WordPress Plugins: Top 10 Must-Have Plugins For Your Site

WordPress plugins play a vital role in turning a basic website into a powerful, feature-rich platform. Whether you’re building a blog, an online store, or a business site, the right plugins can help improve performance, security, SEO, and user experience without needing to write a single line of code.

In this article, we’ll introduce 10 must-have WordPress plugins that can add real value to your site and make managing it easier and more efficient.

What is a WordPress plugin?

A WordPress plugin is an add-on tool that expands your website’s functionality or introduces new features without requiring you to write code. Whether you’re building an online store, a portfolio, or a business directory, plugins make it possible to tailor your WordPress site to fit specific goals.

You can think of WordPress itself as a clean, newly set-up smartphone. It’s fully operational, but to make it more useful or personalized, you’d likely install apps. In the same way, plugins act like “apps” for your website. They can be easily added, removed, or replaced as needed.

With more than 58,000 plugins available in the official WordPress directory, you’re almost guaranteed to find one for any function your site may require. While many of these tools are free and offer essential features, premium plugins often come with extended functionality, regular updates, and dedicated developer support for more complex needs.

Highly Recommended WordPress Plugins

While these plugins may not be strictly essential, they come loaded with powerful features that can significantly boost your website’s growth. From building larger email lists to increasing social media engagement, they can help you achieve your goals more efficiently.

WooCommerce: E-Commerce Plugin

WooCommerce is the world’s leading e-commerce solution for WordPress. It is a free, open-source plugin that can turn any WordPress website into a powerful and fully functional online store.

Thanks to its exceptional flexibility and limitless customization options, WooCommerce is suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small shops to large enterprises. It also gives you full control over your data and storage operations.

Key features

• Free & Open-Source: Build your store with no licensing fees, giving you full control over your data and code.
• Limitless Customization: Easily adapt your store’s design to match your brand. It’s compatible with virtually any WordPress theme.
• Sell Anything: Supports physical products, digital downloads, product variations (e.g., color, size), and affiliate items.
• Diverse Payment Gateways: Comes with built-in support for PayPal, Stripe, Cash on Delivery (COD), and bank transfers. Easily extend with hundreds of other gateways.
• Flexible Shipping Options: Configure shipping zones, flat rates, free shipping, and local pickup to meet your needs.
• Smart Inventory Management: Automatically track stock levels, receive low-stock alerts, and efficiently manage orders.
• Integrated Reporting: Get insightful reports on sales, orders, and top-selling products directly from your WordPress dashboard.
• Massive Extension Ecosystem: Add new functionality (marketing, bookings, memberships, etc.) with thousands of free and paid extensions.
• SEO-Friendly: Built on the search-engine-friendly WordPress platform, helping your products rank higher in search results.

Price

WooCommerce is completely free to use. However, there are numerous extensions available, both free and paid, that can help you expand and enhance your store’s functionality.

SEMRush: SEO and Digital Marketing Toolkit

SEMRush is an all-in-one digital marketing platform designed for professionals and business owners. It provides a wide range of tools to support your SEO, paid advertising, social media, content marketing, and public relations strategies.

A standout feature is its ability to track and analyze your competitors’ performance, helping you make informed decisions and maintain a competitive edge in your industry.

Key features

• Live Content Optimization: Get real-time feedback on SEO, readability, tone of voice, and originality directly inside the WordPress editor.
• Smart On-Page SEO Suggestions: Receive actionable recommendations to improve your content’s ranking, based on an analysis of your top 10 Google rivals.
• Instant Keyword Research: Find and add valuable, related keywords to your content without leaving the editor interface.
• Website SEO Health Check: Connect to the SEMrush Site Audit tool to find and get guidance on fixing technical SEO issues.
• Automated Internal Linking: Receive smart suggestions for internal links to build a stronger site structure and improve user experience.
• Works with a Free Account: Connect your free SEMrush account to access and use the plugin’s core features without any initial commitment.

Price

• Free WordPress Plugin: You can start with a free SEMrush account, which gives you access to a limited set of features and usage credits.
• Premium WordPress Plugin: To unlock the platform’s full power, data, and remove all limits, you need to subscribe to one of SEMrush’s premium plans. Paid plans start at approximately $129.95 per month.

LiveChat: Live Chat Software

LiveChat is one of the world’s leading live chat and customer service software solutions. The LiveChat plugin for WordPress is the official tool that allows you to integrate this powerful platform into your website effortlessly in just a few minutes.

This plugin opens a direct two-way communication channel on your site, enabling you to chat with visitors in real-time, answer questions instantly, and provide timely support. By doing this, you not only enhance customer satisfaction but can also significantly increase conversion rates and generate more leads.

Key features

• Simple & Quick Integration: Easily add a chat widget to your WordPress site with no coding required.
• Flexible Chat Widget Customization: Change the colors, messages, and position of the chat widget to perfectly match your website’s design and brand.
• Proactive Chat Invitations: Automatically start conversations with visitors based on criteria like their time on site or the specific page they are viewing.
• 24/7 Lead Capture with Offline Forms: The chat widget automatically turns into a contact form when you’re offline, ensuring you never miss a potential lead.
• Rich Visitor Insights: See key details about your visitors right in the chat window, including their current page, location, and browsing history on your site.
• Faster Support with Canned Responses: Save pre-made answers to frequently asked questions to respond to customers with a single click.
• Detailed Performance Reports: Track the number of chats, response times, customer satisfaction ratings, and agent performance to continuously improve your service.
• Support on the Go with Mobile Apps: Your agents can answer customer chats from anywhere using the dedicated LiveChat mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Price

• Free Trial: LiveChat offers a 14-day free trial for you to experience all its features.
• Paid Plans: After the trial, paid plans start from approximately $20 per agent, per month when billed annually.

WPML: WordPress Multilingual Plugin

WPML (WordPress Multilingual) is the leading and most comprehensive plugin on the market for building and managing multilingual WordPress websites. It is more than just a translation tool; it’s a complete multilingual content management system.

With WPML, you can translate everything on your website—from posts, pages, categories, and menus to text strings found within your theme and other plugins. This allows you to create a fully localized user experience for each language and reach global markets professionally.

Key features

• Comprehensive Translation: Translate every part of your website, including posts, pages, menus, themes, and plugins.
• Flexible Translation Management: Allows you to translate yourself, assign jobs to your team, or connect with professional translation services.
• Full WooCommerce Compatibility: Easily build a multilingual e-commerce store, from products to the entire checkout process.
• Multilingual SEO Optimization: Provides full control over URLs and meta tags, and automatically adds hreflang tags for correct Google ranking.
• High Compatibility: Works smoothly with most popular themes, plugins, and page builders (like Elementor, Divi, and Avada).
• Professional Support: Comes with fast and reliable customer support.

Price

Pricing starts at $39 per year for the lowest-tier plan.

Nextiva: Business Communication Software

Nextiva is one of the leading providers of business phone systems (VoIP) and unified communication solutions. The Nextiva plugin for WordPress is the official tool for integrating its powerful communication features directly into your website.

This plugin makes it easy for visitors to contact your business through call buttons, live chat, and contact forms, turning your website into an effective channel for interaction and lead generation. It seamlessly connects your WordPress site to the Nextiva platform, helping you manage all customer interactions from a single place.

Key features

• Click-to-Call Button: Easily add a call button anywhere on your site, allowing customers to call you directly from their desktop or mobile device.
• Live Chat Integration: Add a live chat widget to provide real-time support, answer questions, and capture leads.
• Smart Contact Forms: Create and customize contact forms that automatically send lead information directly to your Nextiva CRM.
• Call Tracking & Analytics: Understand which customers are calling from your website, helping you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
• Display Customer Information: When a call comes in, the system can display existing customer information (if saved in your CRM) on your agent’s screen.
• Easy Setup & Management: Seamlessly integrates with WordPress without requiring complex coding knowledge.

Price

The price varies depending on the number of users and the features included in your plan. Paid plans start from approximately $17.95 per user per month.

Smash Balloon: Social Media Feeds Plugin

Smash Balloon is the most popular and highest-rated suite of social media feed plugins for WordPress. It’s not a single plugin, but a powerful toolkit with individual plugins dedicated to different platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The primary goal of Smash Balloon is to help you easily display content from your social media channels directly on your website. Instead of default widgets, Smash Balloon creates beautiful, fully customizable, and reliable feeds. This keeps your website content fresh, increases social engagement, and builds social proof automatically.

Key features

• Supports Multiple Social Networks: Offers separate, optimized plugins for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, plus a Social Wall plugin to combine them all into one.
• Powerful Customization: Gives you complete control over your feed’s appearance—from layout, colors, and fonts to showing or hiding elements like likes, comments, and share buttons.
• Easy to Set Up and Use: Features an incredibly intuitive setup process with no coding required. Simply connect your account and embed the feed using a shortcode or block.
• Fully Responsive: Feeds automatically adapt to look perfect on any device, from desktops to mobile phones.
• Fast and Performance-Optimized: Uses a smart caching system to load feeds incredibly fast without slowing down your website.
• SEO-Friendly: The feed content is embedded directly on your page, making it crawlable by search engines, which can contribute to your SEO.
• Reliable and Always Updated: The plugins are continuously maintained to ensure they always work with the latest API changes from social networks.

Price

• Premium WordPress Plugin: Starts from $49 per year for individual plugins.
• Free WordPress Plugin: Smash Balloon offers various free versions for each of its plugins.

RafflePress: WordPress Giveaway Plugin

RafflePress is the best and most powerful giveaway and contest plugin for WordPress. It is designed to help you easily create successful giveaway campaigns to grow your website traffic, expand your email list, and skyrocket your social media following.

With its intuitive drag-and-drop builder and pre-made templates, RafflePress allows anyone, even non-tech-savvy users, to set up a professional contest in just minutes. It is the perfect marketing tool for creating viral buzz and capturing the attention of potential customers.

Key features

• Drag & Drop Giveaway Builder: Easily create beautiful and effective giveaway campaigns without writing a single line of code.
• Pre-Built Giveaway Templates: Get started quickly with goal-focused templates like “Grow Your Email List” or “Grow Your Facebook Page.”
• Viral ‘Refer-a-Friend’ Sharing: Encourage participants to share your contest for bonus entries, helping your campaign go viral organically.
• Social Media Integrations: Provide actions for users to follow you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more for a chance to win.
• Email Marketing Integrations: Seamlessly connect with popular email services like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and AWeber to automatically add new subscribers to your list.
• Dedicated Giveaway Landing Pages: Create a standalone, distraction-free giveaway page to maximize participation rates.
• Easy Winner Drawing: A simple one-click system randomly and fairly draws winners, saving you time and ensuring transparency.

Price

• Premium WordPress Plugin: Premium versions of RafflePress start from $39.50 per year.
• Free WordPress Plugin: There’s a free version of RafflePress with all the features you need to create a basic giveaway.

Constant Contact: Email Marketing Made Easy

Constant Contact is one of the world’s leading email marketing and automation services, trusted by millions of small businesses. Their official WordPress plugin is the tool that helps you easily connect your website to the Constant Contact platform.

The plugin’s primary goal is to help you capture emails from visitors and effectively grow your email list through custom signup forms. It simplifies the process of turning one-time visitors into loyal subscribers who are ready to receive your news and offers.

Key features

• Easy Form Creation: Quickly build beautiful forms to collect visitor emails and other information with no coding required.
• Flexible Form Customization: Easily change the colors, fields, and text of your forms to perfectly match your website’s design.
• Display Forms Anywhere: Place your signup forms in posts, pages, sidebars, or footers using a block, widget, or shortcode.
• Effective List Management: Automatically send new subscribers to different email lists in your Constant Contact account for easy segmentation and targeted emails.
• WooCommerce Integration: Automatically add a newsletter signup option to your checkout page, making it easy to capture emails from your customers.
• Simple Analytics & Reporting: Track form views and signups for each form directly within your WordPress dashboard to measure performance. 

Price

There’s a 14 or 30-day free trial available to give you a taste of how it can help you. Pricing starts from $9.99 per month.

Uncanny Automator: WordPress Automation Plugin

Uncanny Automator is often called the “Zapier for WordPress.” It is the leading automation plugin that allows you to connect your different WordPress plugins and third-party apps so they can “talk” to each other, all without writing a single line of code.

Its goal is to automate repetitive workflows, save you time, and create smart, seamless user experiences. For example, you can automatically enroll a user in a course when they buy a product, or send a Slack notification when someone fills out a form.

Key features

• No-Code Automation: Uses an intuitive “If this happens (Trigger), then do that (Action)” model to build complex automation “recipes.”
• Hundreds of Integrations: Connects with over 100 popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, LearnDash, MemberPress, The Events Calendar, Gravity Forms, and many more.
• Connect WordPress to External Apps: Integrates with over 4,000 web apps via Zapier and other platforms like Google Sheets, Slack, Zoom, and Mailchimp.
• Unlimited Recipes: Build as many automation workflows as you need to meet your business’s unique requirements.
• Works for Logged-in and Anonymous Users: Create automations not just for registered users, but also for anonymous visitors on your website.
• Intuitive Interface: Features a clean and easy-to-understand user interface that makes creating automations straightforward.

Price

• Premium WordPress Plugin: Pricing starts from $149 per year.
• Free WordPress Plugin: You can also get Uncanny Automator for free with limited features.

Pretty Links Pro: WordPress Affiliate Link Manager

Pretty Links is one of the most popular link management and shortening plugins for WordPress. It allows you to transform long, ugly, and untrustworthy links (especially affiliate links) into short, clean, and shareable links using your own domain name.

The Pro version elevates this plugin into a powerful marketing tool, helping you automate processes, track performance in detail, and professionally optimize your affiliate revenue.

Key features

• Branded & Short Links: Create and customize short links on your own domain to increase trust and click-through rates.
• Centralized Link Management: Manage all your links from a single dashboard. When you need to update a destination URL, you only change it once in Pretty Links instead of editing every post.
• Automatic Keyword Linking: Automatically convert specific keywords throughout your website’s content into the affiliate links you’ve created.
• Detailed Click Tracking: Provides detailed reports on clicks, unique clicks, visitor geolocation, and more, allowing you to measure performance effectively.
• Advanced Redirect Types: Supports multiple redirect types, including 301 (permanent), 302/307 (temporary), and Cloaked, helping you optimize for SEO and tracking.
• Shareable Reports: Easily create and export link performance reports to share with partners or clients.

Price

• Premium WordPress Plugin: To access redirection types that cloak and replace links on your site with pretty links, it’s worth getting the premium version starting from $99.50 per year
• Free WordPress Plugin: Pretty Links is available for free.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What do plugins do in WordPress?

Plugins in WordPress act as extensions that add new features and functionality to your website. From contact forms to e-commerce integration and beyond, they work much like apps on a smartphone, enhancing and customizing your site to better meet your needs.

2. Are WordPress plugins worth it?

Premium WordPress plugins offer a cost-effective way to enhance your website. They typically include expert support and regular updates, helping you keep your site secure and fully functional. Unlike SaaS solutions, most WordPress plugins are self-hosted, which means you retain full control over your data and how your site operates.

3. Do WordPress plugins affect site speed?

Well-coded plugins generally do not slow down your website, especially when caching and other performance best practices are applied. However, some plugins that load front-end assets like images, scripts, or additional files can affect site speed. The plugins included in this list are optimized for performance and are carefully selected to ensure they won’t negatively impact your website’s loading time.

4. How many plugins are too many for WordPress?

On average, a WordPress website may have around 20 to 30 plugins installed at any given time. For feature-rich sites, this number can easily exceed 50. However, it’s important not to install plugins blindly. Always do some research to ensure they are reliable, well-coded, and necessary for your site’s functionality.

Conclusion

Choosing the right WordPress plugins can make a big difference in your site’s performance, security, and user experience. The 10 plugins we’ve covered are widely trusted and provide essential functionality for websites of all types, from improving SEO and site speed to enhancing design and protecting your data.

At Arestós, we offer end-to-end WordPress services including custom theme development, plugin creation, performance optimization, secure platform migration, and ongoing maintenance. Whether you’re starting from scratch or improving an existing site, our team ensures your WordPress website is fast, scalable, and tailored to your business goals.

Ready to take your WordPress site to the next level?

Contact us today to unlock the full potential of WordPress plugins.