Want to know one of my secrets for an optimal WordPress website experience? It’s plugins. The best free WordPress plugins make your site faster, increase traffic, and tighten website security for your visitors.
It’s important not to add too many WordPress plugins to your website as it can make it slow or cause problems.
I have various plugins on my blog that do different things, like creating forms, allowing access to members-only content, and stopping spam comments. The key is to choose the right plugins that work well together for what you need.
However, with so many options available, it can be challenging to know which ones are necessary. To help you, I’ve listed the top ten WordPress plugins that you can install right now to make your site better.
After the reviews, I’ll guide you on how to pick the ones that suit your needs and avoid any issues.
Interested in learning more? Let’s start with the first one.
Jetpack by WordPress
There are more than 60,000 WordPress plugins, but it’s better not to use too many. If you install too many, your website might not be easy for visitors to use.
So, it’s smart to choose free WordPress plugins carefully. Look for ones that can do multiple things at once.
Jetpack is like a superhero for your WordPress website, and more than five million people are already using it. But, some folks still wonder what it does and how it helps their websites.
Also see: Creating Stunning Overlap Sections In Elementor: A Step-By-Step Guide 2023
In simple terms, Jetpack is fantastic for WordPress! It comes with lots of cool features. You can use free tools to design your site, keep track of how many people visit, make it easy for others to share your content, and even protect your site from online attacks.
If you want extra cool stuff like spam protection, daily backups, and tools for better search results, you can get them with one of their simple and affordable plans.
One more awesome thing about Jetpack is that it’s hosted by WordPress.com. This means your website runs smoothly without overloading your server. Plus, using Jetpack is a breeze because its dashboard is super easy to understand. It shows you all the cool features you’re using, and you can keep an eye on all your connected websites.
Here are some things you can do with Jetpack:
- Make sure your website backup is up-to-date and fix any problems if there are any.
- Scan for issues or threats that might affect your website’s security.
- Keep an eye on whether your websites are up and running smoothly or if there are any downtimes.
- Look for updates for the plugins on your connected websites.
Jetpack has a lot of cool features, so explore it to see how it can help you!
Yoast SEO
Yoast is a super popular free WordPress plugin, and there’s a good reason why so many people use it.
If you own a website, you probably understand how important it is to make your site visible to search engines (SEO) to help your business grow. Yoast can really help with that.
Ofcourse, optimizing your website is a complex job, and using just an SEO plugin won’t do everything. However, Yoast is excellent at handling these tasks:
- Picking the right keyword and making your page better for it
- Getting access to analytics to see how your site is doing
- Checking how easy it is for people to read your content
- Improving your content, images, meta descriptions, titles, and keywords
- Making sure your sentences and paragraphs are the right length
- Helping you write better
- Making your pages look nice
While there’s a free version, you can get even more features with the premium version, which costs $99 per year. And now, you can use Yoast Premium with WordPress.com too.
You have the option to use Yoast for free, but there’s also a fancier version called Yoast Premium. It comes with extra features, and it costs $99 per year. The good news is, you can now use Yoast Premium with WordPress.com as well.
Akismet Anti-Spam
Having a WordPress website for a while means dealing with spam comments, even if your site isn’t huge.
The issue is that bots discover your site pretty quickly and start using the comment section to share spam links.
Handling spam can be a real pain, but the good news is that Akismet wordpress plugin is a top-notch free WordPress plugin designed to tackle this problem.
With Akismet, you can easily get rid of spam comments, even if they seem very genuine.
At first, Akismet might not catch all the spam comments or might make a mistake by flagging some legitimate ones. But the cool thing is, it keeps learning and improving as time goes on.
Akismet doesn’t just stop at comments; it also checks the information people submit through your contact form, making sure it’s legit and not fake.
To use the plugin, you’ll need an Akismet API key. Good news for personal bloggers, the keys are free. However, if you’re running a business or a commercial site, there’s a subscription fee of $8.33 per month (billed monthly).
WP Super Cache
I understand that feeling—waiting forever for a webpage to load can be frustrating. Well, your visitors might feel the same way, but there’s a solution!
You can speed up your webpage with a caching plugin, and one of the best free options is WP Super Cache. Let me tell you why:
Normally, browsers store files in their cache so that when you revisit a site, it doesn’t have to download everything again. Without caching, pages might take a lot longer to load.
WP Super Cache does something smart. It creates static pages instead of using complex PHP scripts, making your pages load faster. And you know what faster load times mean? Happy visitors who are more likely to come back.
You can customize it the settings if you want, but even just turning caching on will give your site a speed boost. The plugin is user-friendly, and it even has options for mobile caching. So, it’s a win-win!
Google XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is like a map that shows search engines all the pages on your website. It helps them figure out how your site is organized and makes sure they don’t miss anything when crawling your site.
If creating a sitemap sounds tricky or takes too much time, you can make it easy by using one of the many free WordPress plugin.
These plugins do the work for you, creating a dynamic sitemap for your WordPress website. And the best part? It’s compatible with search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Yandex, and Bing.
Take XML Sitemaps Generator for Google, for instance. It not only creates a sitemap but also lets search engines know when there are changes. You can even add Google News, image, and video sitemaps. Plus, whenever you update your site or publish new blog posts, the plugin tells search engines automatically.
It’s pretty cool, right? And the best news is, this plugin is a big time-saver, and you can use it for free, whether your site is for personal use or business!
Smush Image Compression and Optimization
Images are crucial for engaging content. According to a recent study by Venngage, more than 50 percent of marketers consider visual marketing essential for their business.
The challenge, though, is that high-quality images are often large and slow to load. So, you face a dilemma: sacrifice image quality for faster loading or edit images to lower resolution and hope they still look good.
Neither of these options is great, right? But don’t worry, there’s a solution with free WordPress plugins.
While there are several options, I recommend Smush.
This plugin automatically compresses and optimizes your images. Once it’s set up, Smush finds the perfect balance, allowing you to use plenty of images without slowing down your website.
It’s a win-win situation. You can even do a “Bulk Smush” to optimize multiple images at once. Here’s how: Install the Smush plugin from your WordPress account.
Here’s what you do next:
- Make sure “Automatic smushing is enabled” shows in the top-right corner of the window.
- Follow the prompt to bulk-smush all your images.
It’s that simple!
Smush has more cool features, like:
- Saving your configurations
- Resizing images
- No monthly limits for optimizing images up to 5MB
- Working on multiple sites
- Showing you how many megabytes you’ve freed up on the right side of the window
Many websites rate Smush as one of the best free WordPress plugins.
If you want even better compression and no limits on bulk-smushing, you can upgrade to WP Smush Pro. It starts at $7.50 per month.
WPForms
If you want your customers to reach out to you easily, there’s a great free WordPress plugin for that.
No one enjoys copying and pasting an email address, especially on a mobile device. Enter WPForms. These forms have a simple style that matches your theme, and they work well on both desktop and mobile. It’s super easy to use and comes with powerful features.
Here’s why you’ll love it:
- Create as many forms as you need.
- Customize the confirmation messages visitors see after interacting with your form.
- Built-in spam prevention, with options like CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or Google’s invisible reCAPTCHA to keep bots away.
- Use the drag-and-drop builder for quick and appealing contact forms.
- Smart conditional logic ensures a great customer experience, increasing the chances of visitors sharing their contact information.
- Forms integrate seamlessly with popular marketing and payment platforms.
- The free plan allows you to create a secure contact form easily.
Check out how easy it is to build a contact form using WPForms’ drag-and-drop builder.
Creating forms with WPForms is a breeze! Here’s how you can do it:
- Save time by picking a template for the form you want to create.
- Customize the form by dragging and dropping the fields you need. You can add things like a phone number field or remove the message subject line field.
- When you’re done, click the embed button at the top of the window.
- Paste the shortcode into the page where you want the form to appear.
Easy, right? With templates, customization, and a simple embed process, WPForms makes it quick and efficient to get the forms you need on your website.
If you’re looking for even more templates and advanced features to supercharge your lead-generation efforts, the paid version of WPForms might be the way to go. It starts at $49.50 per year for one site.
With the premium version, you get access to a bunch of cool features like:
- Smart conditional logic
- Customizable email notifications
- File uploads
- Multi-page forms
- Post submissions
And much more! The paid version opens up a whole new level of customization and functionality for your forms.
Elementor Page Builder
Creating a stylish website can be tricky if you’re not a coding expert. That’s where page builder plugins come in handy, and Elementor is a standout choice.
Unlike other plugins, Elementor lets you design your website effortlessly. You can create and customize pages using a drag-and-drop interface, and you don’t need any coding skills.
Here’s why Elementor is awesome:
- Front-End Editing: You get a user-friendly editor that shows you exactly how your changes will look in real-time. No need to constantly refresh the page!
- Building Blocks: Use sections, modules, and widgets to build your pages without any coding fuss.
- Templates Galore: Choose from hundreds of ready-to-go templates to quickly create the design you want. You can even save your custom layouts for use on other pages.
- Free, Yet Feature-Packed: Even the free version of Elementor comes with a range of impressive features, including responsiveness, e-commerce and marketing tools, and theme builders.
- Integration Hub: Elementor plays well with other popular tools like MailChimp, Discord, HubSpot, and more.
Take a peek at Elementor’s simple user interface in action! It’s a game-changer for creating stunning websites without the coding headache.
UpdraftPlus
Protecting your hard work on your website is crucial. Losing everything is the last thing anyone wants, right? Stuff happens – hacks, server issues, update glitches – it’s a part of the online world.
But hey, there’s a superhero in the form of a free WordPress plugin called UpdraftPlus.
UpdraftPlus proudly calls itself “The World’s Most Trusted WordPress backup, restore, and clone plugin,” and it’s not just boasting. It’s easy to use and comes with cool features like:
- Working on multiple sites
- Customizing when your backups happen
- Getting one gigabyte of free storage
- Automatically backing up after routine WordPress updates
- And a bunch more
Sure, there are many backup plugins out there, but few match UpdraftPlus’s power and user-friendliness. You can set up automatic backups and store your files in safe places like Google Drive, FTP, email, and Dropbox.
And if the worst happens and you need to restore your website from a backup, it’s a piece of cake right from your dashboard.
For extra superpowers, you can go premium. Premium features include fancy reporting, database encryption, and more storage options like OneDrive, Azure, and SFTP.
Premium subscriptions start at $234 annually. It’s like having an insurance policy for your website!
MonsterInsights
Facts, not guesses, are the key to understanding and improving your website. That’s where data tracking comes in, and luckily, there’s a free WordPress plugin to help!
Meet MonsterInsights, the “Best (free) WordPress plugin for analytics.” It comes packed with features like:
- E-commerce, user behavior, and SEO reports
- Real-time analytics
- Tracking form conversions and affiliate links
- Keeping tabs on WordPress events
- Plus, it gives you access to the powerful Google Analytics. This tool provides crucial insights to enhance your website, content, and user experience. It tells you how each webpage is doing and which online campaigns bring in the most traffic and conversions.
Armed with all this information, you can build a strategy based on real data to grow your business.
The free version of MonsterInsights lets you install Google Analytics, track data, view metrics on the dashboard, and run reports.
For extra goodies, there’s a premium version that includes post and page tracking, custom tracking and reports, AdSense tracking, and more. The premium version starts at $99.50 per year with the Plus plan. It’s like having your own website detective!
What to Look For in WordPress Plugins
I talked about some really helpful free WordPress tools earlier. But if you want to find more by yourself, I’ve got some simple tips to help. First, there’s a useful place called the WordPress Plugin Repository.
It’s like a library with lots of info about each tool – what it does, how to use it, and more. Look at that info to figure out if a tool is right for you. Check out the list of tools and pick a few that match what you need. When you’re ready to choose, remember these tips:
See if it works with your WordPress version, read what others say about it, check how many people use it, make sure it gets updates, look for good support, and test it on a practice site before your real one.
Also, think about security. Following these tips will help you find the perfect tools for your website. Happy searching!
Free vs. Premium
We all love getting things for free, but that doesn’t always mean they’re the best. This applies to WordPress plugins too.
Free WordPress plugins are great if you’re on a budget and just need the basics. They can do the job without costing you money.
But, if you want extra features or more ways to customize your site, you might want to consider premium versions. These versions unlock additional options and offer more advanced features.
On top of that, premium plugins make sure they work well with the latest WordPress updates and provide better security for your site. Plus, you get a wider range of features to make your site even better.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there any free WordPress plugins?
Sure, there are lots of them. The free WordPress plugins I mentioned give you the basics and handle what most website owners usually want. But be careful not to use too many plugins. If you do, your website might become slower, and there could be issues with how things work together. This could make it not so good for people visiting your site.
What is the best free WordPress review plugin?
Answering these questions isn’t easy because it depends on what you need. Begin by checking out the free WordPress plugins mentioned in this article. Take a look at them and test a few to figure out which ones suit your needs the best.
What is the best free plugin for WordPress?
It’s challenging to label any tool as the absolute best free WordPress plugin because the needs of website owners can differ significantly. However, as mentioned earlier, plugins like Yoast and WPCache are frequently recognized and recommended for their usefulness, making them common choices in “best” plugin lists.
Conclusion
Certainly! Free WordPress plugins cover a broad spectrum, handling everything from website design to SEO optimization and improving user experience.
Certainly! To elevate your website, consider these trusted plugins:
- Yoast: Optimize your site for search engines.
- Akismet: Prevent spam and bot intrusions.
- WPForms: Facilitate easy communication with visitors.
- MonsterInsights: Track essential data for insights.
- UpdraftPlus: Ensure your site’s backup is secure.
Give these plugins a try to gauge their effectiveness for your needs.
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If you’re aware of other noteworthy free WordPress plugins that I haven’t mentioned, feel free to share your insights in the comments below!
