My List of the Most Useful WordPress Plugins

These are life-saving WordPress plugins that I use on many of my clients’ and my own sites.  OK, maybe “life-saving” is a slight exaggeration, but these can definitely cure some of your worst WordPress headaches. I have tested each of these (except where noted) and vouch for their quality. I hope you find them as useful as I have!

Best Accessibility Plugins

If you are using Divi, see the Divi Accessibility plugin in the Divi section below. For more information on web accessibility, see my accessibility checklist.

• Able Player
  If you need an accessible media player on your site, check out the Able Player plugin. It features accessible controls for audio or video playback on your site.
• One-Click Accessibility
  I do not recommend accessibility “overlay” services that claim to make your site instantly accessible by adding a few lines of code. However, if your client insists on using such a plugin, but isn’t willing to pay the fees of commercial solutions, this plugin might be good enough for them.
• WP Accessibility
  This plugin by respected web accessibility consultant Joe Dolson fixes some of the technical accessibility problems with WordPress sites. It is NOT a 100% drop-in solution to make your site compliant with accessibility guidelines! Be wary of any accessibility plugin that makes such claims. Read more about WP Accessibility.

Best Admin Plugins

• Admin Columns ★
  I hate it when plugins add columns to the “All Pages” and “All Posts” feeds in the admin, cluttering them up with useless info. Admin Columns lets you purge useless columns. You can instead display custom fields in the columns – really useful for customizing! I use this plugin on almost every site I make. The paid version is even more amazing, allowing you to do advanced filtering and even bulk custom field editing right from the list view!
• Login Page Customizer
  I haven’t tested this yet, but it’s got excellent reviews; saving for a client who wants to customize their login page.
• Plugin Notes
  This is something I could have used on many client sites where the client sometimes installed strange plugins. It allows you to add notes such as why a plugin was installed and who installed it.
• WP Help
  Create help notes in the admin area for your clients.  Document custom post types, custom fields, weird plugins, whatever you want.  I use this on almost every site now, both for my clients and for myself, when I’ve forgotten how the site works six months from now.
• WPS Hide Login
  I haven’t tested this yet, but could be useful for a client who wants to hide their wp-admin URL. Excellent reviews!

Best Ad Insertion Plugins

• AdRotate
  Allows you to place your own ads on a site using a shortcode. Ads can rotate through the same location on your site. Includes analytics capabilities. Great if you’re selling ad space on your website to clients.
• WP Simple Adsense Insertion
  Gives you a shortcode to easily insert Google Adsense ads anywhere you want in your content.  There are plugins that auto-insert ads in your content, but I believe that you should hand-insert them. For Gutenberg sites, I just use native Gutenberg Reusable Blocks for my ad inserts though.

Best Age Verification Plugin

• Age Gate ★
  If your site is in an age-restricted category such as alcohol, tobacco, or cannibis, then you’ll need to put up a popup to ask for the visitors age. The Age Gate plugin does this well and is very configurable! Unlike some home-grown age gates that I’ve seen, this gate does not hide content from crawlers so your site will still rank on Google even with the gate activated. Very important!

Best Animation Plugin

• Motion.page
  If you need gratuitous motion or scroll effects, check out motion.page. It’s not free but it might do what you need.
• Scrollsequence
  Another brand new plugin that animates pages on scroll. Haven’t tried but looks really cool.

Best Anti-Spam Plugins

I used to struggle with spam until I started using Fluent Forms for forms and WP Discuz for comments. Those have excellent anti-spam built in. No other plugins required!

• Akismet
  It comes pre-installed with most WordPress installations, and it is good if you don’t mind having to register it on WordPress.org. It is free for non-commercial applications and works well.
• Advanced noCaptcha & invisible Captcha
  Use this to add a Google Captcha various types of WordPress and WooCommerce forms.
• Antispam Bee
  Many say this is the best free (non-Akismet) antispam plugin for WordPress now. I installed it on one site that was getting a lot of spam, and this plugin didn’t stop it; but perhaps I was doing something wrong.
• CleanTalk
  I haven’t tried this yet, but it has rave reviews. It’s free for a year, but after that, it’s $8/year.

Best Audio Player Plugin

• WonderPlugin WordPress HTML5 Audio Player
  This is a responsive HTML5 audio player that does a good job of displaying both single songs as well as albums. There are a variety of good skins to choose from. The free version has plenty of functionality. I was skeptical about this plugin at first because it’s not in the WordPress repository, but it’s been working great for me so far. I haven’t found another player that is as good at displaying albums/playlists.

Best Automation Plugin

• Uncanny Automator
  Set up WordPress actions that can be triggered by another WordPress action. For example, when someone registers on your site, change their user role and send an email. Quite powerful!

Best Backup Plugins

• Duplicator ★
  This is my “go-to” plugin for manually backing up and moving WordPress sites. Highly recommended! The Pro version will migrate WordPress Multisite, do scheduled backups, and can save your backups offsite. The lifetime deal is worth every penny!

• All-In-One WP Migration
  This is another great backup and migration plugin. Very easy to use. Free version works with up to 300MB archives. The paid Multisite extension will let you migrate Multisite networks, or a single child site out of the network. This plugin often works where others fail.
• Migrate Guru
  I haven’t tried this yet, but it comes recommended by Gridpane and has tons of good reviews. It’s 100% free.
• WP Vivid
  I haven’t tried this yet but it looks great and has stellar reviews. Looks very easy to use for backups and migrations.

Disclosure: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. I test or research each service before endorsing it. I own this site and the opinions expressed here are mine.

Best Caching / Speed Optimization Plugins

• Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster
  If you’re not using a plugin like Siteground’s SG Optimizer, this could be a good speed optimization alternative. Someone on a forum reported good results speeding up Divi, but I haven’t tried this plugin myself.
• Autoptimize
  This plugin will do things to speed up your site like minification of your CSS and JS. Also helps increase your speed scores if your client is into that. Less extreme than PhastPress below. Note, I tested this plugin on the latest Divi theme with speed optimizations from V4.10, and it actually caused the site to get a slightly worse Googe Page Speed Mobile score by 5 points, probably because the new Divi theme is already doing these optimizations and this plugin is just adding processing overhead with no benefit in that case. I also tested on the Kadence theme and didn’t get any improvement either. But, may help on other themes.
• Flying Scripts by WP Speed Matters
  If you need to improve your Google Mobile PageSpeed Insights Lighthouse score then this plugin will work wonders. I improved my score by 10 points (from 78 to 88) by deferring gtag.js. However, I discovered one show-stopping side-effect: links don’t always trigger on iOS with this plugin enabled. It happens only once in a blue moon and only on very light taps, but I can get it to happen consistently after 5 or 6 taps with this plugin enabled, and has bee reported by others. It’s probably an iOS bug but unfortunately, it makes this plugin unusable for me.
• WP Fastest Cache
  WP Fastest Cache is a caching solution that is very simple to set up (unlike some other caching plugins). I now use server-side caching but before that I was using WP Fastest Cache.
• PhastPress
  If you have a client who is obsessed with improving their website’s speed score (regardless of how many times you tell them that the only thing that really matters is the actual load time), check out PhastPress. Simply installing and activating this plugin improved my site’s Pingdom score from 75 to 98. In my case, the actual perceived load time was the same or a bit slower though. But, like I said, if you have a client that is obsessed with these scores, PhastPress will do the trick! Note, I tried this plugin on a site with the latest version of Divi (with the new speed improvements), and it only improved the Google mobile page speed score by 1 point. Desktop was already at 99.
• WP Rocket
  WP Rocket gets rave reviews on the WordPress Facebook groups that I belong to. I haven’t tried it yet myself though.
• WP Rollback
  Switch any plugin or theme (from WordPress.org) to any other version with a few clicks!

Best Classified Ad Plugin

• Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin
  Great solution if you want to set up a classified ad section on your site. There is a paid version but the free version is totally usable.

Best Code Insertion Plugins

• Code Snippets ★
  Previously when I had to add a filter or action, or a shortcode, I would create a child theme and add the code to functions.php. This plugin gives you a place in the WP admin to add your code in an organized way so you can easily deactivate individual code snippets. WP developers I knew always raved about this plugin but I only recently checked it out myself. Now I’m a believer.
• Insert Headers and Footers
  There are a ton of these types of plugins that become abandoned over time. This one has a ton of installs and recent updates. It includes “code snippet” functionality but also has a section where you can simply add code to the head or footer.
• Include Me
  This is for adding content in the form of PHP files to your content.  I use it for adding content that is shared across of Multisite network.
• Reusable Text Blocks (don’t use on Gutenberg sites)
  After Global Content Blocks went away, I went into withdrawal until I found Reusable Content Blocks. This allows you to create chunks of content or code that you can put almost anywhere using a shortcode. Note, if you use the Gutenberg editor, I would recommend using the native Gutenberg Reusable Blocks instead.

Best Commenting Plugins

• WPDiscuz ★
  Cheezy name sounds like a Disqus ripoff, but this is actually a legit commenting plugin with a similar look to Discus, but with native WordPress commenting and none of the downsides of Disqus. Lots of adjustability (almost too much).
• Better Notifications for WP
  This is a great general-purpose plugin for setting up all kinds of email notifications in WordPress, but it is especially useful for setting up comment notifications. Let’s say you have multiple users generating posts, and you want them to be informed (not just the admin) when someone comments on their posts. This plugin can make that happen.
• DCO Comment Attachment
  If you use WordPress’ native commenting system, this plugin allows users to upload file types of your choosing, including images, videos, and PDFs, to their comments. File size limits are selectable. WPDiscuz has this capability built in.
• WP Open Comment Links in New Window
  I hate it when links in comments open in the current browser window. This plugin opens a new window for comment links, which is how WordPress comments should have worked in the first place.

Read my more detailed look at commenting systems here.

Best Cron Plugin

• WP Crontrol
  I use this to run scripts at recurring intervals. You set up a WordPress action hook, and this executes it at your specified times.  Works great!

Best Custom Post Type / Custom Field Plugins

• Advanced Custom Fields ★
  One of the most commonly-used plugins to customize WordPress sites.  Lets you add custom fields to pages and posts. Often used together with the next plugin, Custom Post Type UI. The free version is very usable but there’s a paid pro version that adds some cool features like repeater fields.
• Custom Post Type UI ★
  Great for creating custom post types and taxonomies to use in your own theme or plugins. In the latest version, they revamped the UI which made it more cumbersome to use, but it’s still worthwhile. It even generates code that you can paste into your theme or plugin, allowing you to delete this plugin afterward, which is awesome. Works great with Advanced Custom Fields.
• Pods – Custom Content Types and Fields
  This plugin combines the functionality of Advanced Custom Fields and Custom Post Type UI, allowing you to create custom post types and the fields that go with them (or with built-in post types). It can do some impressive stuff that Advanced Custom Fields can’t do.
• Remove CPT Base
  Removes the custom post type slug from the URL. Haven’t tried it myself, but it has good reviews.

Best Database Management Plugins

• Better Search Replace
  This is an easy-to-use database search-and-replace tool. I’ve used it to swap out shortcodes in the content, as well as to update URLs in the database before launching sites. There is a pro version that will show you a preview of the changes before executing, however, it doesn’t display the actual serialized string lengths properly (but they are properly written in the database). I also had one case where the pro version wouldn’t work but the free version would, ironically, perhaps due to the overhead of logging.
• Bulk Delete
  Use this if you need to delete all of your posts, pages, etc. Won’t work on images though.
• Edit Custom Fields
  This plugin allows you to delete unused custom fields in your database, simply for the purposes of reducing bloat. It’s up to you to know which fields are unused though. Make a backup before using.
• Remove Old Slugs
  After you change the slug of a page or post, the old one remains in the database, preventing you from using it on a different page or post. This plugin deletes old slugs from the database so you can use them on a new page or post.
• WP Optimize ★
  Remove old post revisions and spam comments to save space and speed up your site.  Run on an old side whose database has become bloated, then uninstall.

Best Debugging / Development Plugins / Monitoring

• Debug This
  See exactly what query WordPress is running. Great for debugging WordPress query problems in your code.
• Fatal Error Notify
  Most web monitoring services won’t inform you if your server is still working but your WordPress site has errors. This is a great plugin that sends you an email if it detects different types of WP errors and warnings that you can set. Note, however, that if you use an SMTP email plugin, and WordPress encounters a fatal error before that has time to load, you may not get informed if your server doesn’t send email. Shared hosting providers like Siteground usually have servers that send email. Other VPSs allow SMTP email setup at the server level which would also solve that problem.
• Theme Check
  Checks your theme for anomalies.
• P3 Plugin Profiler
  Is your site loading too slowly?  Wondering how much each plugin contributes to the load time?  This plugin will give you a nice pie chart of exactly how much time each plugin adds. You can uninstall it when you’re done.
• Query Monitor
  Similar to Debug This, but this has more emphasis on the WP queries on your site. Very useful.
• Server IP & Memory Usage Display
  Displays how much RAM  your site is using, along with PHP and WP limits. Very useful!
• Temporary Login Without Password
  This plugin is a great way to give someone, like a plugin developer, temporary access to your site admin. You can even create a single URL that logs them in.
• What the File ★
  Besides having the best name for a plugin ever, it’s a great diagnostic tool.  Tells you which theme files are being used by any WordPress page so you can figure out which you want to tweak.  Invaluable if you are doing template development or debugging! I install this on almost every site where I’m working on a custom theme or child theme.
• WP phpMyAdmin
  A lifesaver if you don’t have database access for some reason. I don’t know how it works, but it brings up a real phpMyAdmin instance in a separate browser window. I used the first method, “Enter local phpMyAdmin” and that worked great!

Best Divi Plugins

These plugins work great with the Divi Theme or Divi Builder Plugin.

• Divi Accessibility ★ (GitHub) – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR ALL DIVI SITES
  This plugin fixes many of the accessibility problems with Divi, and lets you see where your site is in violation so you can fix others. For example, it has a tool that flags text that does not meet the minimum contrast requirement for readability. However, just installing this plugin won’t make your site 100% accessible! (For example, there’s a problem with keyboard accessibility of Divi Tabs). Note, due to a complaint from Elegant Themes about “Divi” in the name, this plugin has moved to GitHub. But don’t let that deter you. This is a great tool to help your site become more accessible.
• Divi Extended
  This paid plugin has some useful modules such as timeline, logo slider, gallery, content toggle, and testimonial slider.
• Divi Bars ★ (part of Divi Life)
  This is not a free plugin, but it’s useful for adding a thin slide-in bar along the top or bottom of your site for announcements, etc. That is requested so often by clients that I bought a lifetime license for the whole Divi Life suite which includes Divi Overlays (popups) below, Mega Menu, Logo Swap, and Coming Soon modules.
• Divi Overlays (part of Divi Life)
  Wow, really good-looking, flexible, and easy-to-use popup maker for Divi. These have really nice background and animation options, much more so than typical popup plugins. Not free, but super useful. I did find a bug where a CSS class would not trigger an overlay; I created a ticket and they had a new build back to me in fewer than 24 hours (turned out it was related to Divi’s big performance theme update). Another time I found a bug where the second popup on a page wouldn’t trigger and they gave me a fix in less than 12 hours!
• Divi Blog (from Divi Gear)
  Solves the problem of customizing blog feeds. The two default Divi blog feed layouts just don’t cut it most of the time. This lets you create some really awesome customized blog feed layouts!
• Divi Carousel (from Divi Gear)
  Create different types of carousels for images, logos, etc. with tons of customization. Cost is very reasonable at $29 for a lifetime license for unlimited sites – a no-brainer. They also make a Divi Blog Carousel plugin.
• Divi Machine ★ (from Divi Engine)
  This paid plugin is the de-facto standard solution for displaying custom posts with custom fields with filtering on a Divi site. A “must have” if you want to do custom repeaters and/or custom fields. Create your feed element in the Divi library, then use it in a feed. There is an unlimited LTD for 260 UK pounds. Here’s an interview with the developer.
• Simple Divi Shortcode
  This plugin allows you to instantiate any item from your Divi library using a shortcode. I use it to place Divi elements inside of other Divi elements such as accordions or tabs. Note, there is a way to instantiate Divi sections without a plugin but it doesn’t work as reliably when embedded inside of other Divi elements; use the plugin instead.
• Divi Toolbox
  Paid plugin with some useful tweaks to Divi including new header, sidebar, mobile menu, blog feed, and footer settings as well as page transition pre-loaders, popups, particle backgrounds, and cool hover effects.
• Divi Torque ★
  Really amazing FREE plugin with lots of useful Divi modules. One that I use the most is their Logo Carousel. It’s just amazing that this plugin is free!

Best Domain Mapping Plugin

• Domain Mapping System
  Let’s say you have a site, but you want different domains mapped to some of the pages. Not redirected, mind you, the pages will appear to be on the mapped domains. This is the plugin to do it! The paid version will map subdirectories and supports Multisite and different favicons per domain, a highly requested feature. I’ve used this and it works (check out about.build for an example).
• Multiple Domain Mapping on Single Site
  This plugin does domain mapping as well, but it won’t map a domain with subdirectory; it just maps the main domain.

Best Donation Plugin

• Give WP ★
  Give WP is the most popular WordPress online donation plugin and has stellar reviews. I’ve never used it on a live project, but when I need a donation plugin, I’m checking this out first.

Best Download Manager / File Browser Plugin

• Download Manager
  I believe this is the de-facto standard download manager plugin for WordPress. You can password protect downloads, obscure the URL, add a “terms of service” checkbox, and/or a CAPTCHA. There is a paid version but the free version is quite usable. The paid version adds template support, multi-file packages, and more. Unfortunately, there’s no LTD.
• WP Display Files Pro
  This is the perfect plugin if you want to display a directory tree from Dropbox (or another supported service) on a WordPress page. Click on any file to download. $29.

Best Editor Plugins

• Disable Visual Editor WYSIWYG
  The WordPress Visual Editor has a way of screwing up JavaScript and even some HTML (especially blank space). Use this to disable the Visual Editor tab on any pages or posts that you specify, so that they can only be edited in the more benign Text mode.  Easy to undo per page if you need to.
• Re-Add Text Underline and Justify
  The folks at WordPress inexplicably removed the underline and text-justify buttons from the editor in version 4.7. This plugin simply gets it back. It has no parameters and no fuss.

Best E-Commerce Plugins

Note, I now recommend Shopify for all of my clients who want to get into e-commerce. But, if you really want to use WordPress…

• Easy Digital Downloads
  If you want a simpler solution for selling digital content from your website, this is a good solution that is more lightweight than WooCommerce. Use their Dropbox extension ($49 annual fee) to host your files on Dropbox. Works with Paypal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, and other payment gateways.
• WooCommerce
  The de-facto standard WordPress e-commerce plugin. Tons of features and options through plugins. Very configurable through the use of actions and filters.  Kind of a steep learning curve though, and takes a web developer to do updates. Not recommended for beginners (I recommend Shopify instead). If you do want to use Woo, I recommend the Storefront WP theme.
• Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce
  Add new tabs to your WooCommerce product pages! This is cool because you can create “global” tabs that you re-use on multiple products or tabs for specific products.
• WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips
  Does just what the title says. Has just the right number of customization options.
• WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart
  If you don’t want to deal with the complexity of WooCommerce, and only have a few things to sell, this is a good choice. You can set up a store in minutes. It can handle physical or digital products.

Best Email Encoder Plugin

• Email Encoder
  If you’re afraid of getting a ton of spam because you’ve listed your email address on your site, use this plugin to obfuscate your address to bots. Just activate it and it works!

Best SMTP Email Plugins

Web server email is usually not reliable. So, you should use an SMTP email service to send email from your website. These are my recommended plugins to do that.

• FluentSMTP ★
  This is my new default SMTP email plugin. It features FREE logging and email failover, that is, if your primary emailer fails, it can use a backup. Wow! Other plugins charge extra for these. This is simply an amazing plugin!
• Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log
  This is a great SMTP email plugin, and it includes logging for free.

Best Events Management / Calendar Plugins

• Events Made Easy ★
  A very powerful events management plugin with lots of customization possibilities. Takes some time to learn, but it’s worth it if you do events sites.  Does not require user login for people to sign up for events – just name and email address. This is my favorite events management plugin. I’ve never had to use a different one.

Best Favicon Plugin

• Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator
  WordPress does let you natively set your Favicon. However, it uses the same image for other things, such as the iOS home screen icon. Sometimes that’s fine. But often, you’ll want a logo with a transparent background for your Favicon, but not for your iOS home screen icon, because it appears black for that. This plugin comes to the rescue. You upload one image and it creates different versions for different uses. It does use a website for online image processing (i.e., it is not done by the plugin directly).

Best Footnote Plugin

• Modern Footnotes
  This plugin is great for adding clickable footnote numbers to your text. When clicked, a popup appears with the footnote content. On mobile, the footnote content appears starting from the line below the footnote number, rather than in a popup. Footnote popups can be triggered by the tab key, so this is accessible. Really well-done!

Best Form Plugin

• Mailchimp for WordPress
  Create an API key in Mailchimp, enter it into this program, then start creating very usable Mailchimp signup forms in your WordPress admin. After form submission, site will redirect to a page of your choice.
• WP Fluent Forms ★
  I used to use Contact Form 7 but have transitioned to Fluent Forms now. If you don’t want to take my word on how great it is, it has amazing reviews on its WordPress page as well as on various Facebook Groups. Full-featured drag-and-drop form creation with tons of third-party integration (in the paid version). Supports multi-page forms and user-submitted posts. Has full analytics and storing of submissions. I own the paid version lifetime deal.
• WS Form / Pro
  I haven’t tried this yet, but it gets rave reviews as one of the most comprehensive and feature-filled form builders (along with veteran Gravity Forms), surpassing Fluent Forms in features. The pro version requires an annual fee, but there is a free lite version. If there’s something Fluent Forms can’t do, I’ll turn to this.

Best Forum / Question-and-Answer Plugins

• CM Answers
  This Q/A plugin has good features but requires a good deal of setup and CSS to make it look good.  There is a pro version which you might need to buy to get the features you need.
• WP Discourse
  I discovered this while using the Gridpane forum and liked it. Five-star review except for one disgruntled user not even complaining about the plugin itself. Need to try this! See their working forum here.

Best Google Analytics Plugins

• GA Google Analytics
  I’m always looking for a simple lightweight plugin that adds Google Analytics code (and is compatible with the latest GA4). This one has high ratings and lots of installs.

Best Gutenberg Block Plugins

• Accordion Blocks
  Adds the much-needed accordion block to Gutenberg. You need to style it yourself using your own style sheet, but it’s lightweight and just works.
• Block Visibility
  Schedule when any Gutenberg block is displayed and to whom, or hide it altogether. Haven’t tried this myself but it has stellar reviews and looks great.
• Conditional Blocks
  Great for hiding blocks based on device, login status, or for everyone. Pro version has a lot more options for showing and hiding blocks.
• Counter Block
  Create a counter that counts up rapidly to showcase stats. Great plugin that does one thing only rather than having to load a whole library to get a counter.
• Gutenslider
  Really powerful but easy-to-use Gutenberg slider block! Put any Gutenberg block you want into each slider pane.
• Lazy Blocks ★
  This plugin allows you to easily create Gutenberg blocks with just a little bit of template coding to render the output. It even supports repeaters and WYSIWYG editors! Fantastic!
• Reusable Blocks Admin Menu Option ★
  This is another admin feature that really should be an option in WP core. This plugin adds a “Reusable Blocks” admin menu item that shows all of your Gutenberg reusable blocks.
• Stackable
  This plugin adds a whole bunch of useful blocks. The premium version includes dynamic content, query loops, and ACF integration. Unlimted LTD is $499.
• Ultimate Blocks
  Gives you an array of various Gutenberg blocks. I use it for the Expand box, which gives you a “read more” functionality right on your page.

Best Image Plugins

• Imsanity
  I needed a simple plugin that would prevent clients from uploading huge images. Imsanity does the job. It also can re-size large images already uploaded.  This just works! It has a five star rating. Zip file size is 151kb compared to 7.64mb for EWWW, another popular image optimization plugin.
• EWWW Image Optimizer
  While EWWW is overkill for just limiting image upload sizes, it’s great for converting new images that you upload to the more efficient webp format. It handles compatibility issues with Safari and IE, serving them regular jpegs and pngs when necessary. Since that is the way of the future, I’ll probably be switching to this for all of my blogs.
• Regenerate Thumbnails ★
  Regenerates your image thumbnails according to the latest settings. You should do this every time you switch WP themes. In my case, I had a site that I switched to Divi. Divi couldn’t find its image sizes, so the full-sized images were served up. Regenerating thumbnails shaved off 2.7MB from the page size!

Best Job Board Plugin

• WP Job Manager
  I haven’t tried this myself, but I saw a recommendation on Facebook. It’s highly rated and from Automattic.

Best Migration Plugins

• All In One WP Migration
  Install this plugin at your source, download an archive file, then import that file into your destination WordPress site with the plugin installed and it will copy everything over. A painless way to migrate WordPress sites, especially when other plugins fail due to hosting limitations! Free version works for up to 512MB sites. There’s a paid extension for Multisite, but it’s worth every penny if you need to migrate Multisite.
• Auto Upload Images
  Let’s say you’ve used the WordPress Importer to move some posts to a new site. The posts are migrated, but the image URLs are still pointing to the old site, and none of the images are actually migrated. The solution is the Auto Upload Images plugin! Just install it and re-save the post. All images will be migrated and URLs adjusted in that post like magic! Just be sure to deactivate it when done!
• Blogger Importer Extended
  If you need to import a Blogger blog to WordPress, look no further than Blogger Importer Extended. The “recommended” importer didn’t work for me. This one imports not only the blog text, but also images (into the Media Library), comments, and tags! Wow!
• Cart2Cart
  If you need to migrate data from almost any e-commerce platform to another, check out Cart2Cart. It’s more of a service than a plugin, but it’s fully automated. I used it for a tricky migration of customers and orders from an extremely old WooCommerce site to Shopify, but it supports a lot of other platforms. Other apps failed while this one worked after a fix from their customer support folks. I know the site looks a bit sketchy (i.e., not perfect English grammar), but this company is legit and their customer service via chat was great. They have really useful test migrations so you can try before you buy. Highly recommended for e-commerce migrations!
• Export All URLs
  Exports all of your site’s URLs. Can limit to just Pages, Post, Products, or other types of posts. Useful when migrating a site and setting up redirects to the new site’s URLs.
• Export Users for WordPress
  Really solid plugin for exporting users along with metadata (even custom fields) by the makers of Oxygen and Breakdance. Includes the ability to filter and even combine fields. You can even make changes to the file and import it back into WordPress. Works with individual child sites of a Multisite network, but not on the entire user database at once.
• Import Export WordPress Users & WooCommerce Customers
  This is another really great plugin for importing or exporting users. Output CSV columns can be configured to whatever your target platform requires. Works with individual child sites of a Multisite network, but not on the entire user database at once.
• WP Migrate DB Pro
  This is an invaluable tool for keeping staging, dev, and production sites in sync. It just handles the database and media files.  It will automatically do a search-and-replace in the database if you need to migrate from dev to production or move to a new URL.

Best Map, Store Locator, Floorplan Plugins

• Draw Attention
  This is an awesome plugin ideal for creating floorplans and photos with interactive hover effects. You literally draw the hover areas which can trigger content in a sidebar. Think shopping mall floor plan.
• Google Map Widget (with filterable locations)
  This is not a WordPress plugin, but it is code that you can use in WordPress to generate an interactive Google map with multiple place markers and filtering features. Has a monthly fee, but could be very useful. See example here.
• HTML5 Maps – great for showing maps with clickable states or countries
  If you need a simple clickable map of the United States or other countries without showing roads, this plugin is awesome. There are a variety of countries to choose from, or even individual states. If you pick the U.S. map, each state is clickable. You can define what happens on hover and click, and you can have tooltips, popups (with a free third-party plugin), link, or information appearing below or to the side of the map.  You can also define clickable points. If you need to define groups of states, get the premium version.
• Interactive Geo Maps
  This is a fantastic map plugin with excellent reviews. Does not use Google Maps, more for stylized high-level maps with pins or regions. Easy to use with lots of options. For even more options, there is the paid version, which is worth every penny.
• Leaflet Map – a nice non-Google map with pins
  If you need an alternative to Google maps showing pins, popups, roads, etc., look no further than Leaflet Map, which uses an open-source map service. Maps and pins are really easy to create using shortcodes. Use this whenever you don’t want to mess with registering with Google.
• WP Google Maps
  WP Google Maps is great when you want to include a Google Map on your site showing pins or regions. The pro version allows users to get directions and has other features. This is probably the most popular Google Maps plugin, with over 400,000 downloads. Note, there’s an option to use an open-source map, so you’re not necessarily tied to Google when you use this plugin!
• WP Maps Pro
  This is a paid plugin for displaying interactive maps with filterable locations. I have not tried it yet but it looks good.
• WP Multi Store Locator
  This plugin adds filtering to the map, like what you’d use for a store locator. You can filter by distance or category from a given starting point. It’s somewhat buggy; search by tags didn’t work for me, but I got everything else to work. Note that any search you do will include the “home” location on the map, which is a preset point. The pro version shows search results sorted by distance and adds geolocation so that the map’s home location starts out at the user’s current location (if the user allows the browser access to location). Not a perfect plugin, but might get the job done for you.

Best Media Library Management Plugins

• Happy Files
  This is the de-facto standard WordPress Media Library management plugin that lets you assign your media to category folders. No actual folders are created on your server; it’s just metadata. As a bonus, it includes a gallery shortcode and Gutenberg block to display images from any categories you choose. If you update a category, it gets updated on the front end automatically. Free version is limited to ten categories, but there is an LTD for $59.
• Media Library Enable Infinite Scrolling ★
  I had a rude awakening when infinite scrolling was removed from the media library in WordPress version 5.8, replaced with a “load more” button. It was done for accessibility reasons, but handicapping everyone is not the answer. This invaluable plugin restores infinite scroll to the WP media library. I install this on pretty much every site I have to deal with.

Membership / Directory Plugins

• Business Directory Plugin
  Great for setting up a user-managed business directory or even a Yelp! clone!
• Paid Memberships Pro
  Great for setting up a membership site where you sell restricted content. Allows “child” accounts that are linked to the parent account.
• Ultimate Member
  This is a very popular membership plugin that has tons of features. Pretty flexible with some learning curve.

Best Menu Plugins

• Category Posts in Custom Menus ★
  In your category menu items, this allows you to have a dropdown menu with a preset number of posts from that category, automatically populated when you add more posts! This is one of those features that I think should have been built into WordPress core. Happily, the developer is actively supporting this plugin again after a break. I’m using it on this site! Sadly, it doesn’t work with the Divi theme for some reason.
• Max Mega Menu
  Look no farther than this plugin if you need a mega menu on your site! It does what you need with accessibility support (unlike the native Oxygen Builder menus). Easy to install with lots of configuration options. It can insert itself wherever you have an existing menu, or you can instantiate it with a shortcode or PHP. Really great!

Best Mobile Detect Plugin

• WP Mobile Detect
  I use responsive design, but there are cases where you can’t avoid having to detect whether your site is being displayed on a mobile device or not.  Unfortunately, this seems to be an abandoned plugin, so caution is advised.

Best Multilingual Plugin

• Polylang
  I read a lot of reviews recommending Polylang, so I tried it out and I like its simplicity. Basically, you create copies of your existing pages and menus which you then translate. Everything just works after that. There is a free version but most folks will need at least the Pro version. It doesn’t copy your pages so use a plugin like Yoast Duplicate Post to do that. Works with Divi.
• WPML
  This is one of the few plugins on this page that I have not tested myself, but I have it here because so many folks on the forums have endorsed it. It’s also not free, but it’s affordable for what it does.
• MultilingualPress
  Another translation plugin that I see recommended online is MultilingualPress. Haven’t tried it myself though.

Best Multisite Plugins

Note, I no longer recommend WordPress Multisite except for some very specific use-cases. Read why here.

• Duplicator Pro ★
  Only the paid version works on Multisite, but it’s amazing. Great for backing up or migrating Multisite installs. Worth every penny! For a free solution, check out BackWPUp.
• Multisite Plugin Manager:
  If you go to your Network Admin -> Settings -> Network Settings and scroll to the bottom, you can turn on or off visibility of plugins to the child sites. But what if you want some plugins visible to local admins and others not? Use Multisite Plugin Manager to do this.
• NS Cloner:
  This is a wonderful tool to copy a Multisite network sub-site.  Great for replicating sites on your Multisite network.
• Unfiltered MU:
  I discovered that WordPress filters out HTML tags for Multisite regular Admins (but not Super Admins). This is annoying and prevents regular admins from adding Google Analytics code, for example, to a theme’s admin field. This plugin undoes that “feature”. This is pretty much needed on every Multisite install.

Best Pagination Plugins

Most WordPress themes do not have page numbering on your archive pages by default (they usually just have “previous” and “next” links). These plugins add more fancy page numbering and navigation. But they do require template modification!

• WP-PageNavi
  Adds pagination navigation controls to your post archive pages. Very customizable and easy to use as long as you know how to modify your template files.
• WP-Paginate
  Also adds page navigation. Also requires template modification. A bit simpler appearance out of the box. (Note, for custom queries, your query variable must be named $wp_query).

Best PDF Viewer

Note that Gutenberg can display PDFs natively, so you only need the plugins below if you’re not using Gutenberg.

• PDF Embedder
  Display a PDF right in your page or post. Works great and has great ratings. Note, Gutenberg can do this natively; no need for a plugin if you’re using Gutenberg. I use it with Divi though. There is a paid version that includes a download link and better display on mobile.
• Real3D Flipbook
  This paid plugin lets you view PDFs using lightbox with realistic page-turning effects. You can view one page at a time or two, like an open book. Great way to view brochures online. And, you can do deep links into pages. $49 includes six months of upgrades.

Best Poll / Questionaire Plugins

• WP Polls
  This is a good free plugin for generating a single poll question at a time. It’s not so great if you need lots of questions though.

Best Popup Plugin

If you are using the Divi Builder, see Divi Overlays above.

• Popup Maker
  Whether you need a popup that happens automatically after page load, or upon button press, this is the best modal popup plugin that I’ve found. You can create popup themes to customize padding, shadow, background opacity, and many other parameters. You can put any content in the popup that would normally go in a WordPress page or post. Note, I did find a conflict when triggering a popup during Divi Slider animation from one slide to another, but there is an easy CSS fix from the developer.

Best Post Plugins

• Add Widget After Content
  Does just what it says. Great for adding email subscription forms right after your article content.
• Advanced Excerpt
  Use if you want more control over your post excerpts, like adding HTML.
• Page Links To ★
  Oh man, I wish I had known about this plugin before. Basically, in any listing (archive) view, it replaces a link to the Post or Page (or custom post type) with an alternate link that you can specify. This is great for portfolio pages where you want the project images to link to an external URL, not a page on your own site! (Note that Yoast SEO has this functionality built-in).
• Post Types Order ★
  This plugin adds a cool drag-and-drop interface to the admin to order your Posts any way you want. It also works with custom post types. This is a “must-have” on most of my sites.
• Post Type Switcher ★
  This is a handy little plugin that switches post types, whether it is a custom post type, post, or page to anything else. One cool feature is the bulk switcher that lets you switch a whole page of posts.
• Secondary Title
  It’s good practice to have a subtitle for your posts and pages. This plugin adds a new subtitle field for just that purpose.
• WP Sticky Sidebar
  Works great to make your sidebar “sticky” as the user scrolls down!
• Yoast Duplicate Post
  Great if you need to make copies of pages, posts, or even custom post types (when set up to allow that). Will even copy custom fields! Another plugin that does this well is Post Duplicator. Jetpack also has this functionality built in now.

Best Privacy (GDPR) Plugin

• CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice (CCPA Ready) ★
  My new “go-to” privacy banner plugin. This compliance plugin is very comprehensive, yet easy to use once you get the hang of it. Note, you need to put your Google Analytics code in the “Analytics” cookie category in this plugin’s settings to allow this plugin to toggle it based on user settings.
• Complianz – GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent
  The plugin creates a cookie popup with an “Accept” button in the lower right corner of the page. Highly rated and easily configurable once you “get it”.
• Cookie Notice for GDPR & CCPA (no longer recommended)
  This used to be my go-to cookie compliance plugin. But, as the privacy laws got more complex this plugin got WAY more complex to the point of being super difficult to use.
• Ultimate GDPR Compliance Toolkit for WordPress
  This is a paid plugin, but for only $19, it’s a really comprehensive GDPR solution, especially when it comes to managing cookies. Might be good if you need “industrial strength” GDPR compliance, but I haven’t tested it myself because it looked too complicated.
• Privacy Policy Generator, Terms & Conditions Generator WordPress Plugin : WPLegalPages
  This is not a privacy plugin, but a plugin that generates your privacy policy. I haven’t tried it yet but it’s highly rated.

Best Redirection Plugin

• Redirection
  A better way to redirect URLs is to do it in your .htaccess file (even better is to do it in your hosts file, but you might not have access to that).  I like Redirection because it allows me to set up my redirects, then export code which I put into my .htaccess file.  I then deactivate Redirection because doing redirects in a plugin can slow down your site, and if you’re not careful the logs can bloat your database.

Best RSS Feed Plugins

• Featured Image in RSS Feed
  Adds the featured image to your RSS feed. Or, if you’re comfortable adding a bit of code to your theme, use this solution.
• FEEDZY RSS Feeds Lite
  This is the best way I’ve found to add a blog feed from another site to your site. Supports caching. Free version supports images too!

Best Search Plugins

• Better Search ★
  One reviewer said this plugin should be standard for all WordPress installs. It’s a lightweight plugin that just gives better search results and control. Plus, it logs searches so you know what your users are looking for. If you think people will be doing searches on your site, you need this plugin’s functionality at a minimum.
• Relevanssi
  This enhances the WP search in many ways including fuzzy matching, weighting, boolean logic, searching custom fields, and others. Many say this is the best search plugin. One nice thing is that it shows the search term highlighted in the search result excerpt. However, this is a heavy-duty plugin and there is some setup and pre-caching required.
• ACF: Better Search
  I used to use Search Everything to make sure searched looked in Advanced Custom Fields, but that is no longer supported.  ACF: Better Search works just as well and is supported!

Best Security Plugins

• Disable REST API ★
  Did you know that your WordPress site’s REST API is enabled for anyone to use? That means someone can easily download all of your posts with a simple script (I know: I wrote one). I use this on all of my blogs
• Disable XML-RPC ★
  XML-RPC is a fairly useless feature for WordPress (remote publishing anyone?) The one thing it is good at is attracting DDoS attacks on your site. This plugin disables xmlrpc.php by adding code to your .htaccess file.  One of my clients has a high-traffic site that was attacked about once a month.  This stopped it. Note that disabling this will prevent the Jetpack Publicize module and probably other modules from working. Note that WordFence now has this functionality built-in (but it must be turned on)
• Force Login
  Force Login can be a great way to hide a site before it’s ready. Unlike other “coming soon” plugins, it doesn’t give you a landing page. It just presents the WordPress login form. This can be useful. I’ve used other “coming soon” plugins only to have the client have to ask me how to log in.
• Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode ★
  Puts put an “under construction”, “coming soon” or any message you want as your front page while you’re working on your site. Log in to bypass it. To reduce toolbar clutter, go to the Advanced settings page and check “Disable Maintenance Mode Toolbar Menu”. Requires the paid pro version to change to custom background image.
• Password Protected
  If you prefer hiding the site behind a simple password (rather than requiring WP login), check out Password Protected. Note, this doesn’t seem to work on sites with caching (tried on Cloudways with Breeze) due to cookie caching. Instead, I had to use the server’s Basic Authentication.
• Rename wp-login.php
  Doesn’t literally rename the file, but does some tricks to redirect. Great for preventing brute-force attacks trying to log into your site. Also lets you rename /wp-admin.
• Sucuri Security
  The free version of this plugin provides scanning of your WP install for hacks. Good if you don’t want to install WordFence.
• WordFence ★
  I use this on ALL of my sites to protect against hackers. Does regular scans for malware and blocks known evil IP addresses. Note, this plugin is disallowed on WP Engine hosting though, as they provide their own security.
• WordFence Login Security
  This is a lighter-weight security plugin with a subset of features of WordFence: two-factor authentication (for admins only), XML-RPC protection, and login page CAPTCHA. Great if you don’t want or need all of the features of regular WordFence.
• WP 2FA
  If you just want two-factor and no other security features in a plugin, check out WP 2FA.

Best SEO Plugin

• Rank Math
  This is a newer SEO plugin but has rabid followers online and a solid five-star rating on the repo. It offers a lot of cool features, especially if you create a Rank Math account and connect your site. On the other hand, some people, including me, find it has too many features and prefer a more lightweight solution.
• The SEO Framework
  Although Yoast reigns king, it has a huge codebase, gets updated too frequently, and has been documented to slow down sites. I’m experimenting with The SEO Framework because it claims to be lighter weight. The SEO Framework zip file is 350KB while Yoast’s is over ten times larger at 3.91MB. I like the UI better, and it’s overall less intrusive than Yoast. It’s got a five-star rating in the WordPress repo. One thing, though, is that if you want to eliminate the category base in your URLs, you’ll have to install a separate plugin to do that.  I like Remove Category URL.
• Yoast SEO ★
  This is the most popular SEO plugin and works well. Some have complained that Yoast SEO gets updated too often and is getting bloated with too many features that no one wants, however. Still, it’s the industry standard.

Best Session Management Plugin

One use of sessions in WordPress would be to authenticate users with a third-party service or API. Here are a couple of plugins that will help by storing the session in the database instead of a file.

• WordPress Native PHP Sessions
  Implements PHP’s native session handlers and stores sessions in the database. Note that I have not yet tried this plugin, but it has good reviews.
• WP Session Manager (Github)
  This WordPress session management plugin is not in the WP repo, but in GitHub. It was used on a project that I worked on though.

Best Social Media Plugins

• Monarch (Elegant Themes paid plugin)
  This is one of my “go-to” social media plugins which comes with Divi. Displays click counts. You can place the sharing buttons on a variety of locations, including floating on the sides.
• Scriptless Social Sharing
  This is a super lightweight and simple plugin for displaying the major social network sharing buttons. It just works with no hassles! However, note that it won’t show sharing buttons on archive pages, and it doesn’t show share counts.
• Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed
  Wow, this is a great Instagram plugin that works really well. There are paid features but the free version is very usable. Very easy to connect to your Instagram account too.

Best SSL Plugin

• Really Simple SSL
  Check with your web host to see if they handle SSL redirecting. If not, use this plugin.

Best Table Plugins

• Ninja Tables
  I have been looking for a table plugin that generates mobile-friendly tables, and this might be it. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks promising.
• TablePress
  This has been my go-to table plugin, but I might switch to Ninja Tables for mobile responsiveness.

Best Tab Plugin

• Tabby Responsive Tabs
  If you need a really simple tab shortcode plugin, this one does the trick. It’s easy to use and lightweight. Plus, there are cats on the info page! Great unless you need to use the same tabs in multiple places on your site, in which case you should use a tab plugin that utilizes a custom post type for the tabs.

Best Taxonomy Plugins

• Bulk Move
  Moves posts from one taxonomy to another.
• Radio Buttons for Taxonomies
  If you would like to limit Categories or custom taxonomies to one per post, this plugin does it by changing the checkboxes to radio buttons. Simple and just works!
• Taxonomy Switcher
  Kind of a narrow use case, but came in really handy for me on a project. Allows you to switch a bunch of taxonomy terms from one taxonomy to another.

Best Text-to-Speech Reader

• Free TTS
  If you just need some text converted to speech in mp3 form (i.e., not a WordPress plugin) check out this free service.
• Play.ht ★
  If you want a WordPress plugin that allows a voice to read your page content, check out the Play.ht service. The voice quality is simply amazing; at first, it’s hard to tell that it’s a robot reading your text. There are lots of voices to choose from, both male and female. The catch is that this isn’t really a free plugin. You get a dismal 100 words for free. You get to convert 20,000 words per month for $19/month and you need to keep paying as long as you want the audio to work on your site because the files are on their servers, but there’s a discount if you pay for the full year in advance. But, as I said, the quality will blow you away.

Best User Access Plugins

• Members
  Creates a new “Roles” admin menu item under “Users” that allows you to edit the capabilities of all WordPress roles, and to create new ones with custom capabilities.
• PublishPress Permissions
  Allows you to enable or deny viewing or editing access to post, pages, etc. by any user or group of users.
• Unconfirmed
  Oh man, this plugin is a lifesaver if you’ve ever been in this situation: You’ve created a new user and had the site email them their password.  The problem is, they didn’t receive the email. Now you’re stuck. Their account isn’t activated so you can’t reset their password.  You can’t even delete their account.  You have to wait a few DAYS to try again.  This plugin lets you see all unconfirmed users and manually confirm them, so you can re-send the email or create a new password for them. Invaluable!
• User Access Manager
  This is a more advanced user access plugin for when you need the big guns.  This allows you to put users and any post type or page in groups. Then, only people in those groups can edit that content. Can also limit visibility on the front-end as well. It’s kind of tricky to set up due to minimal documentation, but if you fiddle with the settings (a lot) it will do what it claims. I haven’t found a comparable free plugin that does this.
• User Role Editor
  Pretty much required if you use Ultimate Member on Multisite and want local admins to be able to approve or edit users. Also great for creating new user roles with specific limited capabilities.

Best User Plugins

• Custom User Profile Photo
  Your user photo comes from your Gravatar profile, which you may not want for all of your sites. This plugin lets you customize your user photo.
• Export Users to CSV
  Exports your users to a CSV file. Note, you may have to adjust your php.ini settings to allow greater export file size.
• Import Users from CSV
  This plugin works great for importing members in a CSV file. Works great with Ultimate Member.

Best Weather Widget

• wp-forecast
  This is the best weather widget I’ve found. Unlike a lot of the others, it doesn’t require obtaining an API key to use. It is super configurable with lots of options. And it’s accurate (one other I tried wasn’t). The only slight downside is that it requires CSS styling, but that is kind of an advantage if you’re a developer (not so good if you’re not).

Well, I hope this list was useful to you.  For more lists of great plugins, check out WP Site Care’s list of best plugins and WP Review’s Top 30 Best Plugins. What are your favorite WordPress plugins?  Please leave a comment below! – Brian