.

Sample review:  “This is a comment spam blocking WordPress plugin and absolutely essential for any blogger and one of the first plugins I ever loaded. It saves me a lot of time.” — RazorSocial (WordPress)

Pricing: free, $5 or $9 oer mont per site

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (WordPress)

7) Gravity Forms
Google Review Count: 178
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Build and publish WordPress forms in just minutes. Select your fields, configure your options and easily embed forms on your WordPress-powered site using the built-in tools. Forms are mobile-optimized and can be integrated with popular services.

Sample review:  “I love Gravity Forms because it allows me to create robust forms without writing a single line of code. I can use the drag-drop interface to create regular contact forms, registration forms, quizzes, surveys, and so much more.” — RazorSocial (WordPress)

Pricing: $39, $99, or $199 per year

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (WordPress)

8) Yoast SEO
Google Review Count: 177
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 7,457

This plugin is designed to improve your site’s SEO on all needed aspects, with features for SEO writing, on-page analysis, technical SEO, meta and link elements, XML sitemaps, RSS optimization, breadcrumbs, social sharing and more.

Sample review:  “When writing blog posts there is a very useful free plugin called WordPress SEO which gives some guidelines that you can  follow to optimize the content. Using this plugin you specify the focus keywords you want Google to rank you on and then it then gives an indicator where these keywords are mentioned in the post in areas that are relevant for Google.” — {grow}

Pricing: free or multiple levels, based on number of sites, from $69 to $1,499 per year

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Cent Muruganandam, Express Writers, {grow}, RazorSocial (WordPress), Robbie Richards

9) Thrive Leads
Google Review Count: 176
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

A lead generation plugin for WordPress featuring A/B testing, customized targeting, and analytics. Create a variety of forms including pop-up lightboxes, sticky ribbons, inline forms, content locks, and multiple choice.

Sample review:  “You can…run various split tests with Thrive Leads. For example if you want to see whether an after post opt-in will convert better than a widget – you can do it. There’s built in reporting too, plenty of templates, a drag & drop editor and any autoresponder that supports custom HTML forms is supported.” — Blogging Wizard (Content)

Pricing: $19 per month, or license packs from $67 to $147 per year

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

10) TweetDis
Google Review Count: 169
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

A plugin that can help increase blog traffic from Twitter by making it easy for readers to tweet a predefined quote, takeaway, catchy phrase, smart idea, or statistic from your post.

Sample review:  “Take tweetable quotes further using TweetDis. If you’d like a smart set of designs to choose from as well as additional features – TweetDis is a great alternative.
There are a number of great designs to choose from. You can integrate with URL shorteners such as TinyURL and Bitly. You can also use TweetDis to make parts of regular text and images tweetable.” — Blogging Wizard (Content)

Pricing: $37, $47, or $77 one-time license

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

11) Social Warfare
Google Review Count: 167
WordPress Downloads: 10,000+
WordPress Ratings: 26

A social sharing plugin that won’t slow down your site; display customizable sharing buttons with social proof (including tweet counts), plus features for Pinterest image sharing, custom tweets, Twitter cards, popular posts, and analytics integration.

Sample review:  “Right out of the gate, I love(d) the look of the social share buttons but there are a few features that have so much potential to boost shares and drive more traffic…(including) custom tweets – sometimes you may want to include hashtags in tweets when your posts are shared but most plugins use the default title within WordPress. Adding hashtags to post titles in WordPress isn’t a good way to go but Social Warfare provides the perfect solution.” — Blogging Wizard (Content)

Pricing: free or premium options from $29 to $250 per year, based on number of sites

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

12) Redirection
Google Review Count: 167
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors without requiring knowledge of how to create or edit Apache .htaccess files.. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

13) All in One SEO Pack
Google Review Count: 157
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 343

The most popular plugin for managing WordPress SEO and Open Graph social meta. All in One SEO Pack Pro optimizes your WordPress website or blog for search engines and social media networks.

Sample review:  “If you run your website on a WordPress platform, use a multipurpose mobile friendly template. All in one SEO is a good SEO plugin for WordPress which does not have injected sneaky links (like) some companies.” — Robbie Richards

Pricing: free or $79 (individual), $139 (business) or $699 (agency) per year

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content), Robbie Richards

14) WordPress Editorial Calendar
Google Review Count: 152
WordPress Downloads: 50,000+
WordPress Ratings: 59

WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

Sample review:  “A free way to make managing blog topics according to schedule and target audience a lot easier and accountable. For when Kapost or Compendium are not in the budget.” — RazorSocial (WordPress)

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content), RazorSocial (WordPress)

15) MyCurator
Google Review Count: 150
WordPress Downloads: 2,000
WordPress Ratings: 10

Curate content on your WordPress site. MyCurator’s Cloud AI module classifies articles based on their relevance. You customize the RSS, Twitter and Google Alert Sources you want to use. Articles are brought to you throughout the day from your sources.

Sample review:  “This is a plugin that will pull in articles from all over the place, based upon your keyword preferences.” — Marketing Insider Group (Curation)

Pricing: free, $15 or $30 per month

Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group (Curation)

16) Google Analytics by MonsterInsights
Google Review Count: 144
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 371

The Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights allows you to track your blog easily and always stays up to date with the newest features in Google Analytics.

Sample review:  “For most of my sites I use (the Google Analytics For WordPress plugin) to connect to Google Analytics. I could add the code manually but I prefer the ease of use that the plugin provides.” — Blogging Wizard (Content)

Pricing: free or $89 per year

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

17) Edit Flow
Google Review Count: 143
WordPress Downloads: 10,000+
WordPress Ratings: 37

Edit Flow gives you custom statuses, a calendar, editorial comments, and more, all to make it much easier for your team to collaborate within WordPress. Includes a calendar, statuses, comments, and notifications.

Sample review:  “It’s very difficult to be organized with your blogging without having an editorial calendar.  This allows you to plan out your content,  assign out tasks to your team and monitor your calendar scheduling.” — RazorSocial (World)

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content), RazorSocial (World)

18) Title Experiments
Google Review Count: 137
WordPress Downloads: 1,000+
WordPress Ratings: 11

Test your titles and discover what your readers find interesting. Get more clicks. Use the process of A/B Testing to try different variations of your post titles to get a higher click through rate. Add multiple versions of an article title that will be randomly displayed in any post list.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

19) W3 Total Cache
Google Review Count: 135
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 3,546

Improves the user experience of your site by increasing website performance, reducing download times via features like content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Sample review:  “W3 Total Cache is a WordPress plugin that helps your page load as quickly as possible, enhancing user experience and creating a more streamlined site.” — Express Writers

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Express Writers, RazorSocial (WordPress)

20) Simple Share Buttons Adder
Google Review Count: 133
WordPress Downloads: 100,000+
WordPress Ratings: 539

The Simple Share Buttons Adder does exactly what it says—adds share buttons to all of your posts and pages, simply.

Sample review:  “If you want a simple plugin that makes it easy to add social sharing buttons, Simple Share Button Adder is a great choice. It’s highly customizable giving you options to choose from a large number of social networks and choose whether or not to display share counts.” — Blogging Wizard (Content)

Pricing: free, or Plus version at $10, $25, or $100 per year

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

21) NextGEN Facebook
Google Review Count: 132
WordPress Downloads: 10,000+
WordPress Ratings: 118

NGFB creates complete and accurate social meta tags and Schema markup—including titles, descriptions, hashtags, images, videos, ecommerce product details, author profile / authorship, co-authors, publisher information, ratings, event details, recipe information, and more—all from your existing content.

Sample review:  “Social media is a BIG part of your content promotion strategy. Use this plugin to make sure your posts look great when shared on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and others. Allows you to customize your Open Graph data for Facebook. Setup Pinterest Rich Pins, Twitters Cards, and more.” — BuzzBlogger

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger

22) Click To Tweet
Google Review Count: 130
WordPress Downloads: 10,000+
WordPress Ratings: 13

Easily create tweetable content for your readers. Use pullquotes and custom messages inside the body of your blog post to highlight your content for the reader and make it simple for them to share on Twitter.

Sample review:  “A free resource to create links for quotes or images that automatically populate a person’s twitter message box, simplifying sharing to just one click. ” — SnapApp

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Cent Muruganandam, SnapApp

23) jQuery Pin It
Google Review Count: 128
WordPress Downloads: 20,000+
WordPress Ratings: 62

Highlights images on hover and adds a Pinterest “Pin It” button over them for easy pinning.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger

24) Better Click to Tweet
Google Review Count: 113
WordPress Downloads: 10,000+
WordPress Ratings: 28

This plugin started as a complete retool of the “Click To Tweet” plugin. Insert click-to-tweet boxes into your posts, simply and securely. This plugin is customizable, regularly updated, and future-proof.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Blogging Wizard (Content)

25) Advanced Custom Fields
Google Review Count: 110
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 914

Customize WordPress by creating addition fields of almost any type, including text, number, email, image, file, select (with drop-down box of choices), checkbox, radio button, true/false, and more.

Sample review:  “Advanced Custom Fields facilitates the creation of ‘custom fields’ that you can add to just about anything in WordPress.” — RazorSocial (WordPress)

Pricing: free, $25 or $100 one-time

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (WordPress)

26) KingSumo Headlines
Google Review Count: 90
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Write multiple alternative titles for your WordPress posts. This plugin automatically shows different titles to different visitors when they share your posts, then over time selects the best-performing title to maximize traffic.

Sample review:  “KingSumo is a WordPress plugin that tests out blog headlines against each other and then determines which one will attract more traffic…(It) lets you test 2-10 headlines at the same time which are then rotated and randomly shown to visitors. The tool monitors the impressions that each headline receives, displays it as a percentage and then shares the potential each has to perform.” — Rebekah Radice

Pricing: $99 one-time, $499 per year, or enterprise pricing by quote, based on number of monthly visitors

Showcase reviews: Rebekah Radice

More Plugins

MonsterInsights
Google Review Count: 135
WordPress Downloads: 2,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 2,108

MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It enables you to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site in minutes, without writing any code. This plugin lets you see useful information about your visitors right inside your WordPress dashboard: which countries your visitors are from, what are they most interested in, which device are they using, their age, gender, and much more.

Pricing: free or $100/$160/$240 per year

Rank Math SEO
Google Review Count: 135
WordPress Downloads: 700,000+
WordPress Ratings: 2,769

A feature-rich SEO plugin that includes an easy-to-use site auditing tool that makes it possible to automate over 25 different tests in a single click, saving time in identifying issues vs. manual checking. It also includes capabilities for Google Schema Markup (aka Rich Snippets), Google Search Console integration, keyword rank tracking on Google, local SEO features, a 404-error tracker, and a smart redirection manager that helps you create, manage, delete, enable, or disable redirects at scale.

Pricing: free or $59/$199 per year

CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice (CCPA Ready)
Google Review Count: 123
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 1,407

A plugin to help make GDPR, CCPA, CNIL, and LGPD cookie compliance easy with customizable cookie consent banner, built-in cookie scanner, auto-blocking of third-party cookies, one-click privacy policy generator, cookie list display shortcode, and more. You can fully customise the cookie notice style so it blends with your existing website: change the colors, fonts, styles, the position on the page and even how it behaves when you click “Accept”. You can also choose to make the cookie notice bar disappear after a few seconds (completely configurable) or to accept on scroll.

Pricing: free or $59/$199 per year

ExactMetrics
Google Review Count: 110
WordPress Downloads: 1,000,000+
WordPress Ratings: 1,435

ExactMetrics is the most comprehensive Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, with features including Google Analytics reports inside your WordPress dashboard, real-time visitor stats, ecommerce tracking, page-level insights, affiliate ad tracking, A/B testing, and custom dimensions (tracking for authors, categories, tags, searches, custom post types, users, and other WordPress events).

Pricing: free or $100/$160/$240 per year

Booster for WooCommerce
Google Review Count: 77
WordPress Downloads: 80,000+
WordPress Ratings: 411

Booster is an all-in-one plugin for WooCommerce that includes more than 100 functions. Replacing multiple plugins with Booster simplifies your WordPress management, enhances site security, and improves page loading speed. Features include button and price labels; shopping cart and checkout functionality; email management; payment gateways; PDF invoicing and packing slips; pricing and currency management; and more.

Pricing: $49/$169/$297 per year

AmaLinks Pro
Google Review Count: 106
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Monetize any WordPress site with the Amazon Affiliate Program and the AmaLinks Pro plugin. Create, preview, edit and insert Amazon affiliate text/image links within your posts; add “Buy on Amazon” buttons or design and create your own custom CTA buttons; and display product information, images, ratings, reviews, and links in a Showcase Box.

Pricing: $67/$197 annually or $497 lifetime

Tatvic Google Analytics Plugin for WooCommerce
Google Review Count: 70
WordPress Downloads: 40,000+
WordPress Ratings: 115

Tatvic’s Google Analytics WooCommerce plugin simplifies use the Enhanced Ecommerce feature in Universal Analytics – Enhanced Ecommerce. This plugin enables you to use Enhanced Ecommerce features without adding any new complex code to your WooCommerce Store.

Pricing: free or $135

MakeWebBetter
Google Review Count: 44
WordPress Downloads: 9,000+
WordPress Ratings: 11

MakeWebBetter offers a collection of WordPress plugins for WooCommerce, each designed for a specific purpose. Plugins include functionality for upselling current customers, managing refunds and exchanges, creating and selling gift cards, and creating and managing loyalty programs. Among its most popular plugins are the MWB HubSpot for WooCommerce plugin, which integrates your WooCommerce store with HubSpot.

Pricing: free or $69-$97 per plugin

GS Plugins
Google Review Count: 60
WordPress Downloads: 1,000+
WordPress Ratings: 42 (GS Team Members)

A collection of small plugins to supercharge your website. Popular plugins include GS Logo Slider ( logo slideshow plugin to display partner, client, brand, sponsor logos); GS Team Members (provide every member of your team with a professional-looking profile page with info and social links; Filterable Portfolio; and Testimonial Slider.

Pricing: varies by plugin; most start at $30/year

Adoric
Google Review Count: 96
WordPress Downloads: 30+
WordPress Ratings: 0

An easy-to-use popup builder for creating opt-in forms to grow your mailing list. Features include a drag-and-drop builder for creating and editing high-converting popup, slide-in, or floating bar campaigns; solutions for cart abandonment, conversion optimization, and web personalization; 0ver 800 pre-built templates; analytics; and integration to a variety of ESP, CRM, and other tools.

Pricing: free or $29/$79/$199 per year

Strive Content Calendar
Google Review Count: 48
WordPress Downloads: N/A
WordPress Ratings: N/A

Plan your entire publishing schedule with the Strive Content Calendar plugin. It adds a visual calendar into your WordPress dashboard where you can see all your upcoming posts and how close they are to being finished. There are also post revisions for republishing outdated content, a custom editorial checklist, and a Pipeline view for keeping track of your unscheduled drafts.

Pricing: $7 per month

Showcase Reviews

Blogging Wizard (Analytics)
Blogging Wizard (Content)
BuzzBlogger
Cent Muruganandam
Entrepreneur
Express Writers
{grow}
Hunter & Bard
Marketing Insider Group (Curation)
Marketing Insider Group (Startup)
RazorSocial (WordPress)
RazorSocial (World)
Rebekah Radice
Robbie Richards
SnapApp
Social Media Examiner

This was the 29th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.

#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins