PLUGINS COLLECTION

25+ Best WordPress Plugins and Extensions 2021

Last Updated: 21 mins By: WPEverest Author

Are you looking for the best WordPress plugins for your site? Hop in; this article is all you need.

WordPress plugins are the tools that add or enhance the set of functions to your WordPress website. They enable you to add specific features to your site without touching the code.

While there are many WordPress plugins options available, choosing the best ones for your site can be pretty intimidating.

Don’t worry! In this WPEverest article, we’ve handpicked the best WordPress plugins to save you from all the work. 

But before we jump into the list, let’s take a quick insight on how to choose the best WordPress plugins first.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Plugins?

WordPress plugins make life so much easier. You can easily add new features and functionalities to your site in a few steps. Moreover, it is very easy to install a plugin on your WordPress site.

However, you need to ensure that the plugin you install provides your site the best features and security. Besides, there are various factors that you need to consider before choosing the best WordPress plugins for your site. Some of those factors are listed as given below:

  • User-Friendly Interface: Not all of the users are tech-savvy. So, a good WordPress plugin must have an easy-to-use and understandable interface.
  • Performance: Some plugins may take up your server’s storage space and make your site slow. Therefore, you need to choose the plugins that are lightweight for your site.
  • Good Star Ratings and Reviews: Star ratings and reviews reveal a lot about the quality of WordPress plugins. So, always check ratings and reviews before plugin installation.
  • Regular Updates: Plugins that aren’t regularly updated aren’t safe to be used on your site. So, choose the plugins that are updated regularly.
  • Customer Support: When a problem occurs, users may need the help of a professional. And, this is where support is needed. The best WordPress plugins offer great customer support for their users.
  • WordPress Guidelines: When installing a plugin, make sure it follows the rules and guidelines set by WordPress itself.

Having said that, it is very time-consuming to go through each plugin and check these out. So, we’ve reviewed and listed the best WordPress plugins for your convenience.

25+ Best WordPress Plugins and Extensions

1. Everest Forms – Best WordPress Contact Plugin

Everest-Forms-WordPress-plugin

Having a good communication bridge with the users is necessary for a website’s success. So, adding a contact form is a great option. Everest Forms is the most powerful and easy WordPress contact form plugin that you can find. This plugin allows you to create attractive simple to professional contact forms in a few clicks. 

Not only contact forms, but you can also create any other forms for your site. The drag-and-drop form builder lets you add form fields to your desired position. And, it offers many pre-built form templates to make save your time. Customizing your form according to your requirements is a piece of cake.

Key Features:

  • The conditional logic feature allows you to create interactive and user-friendly forms.
  • Compatible with WordPress multilingual plugins so, you can translate your forms easily.
  • Use extension for surveys, polls, and quizzes and increase user interaction. 
  • Divide long and complex forms into multiple parts with Multi-Part forms extension.

2. User Registration – Best WordPress User Registration Plugin

User-Registration-WordPress-Plugin

User Registration is the best WordPress user registration plugin that allows you to register users to your site easily. It offers a user-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop interface. So, creating and adding registration forms to your WordPress site is very easy. It works well with the Gutenberg editor and supports shortcodes too.

Moreover, you have the option to customize the look and feel of the user profiles. Also, you can export your form submission entries in PDF files easily. The premium version offers more advanced features such as multi-step forms, file upload, advanced fields, and more. And, you can find the free version on WordPress.org. 

Key Features:

  • Lets you choose the desired user roles before in the registration form settings.
  • Allows you to restrict the content on your website according to user roles.
  • Integration with Google reCaptcha allows you to prevent spam form submissions.
  • Compatible with WooCommerce so, you can add WooCommerce tabs to user profiles.

3. Masteriyo – Best WordPress Learning Management System

Masteriyo WordPress LMS Plugin

Built on cutting-edge technology, Masteriyo is an excellent Learning Management System for your website. This modern free WordPress LMS plugin is powered by React js. Hence, you’ll experience the smooth and fast creation of courses, lessons, and quizzes like never before.

Moreover, you can generate good revenue with its built-in course selling feature that allows accepting payment via PayPal. Contrarily, you can also make your courses completely free or make it compulsory for your users to register before accessing the free courses. Further, vertical course navigation makes it easy for your learners to figure out the course section they are at.

Key Features:

  • Intuitive drag and drop course builder with a clean and user-friendly interface.
  • Distraction-free learning page to allow readers to focus on their learnings.
  • Smart question and answer system to enable interaction with instructors and among learners themselves.
  • Compatible with any theme designed by following WordPress Theme standards.

4. Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin      

Yoast-SEO-Plugin

Undoubtedly, Yoast SEO is the best option in the list of WordPress SEO plugins. It is also great for beginners who want to learn how to create SEO-friendly content. This plugin guides you to improve your content and other on-page SEO settings in a simple interface. 

There are options for adding focus and other related keywords. So, you can optimize your posts and pages according to the keywords easily. Also, there is the readability check feature that checks the overall readability of the content. Necessary issues are pointed out to make it more SEO optimized.

Key Features:

  • The analysis tool allows you to optimize each page separately.
  • In-built XML sitemap tool to help create sitemaps for your site.
  • Preview the search result snippet of your posts and make necessary changes.
  • More settings for improving the SEO of your WordPress website.

5. WPML – WordPress Multilingual Plugin

WPML-WordPress-Multilingual-Plugin

WPML is one of the must have WordPress plugins to translate your website into multiple languages. It’s very easy to use and powerful at the same time. Thus, you can translate your WordPress pages, posts, taxonomies, menus, etc., over 40 languages without any difficulty.

Furthermore, WPML’s Advanced Translator Editor offers features like machine translation, translation memory, spell checker, glossary, and many more. This allows your team of translators to perform their work quickly and efficiently. Besides, WPML seamlessly integrates with popular WordPress SEO plugins.

Key Features:

  • Allows translation of text in other plugins from WPML’s String Translation interface.
  • Fully compatible with other WordPress themes, plugins, and page builders.
  • Compatible with WooCommerce so, you can translate your online stores.
  • Option to add your own language variant using WPML’s languages editor.

6. Easy Social Sharing – WordPress Social Media Plugin

Easy Social Sharing Best WordPress Social Sharing Plugins

As a website owner, you must know that just posting content online is not enough. To attract viewers and audiences to your site, you need to share your content. And, social media plays a big role in it. So, you can use the Easy Social Sharing plugin to add the social sharing buttons on your site. 

It is one of the must have WordPress plugins for any website. With the help of this plugin, you can easily display the share buttons for popular social media sites. It offers 18 social sharing buttons that you can embed directly on your posts and pages. Also, it comes with the Social Shared Counts feature which is great for WordPress blogging sites. 

Key Features:

  • Offers simple and easy dashboard settings.
  • It has a responsive design so, the buttons look good on all devices.
  • You can see a live preview of the social share buttons in the backend.
  • Customize buttons with multiple layouts, designs, custom colors, and more.

7. WooCommerce – WordPress eCommerce Plugin

WooCommerce-WordPress-Plugin

WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress eCommerce plugin perfect for small businesses to large online stores. Even beginners can create beautiful eCommerce stores using this plugin. It allows you to showcase physical (books, clothes, jewelry, etc.) and digital goods (eBooks, software, music, etc.) on your website.

On top of everything, it’s a flexible plugin that allows you to enhance your store’s functionality with several other WooCommerce plugins and extensions. All of these note-worthy features make it one of the top WordPress eCommerce plugins for your online store.

Key Features:

  • Easily showcase products, affiliate items, custom configuration, and more. 
  • Offers attractive themes to choose from for creating your storefronts.
  • Manage payments for your Store easily with WooCommerce Payments.
  • Customize your eCommerce pages with modular product blocks.

8. Akismet -WordPress Spam Plugin

Akismet-Anti-Spam-Plugin

Akismet is developed by Automattic, which is the same company behind WordPress. It’s the best WordPress anti-spam plugin that filters the spam from comments. Thus, it’s one of the must-have WordPress plugins for blogs and other websites. The plugin automatically checks all the comments on your WordPress site and filters the spam.

Moreover, there’s a status history for each comment. So, you can easily view the words which are cleared, spammed, or unspammed by the moderator. Further, you can see the URLs in the comment body that remove the misleading links.

Key Features:

  • Trusted spam protection solution with amazing performance.
  • Automatically checks comments and contact form submissions for spam.
  • The discard feature lets you block the worst spams to save disk space and speed up the site.
  • Moderators can see the number of approved comments for users. 

9. Elementor – WordPress Page Builder Plugin

Elementor-WordPress-Plugins

Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress plugins that let you build websites effortlessly. With its instant reaction feature, you can quickly build your website. For instance, it includes instant drag-and-drop builder, live edit, and page-load features. Also, there is the live preview feature that shows you how the frontend looks as you build your site.

Furthermore, you can upgrade to the pro version for more exciting features. Some of its premium features include advanced website builder capabilities, powerful pro widgets, incredible plugin support, etc. It’s also one of the best WordPress plugins for developers as it can be extended further.

Key Features:

  • You can use 40+ free widgets so you can reach the top of your design capabilities.
  • It offers 100+ pre-designed templates and blocks in the free version.
  • More features like motion effects, WooCommerce builder, Custom fonts and icons, etc., with a premium plugin.
  • Translation-ready and RTL (Right-to-Left) text support.

10. LearnDash – WordPress LMS Plugin

LearnDash-LMS-Plugin

Learndash is one of the best LMS WordPress plugins that you can find in the market. With the help of this Learning Management System, you can use your WordPress website as an online learning platform and offer courses. It allows you to create free and premium courses on the backend. Also, you can easily register your users and enroll them in a course.

Likewise, the plugin offers a drip-feed content feature. That means you can release your course content at the allocated schedule. Apart from that, you can encourage interactions between your learners with discussion forums.

Key Features:

  • Membership option to sell online courses and provide access to members.
  • Add payment gateways to accept payments for your courses.
  • Create user groups and assign a group leader to manage the progress. 
  • The reward feature allows you to give certificates, points, and badges to encourage users.

11. Pretty Links – WordPress Affiliate Marketing Plugin

Pretty-Links-Plugin

Pretty Links is one of the must have WordPress plugins if you are using affiliate links on your site. This plugin allows you to manage your affiliate links with ease. You can shorten links using your own domain name. And, you can create a custom slug or generate random 3-4 character slugs for your URLs. 

Moreover, Pretty Links allows you to view the click details such as the IP address, browser, operating system, referring site, etc. Also, you can download these click details in CSV format. Further, it’s also possible to choose the temporary (302 or 307) and permanent (301) redirection options for your pretty links.

Key Features:

  • Track your affiliate links for visitor activity and number of clicks
  • The reporting interface shows a configurable chart of clicks per day.
  • Filter tracking reports by specific link clicked, date range, unique clicks, etc.
  • Option to turn the tracking on and off for each link depending upon your need.

12. MemberPress – WordPress Membership Plugin

MemberPress-WordPress-Plugin

If you want to build a membership website, then MemberPress is the best WordPress plugin for you. This plugin allows you to manage membership subscriptions and sell digital products easily.

You can restrict access to your pages, posts, videos, and other content based on your users’ membership plans. Since Membership also works well with WooCommerce so, you can use this plugin for online stores too.

Key Features:

  • Simple and easy user interface so, beginners can use this plugin effortlessly.
  • Allows you to create affiliate programs, coupons, pricing pages for your website.
  • bbPress integration lets you create an online community for your members.
  • It integrates with email marketing services like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, AWeber, etc.

13. W3 Total Cache – WordPress Cache Plugin

W3-Total-Cache

W3 Total Cache is amongst the top WordPress caching plugins for your site. It’s integrated with Content Delivery Network (CDN) and the latest best practices to significantly reduce the loading time, improving your site’s performance.

The plugin is fully compatible with shared hosting, virtual private/dedicated servers, and dedicated servers/clusters. Further, W3 Total Cache supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

Key Features:

  • Implementation of a content delivery network (CDN) which makes your site load faster.
  • Saves up to 80% bandwidth by minifying and reducing the size of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
  • Post attachments are directly imported to the media library and CDN.
  • Various security features for the safety of your website.

14. Smush -WordPress Image Optimization Plugin

Smush-Image-Optimization-Plugin

Images play a vital role in attracting visitors to your content and convey your message instantly. However, the images can slow down your site speed by filling your storage space. This is where Smush comes in handy.

Smush is the best WordPress image optimization plugin that lets you compress your images. So, you can optimize your images and still maintain their quality. The plugin has a bulk smush functionality that can compress up to 50 images with a click.

Key Features:

  • You can compress or resize your images automatically as you upload them in the media library. 
  • Integration with NEXTGEN and WP Retina 2x so, you can display crisp images.
  • It processes PNG, JPEG, and GIF files for optimum results.
  • Quickly figure out images with the incorrect sizes that slow down your site.

15. Jetpack – WordPress Security Plugin

Jetpack-WordPress-Plugin

Jetpack is one of the essential WordPress plugins out there suitable for different purposes. It offers a collection of features for security, blazing fast speed, and optimization of your website. So, you can utilize this plugin to improve the overall performance of your site.

The plugin also works well with other powerful WordPress plugins and tools for even more functionalities. For instance, it seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, AMP plugins, contact form plugins, social media platforms, and more.

Key Features:

  • Provides site security with auto real time backups, easy restores, malware scanning, etc. 
  • Speed up your site’s performance with AMP tool and free content delivery network CDN. 
  • Advanced site analytics to understand your audience better.
  • Easy design tools to customize your site and make it stand out from the crowd.

16. Redirection – WordPress Redirection Plugin

Redirection-Plugin

With over 2 million active installations, Redirection is one of the must-have WordPress plugins for managing redirects. It also allows you to keep track of 404 errors and fix them to improve your site’s ranking.

Using this redirect manager, you can create and manage the redirection of any URL quickly and easily. Further, you can also redirect URLs based on different conditions like login status, WordPress capability, IP address, server, etc.

Key Features:

  • Automatically creates a redirect when there are changes in the permalinks of posts and pages.
  • Dedicated redirect manager plugin available for free.
  • Manage redirection without knowledge of Apache and Ngnix
  • Fully compatible with Search Regex to allow bulk update of redirects.

17. Code Snippets – WordPress Code Plugin

Code-Snippets

As the name implies, Code Snippets is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add code snippets to your site. The plugin is highly user-friendly. Hence, even a beginner can learn how to use this plugin in no time. Further, it’s available for free in the WordPress repository.

Code Snippets comes with an interface that looks exactly like the plugin’s menu. Therefore, you can easily manage the snippets from there. Additionally, snippets can be activated and deactivated, similar to the plugins.

Key Features:

  • Snippets can be exported either in JSON or in PHP for further users.
  • It eliminates the need to add custom snippets to the theme’s functions.php file.
  • Snippet editor provides the fields for a name, a visual editor-enabled description, etc.
  • Can be translated into multiple languages.

18. BuddyPress – WordPress Forum Plugin

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is one of the best WordPress plugins for building online communities for your site. It lets you create a forum on your site as well as an online social networking site. It even allows your users to create profiles, have private conversations, make social connections, and more.

With BuddyPress, any member can create groups. However, this option needs to be enabled by the admin at first. Likewise, Activity Stream lets you keep track of any sort of activity across BuddyPress installation.

Key Features:

  • Modern and powerful social networking software
  • Works perfectly with any WordPress theme
  • Developers can add more features and functionalities to their website.
  • It comes with built-in support for Akismet and bbPress.

19. Site Kit – WordPress Google Analytics Plugin

Site-Kite-Googles-Official-WordPress-Plugin

Site Kit is Google’s official WordPress plugin that lets you get insights into how people find and use your site. It brings the best Google tools such as Search Console, Google Analytics, AdSense, and more to your WordPress site.

The plugin is extremely easy to set up. Just a few clicks and you are good to go. And, you can see the stats of the multiple Google tools in one dashboard. Furthermore, it lets you view the metrics for an entire site or your individual post.

Key Features:

  • You can access a single dashboard to see the stats of your entire site.
  • View insights for a specific page directly in the WordPress admin bar.
  • You are notified when you hit a milestone in the dashboard.
  • Easy management of granular permissions across WordPress and different Google products

20. WP Rocket – WordPress Performance Plugin

WP-Rocket-Plugin

WP Rocket is amongst the best WordPress plugins that help you to improve your website’s speed. You’ll notice a lightning-fast website as soon as you install and activate the plugin. So, you don’t need to have any coding skills to use this plugin.

With the help of its built-in page caching, you get an ultra-fast load time. Other than this, it also minifies your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Also, GZIP compression compresses your file sizes so your users can access them real quick.

Key Features:

  • You can enable lazy loading features for faster loading of images and videos.
  • It integrates with a content delivery network (CDN) for better caching.
  • Browser caching makes your site load faster as it stores the static contents.
  • Excellent compatibility with other top WordPress plugins and themes.

21. Business Directory Plugin – WordPress Directory Plugin

Business Directory Plugin Top WordPress Listing Directory Plugin

If you want to create a directory website like Yelp, you can use the Business Directory Plugin. This WordPress plugin is the best for building a local directory for your site. You can create a listing directory for businesses, companies, employees, etc.

Not to mention, this plugin also lets you advertise businesses and sell listings to business owners. Moreover, you can offer your listings as a membership feature. Besides, it has a search and sorting bar for quick directory listing searches.

Key Features:

  • Image options like drag and drop image uploads, image ordering, primary image settings, etc.
  • You can create multiple free plans and they can be assigned to categories for posting.
  • Support WPML so, you can create multilingual directories.
  • ReCaptcha to avoid spam listings

22. Ad Inserter – WordPress Advertising Plugin

Ad-Inserter-WordPress-Plugin

Ad Inserter is one of the must-have WordPress plugins if you want to insert and manage ads on your site. This plugin offers impressive features for managing ad codes effortlessly. So, you can insert ads for Google AdSense, Amazon Native Shopping Ads, and more.

It’s straightforward to insert code anywhere you want with its syntax highlighting editor. However, this plugin is more than just an AdSense plugin as it also provides several other options like inserting opt-in forms, header scripts, analytics, etc., on the page.

Key Features:

  • You can preview the code for ads with the visual CSS editor.
  • It supports Google Ad Manager (DoubleClick for Publishers).
  • Offers a code generator for banners and placeholders.
  • The timed ad rotation feature defines the time for rotating adverts in a single ad-block.

23. LiveChat – WordPress Live Chat Plugin

LiveChat-Plugin

LiveChat is the best WordPress plugin that lets you easily add live chat support to your site. If you want to have quick and effective communication with your site visitors or customers online, you need this plugin.

The plugin also comes with a built-in ticketing system that allows you to provide seamless customer support. Moreover, you can integrate the plugin with popular third-party apps and services to extend the live chat functionality further.

Key Features:

  • Connect multiple websites to a single LiveChat account to communicate with visitors.
  • Canned responses allow you to reply and help customers quickly with predefined answers.
  • The visitor tracking feature allows you to track your customers’ location and more info.
  • Manage and categorize chats to figure out the most common issues and queries.

24. Mailchimp for WordPress – WordPress Email Marketing Plugin

Mailchimp-for-WordPress

Are you looking to grow your email marketing list? If yes, then Mailchimp for WordPress is all you need. It’s a powerful email marketing service that lets you grow and manage your audience list. It allows you to connect your Mailchimp account with your WordPress site easily.

This plugin also lets you create attractive, user-friendly, and mobile-optimized sign-up forms in minutes. Further, Mailchimp for WordPress seamlessly integrates with form builder plugins like Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms, and more.

Key Features:

  • Grow Mailchimp lists and create amazing newsletters for your website.
  • Create forms or integrate with any existing form like contact form or registration form.
  • Various filters and hooks for extending the default behavior of the plugin.
  • Premium add-ons are available for additional benefits.

Other Useful WordPress Plugins

25. XML Sitemaps 

XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are essential for the ranking of your website as they help better indexing your web pages. Just as its name, XML Sitemaps is one of the best WordPress plugins for creating special XML sitemaps.

It has over 2 million active installs till now and is still counting. On top of everything, XML Sitemaps is very user-friendly. Hence, you can use this plugin to improve your site’s SEO even if you are a beginner and have no experience with sitemaps.

Key Features:

  • The plugin is available free of cost.
  • Create special XML sitemaps to improve your site’s SEO.
  • It notifies the search engines every time you create a new post.
  • It can be easily translated into your language.

26. Broken Link Checker

Broken-Link-Checker

There can be many links on your site that don’t exist or work anymore. These links are called broken links, and they are very bad for your site’s SEO. Broken Link Checker is one of the best WordPress plugins available for fixing such broken links.

This plugin scans all the internal and external links on your site and identifies if they are broken or not. Then, you can easily edit the links or remove them. Also, you can fix broken links one by one or in bulk. Thus, it helps to improve your site’s SEO and user experience.

Key Features:

  • Notifies you about missing images and 301 redirects.
  • It offers a search and filter function for URLs and anchor texts.
  • There is an option to prevent search engines from following internal broken links.
  • Make broken links appear differently in a post.

Summing Up:

So, this were our list of the best WordPress plugins for your site. They’re designed to provide the essential features for your website like SEO and speed optimization, security, backup, email list improvement, and so on.

We hope this article helped you to find the right plugin for your site. Please share this article if you found it helpful.

Also, you can check more WordPress articles here:

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