With so many plugins available for your self-hosted WordPress site, it can often be really tough to choose the ones that best suit your needs. Currently, there are nearly 40,000 plugins in the official repo, not to mention countless premium plugins available for purchase from a host of different companies.
There are a number of ways you can work out what the best choices are for your website, but we thought we would help you out by providing you a few plugins from the WordPress community that we admire. We admire these plugins only for their usefulness, but also for the way they are built and maintained.
Some of these plugins are freely available, while some carry a price tag. But one thing that they all have in common is the fact they are all incredibly well built and perform their respective tasks in the best way possible. Some of them are also included in our WooBenefits — tailored discounts offered exclusively to WooThemes customers.
So, without further delay… here’s the list!
1. Query Monitor
Query Monitor lets you view debugging and performance information on database queries, hooks, conditionals, HTTP requests, redirects and more.
This is one for the developers, but it is easily one of the most useful development plugins available. The full feature list is huge, but the gist of it is that with Query Monitor installed you are able to read and understand database queries, view all hooks and filters that are being fired, see which theme templates are being used, access all request data, and so much more.
What’s even more incredible is that this plugin is 100% free and is maintained regularly. That makes it some sort of a one stop shop for any WordPress developer, whether you are building themes or plugins.
2. SearchWP
SearchWP will instantly improve your WordPress search by including content that is usually ignored.
The native search in WordPress is passable, but it’s not great. A few people have tried to improve it with custom indexing plugins that allow content to be found much more easily, but none of them have done it quite as well as SearchWP. Working in the background, SearchWP enables all of your site content to be searched – including custom fields, shortcode content, PDF content and so much more.
Jonathan Christopher, the developer behind SearchWP, had this to say about what makes it such a great plugin:
I built SearchWP so that developers & site owners could build a search designed for their site. The plugin is both turnkey and developer friendly, and can be manipulated to do pretty much anything you want without sacrificing performance. It also aims to work with other plugins like WooCommerce by exposing the immensely valuable data stored as meta in such a way that it directly influences search results in any way you’d like. SearchWP’s goal is to empower site owners to instantly improve WordPress search on their site without having to write a single line of code.
If search is an important feature of your site (and it really should be), then SearchWP is absolutely vital. With its advanced content indexing and rapid queries, your users will always be able to find exactly what they need in no time.
WooThemes customers get 15% off SearchWP by using our WooBenefits coupon.
3. WP Featherlight
WP Featherlight is an ultra lightweight jQuery lightbox for WordPress images and galleries. It is simple, clean and works seamlessly.
Lightbox plugins are many and varied. Some of them try to do far too much, while some of them are simpler and more efficient. In the class of simpler lightbox plugins, WP Featherlight is one that beats them all.
Made by the fine folks at WP Site Care, this plugin is designed with both site administrators and users in mind. It is the very definition of simple, clean and efficient, all the while looking great.
The guy behind WP Featherlight, Rob Neu, had this to say about why the plugin is so valuable:
It’s designed to do one thing and one thing only. It’s lightweight and doesn’t bloat your site with a bunch of options or giant scripts. You just install it and it lightboxes your galleries and images as you would expect – you get everything you need and nothing you don’t, so it’s a good choice for both normal users and developers.
WP Featherlight is free to download, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t install this on every site you manage.
4. Editus
Editus is a front-end editor for WordPress that makes writing simpler, faster and easier.
Front-end content editing has received a lot of attention lately, but no plugins have really nailed the idea yet. That is, no plugins until Editus (recently renamed from “Lasso”):
Editus is an expertly written and incredibly easy to use front-end content editing plugin. With Editus, you will be able to manage all of your site’s content without opening up the dashboard. Not only that, but the content editing process is very smooth and incredibly easy to use, employing a neat drag-and-drop interface to make everything as easy as possible. The further along I got with development of Editus, the more I realized that what we had was a full-fledged front-end editing framework for WordPress, that could easily be extended by other developers – writing and editing in the context of the post is the best way to ensure that what you see, is truly what you get.
I chatted to Editus’ lead developer, Nick Haskins, about why he built the plugin and he had this to say:
Previewing a post doesn’t seem like it takes a lot of time, but it adds up pretty quickly. If you preview a post 10 times, and you write frequently, over the course of a year you actually spend about 12 hours clicking that preview button, and returning to the post editor. By using a front-end editor you’re saving yourself valuable time in the long-run.
WooThemes customers get 30% off Editus by using our WooBenefits coupon.
5. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is an advanced form builder for WordPress.
Gravity Forms needs no introduction. It’s been around for ages, and in all that time still stands as the king of WordPress form builders.
With a powerful form creation interface and a number of incredibly helpful add-ons, Gravity Forms is a solid go-to plugin for building any type of form you can imagine. It can handle content creation, user registration, mailing list integration and a host of other things. If you’re needing to build a complex form yourself, or you want to give your clients a platform to manage their own forms, then Gravity Forms is a superb solution.
Pro-tip: Use Gravity Forms along with Lasso to have a full-featured content submission and editing solution!
6. WP Migrate DB Pro
WP Migrate DB Pro is a premium solution for moving your WordPress database from one server to another.
Moving your site can be a tedious operation, whether you are changing your URL or just keeping it the same it is almost always a pain with a high potential for error. With WP Migrate DB Pro, however, it is more than just a smooth experience – I would even go so far as to say that it is an enjoyable one too.
With an incredibly easy UI, moving all of your precious content across WordPress sites is easy to do with absolute zero room for things to go wrong. With plenty of failsafes built right in (including optional request frequency throttling to prevent servers blocking the migration process), using WP Migrate DB Pro is an absolute breeze. It will allow you to take care things and get back to focusing on doing what you do best: publishing great content.
When I asked Brad Touesnard, the developer of WP Migrate DB Pro, what makes this plugin great, he said:
It’s our unwillingness to settle for “good enough.” We foster a culture of valuing the little details and will implement the tough solution if it means the best experience for the user.
A free version is also available with a limited feature set, but the pro version (with add-ons!) is well worth the purchase.
WooThemes customers get 20% off WP Migrate DB Pro by going through our WooBenefits.
7. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO boosts your site’s search engine optimization, making it easier for your potential customers to find you.
This is another plugin that really needs no introduction. Formerly known as “WordPress SEO by Yoast,” Yoast SEO is a one-stop-shop for all your SEO needs.
The free version is an absolute must for any WordPress site, but there is also a premium version and a number of helpful add-ons (including one specifically for WooCommerce).
With everything that Yoast SEO offers (and there is a lot) you’ll find yourself in total control of your site’s visibility in search engines, from managing page titles to adding meta descriptions, sitemaps and everything in between. This is one of those plugins that you just can’t do without.
8. Sucuri Security
Sucuri Security is a security toolset for security integrity monitoring, malware detection and security hardening.
The importance of your site’s security can never be underestimated, especially if you are running an online store or site that stores sensitive information. Once of the best ways to make sure your site is as secure is possible is by installing this security plugin from Sucuri.
Sucuri Security works tirelessly in the background to monitor all of the activity on your site, make sure there is nothing malicious going on and quickly notifying you of any potential threats. It is a complete security solution that will leave with you great peace of mind and a safer website. All you need to do is not set ‘123’ as your password…
9. MailPoet
MailPoet brings newsletters, post notifications and autoresponders to your WordPress dashboard.
With so many newsletter solutions out there, it can be tough to choose the one that best suits your needs. That’s where MailPoet comes in by bringing newsletter management right into your dashboard.
The plugin lets you manage your mailing lists and send newsletters from the familiar WordPress dashboard interface. It also gives you control over the look and feel of your newsletters, including a number of pre-built themes (with some modeled on our own WordPress themes) so you can make sure your corporate branding is as consistent in your newsletters as it is on your site.
MailPoet newsletters look great on all email platforms (including mobile devices) and come with advanced user-tracking, so you can find out exactly how many people are opening your newsletters, how many are ignoring them, and just about everything else you need to know in order to effectively manage a mailing list.
Best of all, you can start using MailPoet for free. But to really take advantage of everything the plugin offers, the premium packages are well worth looking into.
WooThemes customers get 20% off MailPoet by using our WooBenefits coupon.
10: Airplane Mode
Airplane Mode allows you to control loading of external files when developing locally.
As a bonus, we’ve included one of the most useful tools for WordPress development: Airplane Mode by Andrew Norcross. This is a plugin mostly for developers that is incredibly helpful for local development as well as when you are working with a slow internet connection.
What the plugin does is prevent WordPress from loading a whole lot of external files and services, such as fonts and Gravatars. This has a two-fold effect of reducing network usage as well as improving load times. If you are developing locally and you don’t need all of those extra items, then Airplane Mode is one of those plugins that you really just can’t do without.
Andrew had this to say about why he built the plugin:
Airplane Mode was built based on a need: a vacation house with bad wifi and a long plane ride. Airplane Mode allows you to focus on development in less than ideal situations without excessive lags or errors you know won’t resolve.
Which plugins do you admire?
That’s our short list, but there are, of course, plenty of other incredible WordPress plugins out there. I encourage you to explore your options and find the ideal plugin that really fits your needs perfectly.
Are there any WordPress plugins you can’t live without? Which developers or solutions are on your short list? Leave some of your own recommendations and reviews in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.
Nice list! WP jQuery Lightbox is also a good jQuery lightbox plugin. I am using it on several sites and never had problems. Also very easy to install.
Indeed! There are a lot of great lightbox plugins out there – we picked WP Featherlight here because of how well it is written and put together 🙂
Nice list! WP jQuery Lightbox is also a good jQuery lightbox plugin.
Thank you Hugh, great collection!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I really can’t get enough of Advanced Custom Fields Pro. Such a valuable tool for turning WordPress into a full-fledged CMS.
Other plugins I’ve been using lately:
Nested Pages, which is a great alternative to the default WordPress page admin
FacetWP, which allows you to create a fine-tuned dynamic search (and works well with SearchWP, mentioned above)
Breadcrumb NavXT, which is the most flexible breadcrumb tool I’ve found
And WP All Import Pro for bulk imports of posts.
Oh, and of course, WooCommerce. 🙂
Advanced Custom Fields is an incredible plugin and very nearly made this post, but we have to end the list somewhere :p
I haven’t used all of your suggestions here, but we do have a WooBenefit for FacetWP as well that any of our customers can take advantage of!
Well, ACF should be on top of your list.
I can’t recommend Advanced Custom Fields or the Pro version enough either. You can’t complain about their licensing, also ($25 for each slightly unusual ACF add-on, useable on all sites for life).
What I also like ACF also handles creating Theme Options panels which work well. Though I have started to turn to Redux Framework and making my Theme Options panels programmatically (just because it’s easier to integrate with making child themes that modify existing themes that use Redux).
Advanced Custom Fields is the missing link to making WordPress a robust CMS. I’m just seconding the vote for hitting your list.
Thanks for sharing your list of plugins, good to see an overlap of some of my favourites.
Maybe an interesting search plugin to check out is Search and Filter Pro.
While I don’t think this will be a complete replacement for Advanced Custom Fields, there is a planned Custom Fields API for WordPress core that looks very exciting: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/05/27/metadata-api-project-reborn-the-new-fields-api-project/
i love anti spam by webVitaly (https://wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/) it’s a free and also premium plugin that reduce of about 99% spam comments. Qnti span do not require any settings, just activate it and work.
That looks great – definitely worth looking into!
Nice Roundup. I am using WP Zero spam with a lot of success.
Looks good Elmer – thanks!
Here’s a couple more
1) AffiliateWP – for master level affiliate marketing. I’ve checked out the competition and AffiliateWP beats them hands down
2) MainWP – I’ve been with them ever since they were known as SickNetwork, and they’ve come leaps and bounds. They’re really good for managing multiple sites. A lot of people on the Advanced WordPress group swear by them
3) Types Toolkit & WPML – Made by the same guys and the best in what they do out there.
4) Thrive Clever Widgets – I haven’t found anything like this, but this newly launched plugin enables us to have intelligent widgets for different post categories/tags. Really brilliant
Those all look very impressive – thanks Leo!
Nice list. I’m using most of them. Here’s one more from myself. It’s called Decorations for Occasions (http://decorationsforoccasions.com) and I think it’s one of a kind. I’m very curious what do you think about it.
Definitely a unique idea I think! Looks like a fun plugin 🙂
Thanks for feedback. I hope you liked it.
Hi Hugh,
I would like to know your thoughts on Followprice – a universal and automatic price and stock alert tool.
It gets a “followprice” button on your product page, allowing your visitors to become followers of your products. It will automatically notify them of price changes or stock availability. It’s free. They have some other paid features which are pretty great.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/followprice/
Cheers,
Followprice looks like a good idea – I haven’t looked at the code, but the concept is solid. I would say that the settings page should be integrated into the existing WooCommerce settings correctly, but it looks like something worth checking out otherwise.
I admired Editus plugin and Gravity Form also. But one thing is really annoying me that these plugins which is free ones shoul implement to wordpress core. Especially visual editor, form, security plugins…
And other thing is woocommer should not stay just “plugin” , my opinion.
It should be special ecommerce system such as opencart and also woocommerce should implement plugins which most effective and common free addons.
I think that if all the plugins we liked were implemented in WordPress core, then WordPress would become a giant, unusable piece of bloatware. As it stands now, the plugin system works brilliantly and allows you to have the specific functionality that you need without bloating the core code, so it’s a win for everyone really 🙂
yes i agree but not all of them ofcourse. For example, first time i met wordpress there is a plugin which make just pagination. And i guess after six months wordpress implemented this feature from core file. So, this little and basic features such as contact form or rich visual editor can be implement easily and it can add from Settings page and so it should disable with “disable simple contact form feature” etc…
I request this cause we already adds form plugin, editor plugin, maybe woocommerce and woocommerce add ons so our website become huge website.
Thank you for this list, Hugh. There are a few that I haven’t used and I will look into immediately. I notice that you don’t have any Pootle Press plugins on your list. I am a big fan of many of theirs. 🙂
What is your favorite cache plugin?
Pootle Press is great and they have some fantastic plugins for sure 🙂
In terms of caching plugins, I’d generally go for WP Super Cache or WP Rocket as they are both very easy to use yet very powerful at the same time. That being said, an even better option than any caching plugin is to have your site hosted with a managed WordPress host who handles the cache and speed side of things for you.
One of the handiest plugins I’ve found in a while is WP Add Custom CSS. ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-add-custom-css/ ). It provides a CSS area that is specific to individual pages and posts. Much faster than bouncing back and forth targeting a single page via a style.css file.
ZenCache Pro is also one of my favorites.
WP Add Custom CSS looks very useful – nice find! There’s also the Custom CSS module inside Jetpack, which I use regularly.
Thanks Hugh. This is a great list and I use nearly half of the plugins on the list.
A recent premium plugin that has grabbed my attention is WP Rocket.
It really took the pain out of caching (W3TC people) and caching really well. The optimization results are crazy as well. Now that’s something that I want to use with each project going forward.
WP Rocket is brilliant – plus we have a WooBenefit that gives you a bit of a discount when purchasing it 🙂
An early version of Gravity Forms had a file upload feature that didn’t check to see if the uploaded file was actually a jpeg, or a virus disguised as a jpeg, when the server couldn’t open the jpeg, it assumed it was some sort of executable file and just executed the code……a very obvious vulnerability. Needless to say, my site was hacked and rendered useless by a PHP attack. The developer refused to take responsibility. Major fail.
It’s a pity that you had an experience like that – having your website hacked is never a fun experience �?
I can tell you, however, that today Gravity Forms is an incredible piece of software that is very reliable and (in my experience) very secure.
I have just installed Query Monitor. Can’t believe I’ve missed it. I need to optimize a huge plugin with lots of unnecessary database calls – https://wordpress.org/plugins/photosmash-galleries/ – and this plugin should help me a bit.
Photosmash looks interesting – nice work! Query Monitor will definitely help there 🙂
Hi,
Nice list. I have a question concerning Mail Poet. When would you advise Mail Poet over MailChimp, that other giant newsletter heavyweight?
It all depends on your needs really. MailChimp is great of course, but MailPoet allows you to keep everything on your own site in your own database without outsourcing it. Both are great options, but it just depends how you prefer to manage things.
If you’re building a site for a client, then there’s a good chance they would prefer MailPoet because they won’t have to learn how to use a new dashboard (such as MailChimp) to handle their newsletter, but once again – it’s a matter of preference 🙂
Learned a lot from this post, I am a wordpress lover. Came to know about a new plugin for newsletter.
Thanks for sharing.
Great – glad we could help you learn 🙂
Thanks for sharing! Definitely going to try some of these.
Advanced Custom Fields Pro should definitely be on this list though, such a powerful plugin that really extends what WordPress can do as a CMS. I use it on almost every site I build.
ACF is a winner and is definitely worthy of a list like this 🙂
nothing here made me say wow
That’s OK – we all have different needs when it comes to plugins 🙂
What ones do make you say wow?
Nice list Hugh! The plugin dynamic featured image is very helpful and worth mentioning. I utilize it in almost all website possible.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/dynamic-featured-image
https://github.com/ankitpokhrel/Dynamic-Featured-Image
That looks very useful yeah – I love the concept!
Thanks for this list. I’ll include the translation plugin WPML for people working on websites in other languages than English.
I agree – WPML is very useful indeed 🙂
I was going to add WPML so I’m glad to see it was mentioned. It also integrates well with Gravity Forms.
Pretty sure you forgot Woocommerce on your list. Hands down the best wordpress e-commerce plugin EVER!!! few more mentions… slimstat, fence, wp duplicator, sharoholic, contact 7 and woodojo to name a few looks like you all have named the rest 😀
We purposefully left out our own plugins, but thanks for the props – we quite like WooCommerce as well :p
Great list!
I have been using https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-fastest-cache/ for some time now and find it works better for page load speed than anything else in the WordPress repository.
What do you think?
Cheers
That looks really good, but I haven’t tried it personally – it’s great to have options like that out there though 🙂
Good list, and enjoy seeing the plugins that others like using. Any recommendations for parallax plugin? Looking especially for one that works inside Canvas for the home page only (or any other individual page).
Not sure about Canvas, but if you use our Storefront theme then we have an incredibly easy to use parallax extension here: http://woocommerce.com/products/storefront-parallax-hero/ 🙂
According to me ACF pro is missing.
Such a powerful tool!
I agree – it is incredibly powerful!
This is awesome! I didn’t expect to find anything new here but I wasn’t aware of Query Monitor. Definitely going to try that out now.
And +1 for Woocommerce 😉
Glad we could introduce you to such a useful tool 🙂
We consider Shareaholic to be a must-have for our sites.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/shareaholic/
Definitely – Shareaholic is very useful!
I have to agree on this one too, Shareaholic is by far one of my favorite plugins. 🙂
This is great list, i used Yoast SEO for every website. Easy to control for On-page SEO.
For sure – that’s why we included it here 🙂
NextScripts Auto Poster is really good for pushing posts to multiple social meida channels.
NextGen Gallery is great, especially the pro version, for all sorts of image display options
Revive Old Post is handy for recycling content to keep the flow constant
Thanks for the tips here Eliza 🙂 I find that Jetpack’s Publicize feature is great for pushing posts to all of your social networks too.
ZenCache – easy to use caching software with no issues like some I could mention (yes, I am looking at you W3TC) and plays nicely with Woocommerce (we use the Pro version).
Yip – ZenCache is certainly a popular one!
The best WordPress plugin is Ultimate Member.
I love it, plus the extensions are awesome!!!
We LOVE this one too Henry…
Woody
I’ve only heard great things about Ultimate Member – definitely looks like a winner! Have you seen our WooCommerce Memberships extension: http://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-memberships/ ?
Neat list, thanks! I addition to those already mentioned, I’ll add a few of my faves (several of which I consider vital): AddThis Sharing Buttons, BackWPup, Collapse-O-Matic, Desktop Server for WordPress, Fast Secure Contact Form, numerous Genesis plugins, Infinite WP – Client, List Category Posts, Reveal IDs, TablePress, Velvet Blues Update URLs, WordFence Security, WP Realtime Sitemap, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. I keep a mostly current list of favorites here: https://profiles.wordpress.org/brucerawles#content-favorites
Thanks Bruce – that’s a really solid list 😀
Backup Buddy. Lifesaver.
True – Backup Buddy is incredibly useful 🙂
My personal favorite is WP Migrate Pro. Makes it a lot easier to work with Dev -> Prod and deployments etc.
Yip – makes it so useful when moving from a development to a production environment.
Super, veel aan gehad en gebruik er nu een aantal, dank……..:-)
Glad we could show you a few plugins that you’ll find useful 🙂
Great list! I’ll definitely look at the query and search enhancement plugins. I made my own list about a month ago with a few of the same plugins on it too:
http://hirecollin.com/2015/08/most-trusted-wp-plugins-for-2015/
I was wondering, what’s so great about securi over iTheme security?
Nice list! 🙂
iThemes Security is really solid too and definitely worth using. We picked Sucuri here because it has the backing of Sucuri.net, which makes it incredibly powerful.
Great list, thanks! I would also add on top of list the ACF plugin 🙂
wish we could plus one comments, ACF and ACF Pro are fantastic, and something i use with almost every site.
I agree – ACF is really awesome. It’a definitely a running suggestion in these comments :p
Great list with some interesting new plugins for me to try. I have used Mail Poet on several of the sites I developed and have been very happy with the ease of use and the output. I develop my sites on a localhost server (WAMP) so I have used WP-Migrate-DB quite a bit in the past since it let me backup my live site to the local server without having to log in to the hosting platform. Lately, however, I have found that WP-Duplicator is much more useful because it will transfer both the database and the files. I used it to migrate from my old shared hosting platform to a new C-Panel host without problems. I just wish WordPress would fix core so they didn’t use full direct serialized addressing and used relative addressing like Drupal. It would be a lot easier. Thanks for the list and the great Woo Commerce products.
WP Duplicator is certainly a good plugin for that kind of thing, but have you seen the addons for WP Migrate DB Pro: https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/#addons ? They have a Media Files addon that allows you to export your media library along with your database.
It’s great to get a bit of insight into your development workflow – that’s always an interesting topic to explore 🙂