
These best free & premium WordPress plugins were hand-picked because they were deemed the most flexible, usable, stable and just plain useful for a wide array of use cases. Most of them are relevant to almost any type of WordPress website.
I have tested out the vast majority of them myself and for the ones I have not tested personally I relied on popularity and average ratings to determine inclusion. Only the best made the list. I hope you find this well-researched list useful.
Best WordPress Plugin Categories
Last Updated 4/12/2015
Best Author Biography WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Sexy Author Bio
Best Premium: Fanciest Author Box
Best Custom Admin Theme WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Helios Solutions Custom Admin Theme
Best Premium: Modern Admin
Best Custom Login WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Custom Login
Best Premium: Pathway – Custom WordPress Login Page
Best Email Opt-in WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Optin Forms
Best Premium: OptinMonster
Best Forms WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Contact Form 7
Best Premium: Gravity Forms
Best Google Maps WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Best Premium: Interactive World Maps
Best Live Chat WordPress Plugins
Best Free: WP Live Chat Support
Best Premium: WordPress Live Chat
Best Logos WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Logo Slider
Best Premium: Logos WordPress Plugin
Best Navigation Menu WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Responsive Menu
Best Premium: UberMenu – WordPress Mega Menu Plugin
Best Notification Bar WordPress Plugins
Best Free: GC Message Bar
Best Premium: Foobar – WordPress Notification Bars
Best Popular Posts WordPress Plugins
Best Free: WordPress Popular Posts
Best Premium: Popular Posts Bar Widget
Best Pricing Tables WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Easy Pricing Tables
Best Premium: CSS3 Responsive Web Pricing Tables Grids
Best Question & Answer WordPress Plugins
Best Free: DQ Question & Answer
Best Premium: SabaiDiscuss for WordPress
Best Heavyweight Shortcodes WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Shortcodes Ultimate
Best Premium: Intense Shortcodes
Best Lightweight Shortcodes WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Bootstrap Shortcodes for WordPress
Best Premium: Elegant Shortcodes
Best Redirection WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Permalink Finder Plugin
Best Premium: 5sec Redirect
Best Reviews WordPress Plugins
Best Free: WP Product Review
Best Premium: Taqyeem – WordPress Review Plugin
Best SEO WordPress Plugins
Best Free: WordPress SEO by Yoast
Best Premium: Premium SEO Pack
Best Social Counts WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Social Count Plus
Best Premium: Monarch Social Sharing Plugin
Best Social Locking WordPress Plugins
Best Free: OnePress Social Locker
Best Premium: Social Locker for WordPress
Best Social Sharing WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Simple Share Buttons Adder
Best Premium: Monarch Social Sharing Plugin
Best Testimonials WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Easy Testimonials
Best Premium: Testimonials Showcase
Best Visual Builder WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Page Builder by SiteOrigin
Best Premium: Visual Composer: Page Builder for WordPress
Best WordPress Management WordPress Plugins
Best Free: InfiniteWP Client
Best Premium: ManageWP Worker
Best Social Login / Registration WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Nextend Social Connect Plugins for WordPress
Best Favicon Generator WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator
Best Premium: Fresh Favicon
Best Feedback / Polling / Survey WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Feedweb
Best Premium: WP Form Builder Feedback Survey Quiz Manager Pro
Best Slider WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Cyclone Slider 2
Best Premium: Slider Revolution
Best Portfolio / Grid WordPress Plugins
Best Free: Nimble Portfolio
Best Premium: Essential Grid
Did I miss any of the best free and/or premium WordPress plugins?
If so, feel free to share any of the best free and/or premium WordPress plugins I missed in the comments down below!
Nice list. Really useful. Simple, well done with your tab thank you !
Hi Andy,
This is really a great list of Best Free and Paid WordPress Plugins. Find some awesome and new plugins and hope those will help me to get more traffic in my blog.
Thanks for sharing this informative post.
Hi Andy, thanks a lot for this great list. It just has one little flaw: we’re not on there 😉
We’ve built a 100% free, innovative (!), so-easy-that-my-granny-can-use-it-plugin which allows bloggers to add social & share icons to their blogs, give them counts, add pop-ups and many other features. Please have a look: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/. Your feedback as expert-reviewer would be highly appreciated – we’ll build it into the plugin!
Wow! This is such a fantastic list. And I like seeing that we are using several of these already. Thank you!
Thanks Andy,
Just refreshed my mind with the best ones available in wordpress,
is it safe to use seo search terms tagging?
Pretty impressive list. Looks like you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this. (y)
Hi this is really a great list within categories
please have a look to our plugin for forms and registering it’s really worth to try and will be revolutionary, so cheap yet full of of functions 🙂
http://codecanyon.net/item/forms-management-systemwordpress-frontend-plugin/8978741?WT.ac=portfolio_item&WT.z_author=MOSTASHAROON
Thanks for the efforts
Great compilation of plugins Andy!
I’d like to add 2 security plugins to your list: Wordfence (free and paid version) and BruteProtect (free).
Here is Easy PopUp Show, a wordpress plugin developed by me that you can use to grow your list.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-popup-show/screenshots/
Nice list – thank you!
I have looked at several “best wordpress plugins” lists and this one is pretty good because it narrows things down to a few best plugins for every type of functionality.
Good article. I think it would be really usefull to focus little bit more on content creating plugins, because in the end the most important for a website is to be attractive for users.
There is a great solution from h5p.org (https://wordpress.org/plugins/h5p/) to create for free highly cusgtomized and interactive content like interactive vidoes, images, quizzes etc. I really like this plugin because you can create various summaries, images with hotspots and even games with html5.
Nice list andy, I’m using WordPress SEO by yoast. This plugin is awesome.
Take a look at Simple tasks and todo’s as well, a new plugin which creates a task-list overlay on top of your website and wordpress admin. Very handy for development, to keep track of things to do! https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-tasks-todos/screenshots
Adding schema markup to your website is getting more important. What are the best plugins for doing that?
Dale.
Yoast WordPress SEO. So far, so good. Didn’t have any problem once it setted up finally.
Thank you for that cool list! I have a great addition: ourselves 🙂
We recently released a FREE plugin which allows to add social icons to a website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/
We think it’s the best one on the market and user feedback seems to confirm that: in less than 4 months we got over 60k downloads, >280 5-star-reviews and an overall rating of 4.9/5.0.
If you also like us – why not include us in your (future) list as well?
Thank you!!
John
Great article, big thanks for useful information.
Great article. Thanks.
Thanks a bundle for sharing such a helpful article keep it up
Cheers
You covered all the right ones Andy! I’ve just shared this list with my followers.
Kind regards
Anja
Hello,
I’m Scarlet from OnePress.
I am writing you to inquire if you are interested in reviewing our plug-in called Opt-In Panda on your website penguininitiatives.com.
I will be happy to send you a free copy of Opt-In Panda for testing and reviewing (including all of its add-ons: Social Locker, StyleRoller, – $60 total value).
In brief, Opt-In Panda is a marketing tool which allows you to collect emails of visitors and generate more leads without creating additional popups.
This plugin is created by developers of the Social Locker, the most popular social paywall for WordPress.
Please check out the plugin page to learn more:
http://codecanyon.net/item/optin-panda-for-wordpress/10224279
Let me know if it is possible to publish a review of our plugin Opt-In Panda on your website and what we need to do for that.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
Scarlet Bailey,
OnePress
what a huge list with A grade plugins. Thanks for sharing, most of plugins in the list i tried & they are best in their field.
Great list, thanks for your work!
I’d like to suggest adding two more plugins:
a) Disqus (https://disqus.com) – great comments system with an ability for users to sign in with their social media profiles (Twitter or Google or Facebook). They provide WordPress plugin and help fighting with spam.
b) Analytics Dashboard (http://codecanyon.net/item/analytics-dashboard/10819439) – plugin which displays all statistics for blog, like posts, comments, likes on Facebook or followers on Twitters.
Thanks / You’re Welcome!
I used to use DISQUS. I liked the service, but I didn’t like being reliant upon their servers as it was a tad harmful from a load time perspective. Plus I didn’t like how little flexibility I had to modify how it renders on my site. Other than those things though, it’s a great service!
I’ll check out the Analytics Dashboard.
Thanks,
Andy
Nice work. Really valuable for who looking for wordpress startup guide. Thank you for your effort.
Thanks nice post, but i more interest using WordPress SEO by yoast
Hi,
What plugin do you recommend for placing adsense ads? Thank for advice
I don’t use any, but when I did test several of them in the past “Google AdSense for Responsive Design – GARD” was my favorite: https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-adsense-for-responsive-design-gard/
contact form 7 is the best of form plugin
Great article. thanks for sharing the best plugin list. this article is helpful for new blogger. The list some of the best WordPress SEO plugins 2017, security plugins, speed optimization plugins, marketing and social media plugins. These plugins will help you to make your site robust, secure, SEO friendly and complete with all the aesthetics needed in a modern website. I used many of the suggested on this list a few months ago, and made a huge difference….
1. Jetpack (FREE)
2. Akismet (Freemium)
3. Yoast SEO (Freemium)
4. Google XML Sitemaps (FREE)
5. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets (FREE)
6. W3 Total Cache (Freemium)
7. WP Smush (Freemium)
8. WP-Optimize (FREE)
9. BJ Lazy Load (FREE)
10. Wordfence Security (Freemium)
11. Broken Link Checker (FREE)
12. Redirection (FREE)
13. MailChimp for WordPress (Freemium)
14. Social Icons (FREE)
15. Disable Comments (FREE)
Wow! Plugins in a category list are well done! Great job on doing this. Very helpful!
I was just looking for this info for a while. After 6 hours of continuous Googleing, finally I got it in your web site. I wonder what’s the lack of Google strategy that do not rank this type of informative websites in top of the list. Generally the top web sites are full of garbage.
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