12 Best WordPress Plugins in 2023
A good plugin has the power to help you skyrocket the success of your business online. But the WordPress plugin directory is stuffed with almost 60,000 plugins, so this guide has narrowed down the best free WordPress plugins for your website.
In this post, we’ve summarized the top “must-have” WordPress plugins and their main features. Most on this list are free!
What Is WordPress Plugin?
Plugins can be easily installed and activated from within the WordPress dashboard, and there are thousands of free and premium plugins available from the WordPress plugin repository and other third-party sources. Examples of popular WordPress plugins include SEO optimization tools, e-commerce solutions, social media integrations, contact form builders, and security plugins.
WordPress plugins can help website owners customize their websites and improve the user experience for visitors. They are a great way to add functionality to a website without having to write custom code or hire a developer.
The Best Free WordPress Plugins
1. SeedProd
SeedProd is the most powerful WordPress landing page plugin there is. It makes it a breeze to design and customize your website’s landing pages. And, it’s raved about on WordPress.org, boasting thousands of 5-star reviews.
Aside from landing pages, you can also use SeedProd to easily create custom WordPress themes.
Do you want to see how SeedProd works before diving in? We used it to make a WordPress coming soon page. Check out the tutorial to see the full process.
2. All-in-One SEO
The awesome All-in-One SEO plugin gives you complete control over your WordPress SEO. More than 2 million websites already use it to optimize their posts, pages, and WooCommerce products. It’s a great Yoast SEO and Jetpack alternative.
- Automatic Meta Tags — Automatically generate meta tags, then write your own meta titles and meta descriptions when you want to.
- Additional Keyphrases — Discover and rank for additional keyphrases in a single click with AIOSEO’s Semrush integration.
- WooCommerce SEO — Optimize product listings and category pages with full SEO integration for your eCommerce store.
3. MonsterInsights Lite
MonsterInsights Lite gives you a simple way to connect your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account. With it, you can see how site visitors find your website and what they do while there. With this data, you’re able to capitalize on what site visitors like to keep them coming back for more.
- Dashboard Reports — See real-time stats in an easy-to-read report found right in the dashboard of your WordPress site.
- Universal Tracking — Your stats are never skewed thanks to the universal tracking system that’s in place. In other words, if your site visitors switch from a mobile device to a desktop, you’ll still get accurate data counts.
4. OptinMonster
The best WordPress lead generation plugin in the world is OptinMonster — nothing else compares as you can see from this list of the best WordPress popup plugins to explode your email list. It’s simply a must-have for small business owners, bloggers, and any website. That’s because this plugin comes with a treasure chest of valuable features to grow your business online.
- Exit-Intent Technology — Turn site visitors who were headed to abandon your site into email subscribers instead.
- MonsterLinks™ 2-Step Options — Convert any link or image into an opt-in form and boost conversions by 785%.
- Geo-Location Targeting — Get more leads by personalizing campaigns based on your visitor’s location.
5. WP Call Button
WP Call Button is one of the best free WordPress plugins because it lets you easily add a Click to Call button to your WordPress site. It’s a great way to get more leads and close deals fast. Some people still prefer to speak to someone on the phone, so it’s great to give them the option.
- 100% Responsive — Mobile-friendly and looks great on any device.
- Simple — You can easily add a great-looking call now button without having to know any code.
- Lightweight — Optimized for speed and SEO
6. UpdraftPlus
There’s nothing worse than losing all your site’s content to a hacker, server crash, or other website malfunction. That’s why using a free auto-backup solution like UpdraftPlus is so important. And it’s on our list because it’s simply the best WordPress backup plugin around.
- Automated Backups — Schedule an automatic WordPress backup of your website’s files and WordPress database.
- Cloud Storage — Store your backups in a cloud service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3.
- Email Notifications — Get an email when a backup completes.
7. Enable Media Replace
Have you ever wanted to replace an image in your Media Library without having to delete the old image, rename the new file, and upload it to your site? The good news is, with Enable Media Replace you can.
- Easy to Use — With this cool WordPress plugin, all you have to do is either replace the old file with a new one.
- Fast — The plugin is incredibly lightweight
8. Editorial Calendar
Your content marketing strategy is the key to consistently publishing valuable content for your site visitors. And one of the best ways to organize your website’s content is by using the best WordPress editorial plugin, Editorial Calendar. With this plugin, you can make sure posts are getting published on time so your website is continually churning out posts that will drive traffic, boost conversions, and increase sales.
- Visual Calendar — See all posts and when they’re scheduled to go live.
- Modern Organization — Drag and drop posts to reorganize due dates on the calendar, quickly edit post titles, content, and publish times, and even manage posts for multiple authors.
9. Disable Comments
Here’s a great secret weapon you’ll find on a lot of lists of the best free WordPress plugins. Because comment spamming can be annoying, some website owners don’t want a comment section enabled on their websites. WordPress will let you disable certain comments on certain parts of your website, but the Disable Comments plugin gets rid of all comments on your entire website.
- Disables Comments — Like the name of the plugin, it lets you turn off commenting for your whole website.
- Works on Fields — Remove all comment-related fields from edit and quick-edit screens.
- Flexible — You can also get rid of comment-related items on your WordPress dashboard, in widgets, and in the Admin Menu and Admin Bar.
10. Autoptimize
Autoptimize works great with your caching solution to speed up your site. Using it can help your site’s speed increase dramatically, which in turn helps with SEO, driving traffic to your site, and boosting conversions and sales.
- Automatic Optimization — Optimizes your site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.
- Condenses — Helps with minifying, which means it removes any unnecessary characters from your site’s code, and concatenation, which means it combines multiple separate files into one.
11. Really Simple SSL
There are plenty of free SSL certificates available, but moving your entire site to HTTPS to avoid the “Not Secure” warnings Google is adding to all non-secure websites can be tough if you’re not sure what you’re doing. The good news is you can use the best WordPress SSL plugin, Really Simple SSL, for free.
- Automatic Redirection — This 1-click solution redirects and updates all old URLs to reflect the change to a secure site.
- Easy to Use — Handles everything that comes with migrating your site to HTTPS.
- Won’t Slow You Down — It’s a super lightweight plugin.
12. Easy Google Fonts
If your WordPress theme doesn’t come with the Google Fonts you want, you can always use the Easy Google Fonts plugin. With it, you take control of your website’s typography.
Easy to Use — This free plugin integrates with your WordPress Customizer, so accessing the 600+ fonts is easy to do.
- Preview Changes — See your font changes in real-time.
- Use Stylesheets — Create your own font controls and rules and automatically pull in stylesheets, all without any coding or editing of the main stylesheet. So when your theme updates, you don’t lose your custom work.
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