Updated: November 2024

The open-source software WordPress is one of the best content management solutions worldwide. With them, you can start your blog or build a convincingly designed website with little prior knowledge and relatively little expenditure of time.

The fact that the former blog software – which is already captivating with its wealth of functions right from the start – is so popular is thanks in particular to the large pool of plugins.

The useful WordPress extensions can be installed quickly and add numerous features to the platform: The selection ranges from extensions for search engine optimization and higher security to e-commerce tools and social media plugins.

The Best Free WordPress Plugins

WordPress extensions are created by a huge community of developers. Whether an extension is offered for download free of charge or whether money is charged for it is the decision-making power of the respective developer.

Often there are also two versions of a plug-in, whereby the free version is limited in terms of functions so that the user can only have the full range of functions when purchasing the extension. In the following sections, we will first introduce you to our top 15 free WordPress plugins.

The best free WordPress plugins for search engine optimization

Yoast SEO Free

An SEO plugin should be part of the standard of every WordPress project. Even hobby bloggers now know that their own website will only be read by users if it can be found quickly via Google. Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins to improve your ranking in Google search results.

With the free edition of the extension, you can prepare your WordPress project perfectly for Google and have the legibility of your texts checked automatically. While you are still limited to one basic main keyword in the basic edition, you can plan extensive keyword strategies with Yoast SEO Premium.

WP Meta SEO

WP Meta SEO also helps you to make your WordPress website more search engine-friendly. Influence the most important factors of on-page optimization directly from the WordPress backend by not only editing titles and meta descriptions but also managing internal links and permalinks or creating an XML sitemap.

In the free version, WP Meta SEO also supports you with the integration of your images: The WordPress extension not only ensures that the image material is displayed in the appropriate size but also provides important image SEO features for the best possible placement in the Image search rankings.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is an optimal solution to keep the loading times of your WordPress project as short as possible – and in this way to impress your visitors and Google. Once pages have been loaded, they are cached so that no new database query has to be started when they are called up again.

The WordPress extension W3 Total Cache helps with the implementation. It generates static HTML pages and thus ensures shorter loading times. This improves the performance of your pages and keeps website visitors satisfied.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links are annoying and can get you in a lot of trouble: your readers will be frustrated and such links send a negative signal to the search engine. Checking all links manually is no longer feasible if the web project exceeds a certain size. The Broken Link Checker can help here.

The WordPress extension automatically and regularly checks all internal and external links on the website (also in the comment area) and reports incorrect links. The extension can also detect missing images or redirects. As the operator, you will receive appropriate notifications either in the dashboard or by e-mail, in order to directly replace or deactivate incorrect links, images, and redirects.

Antispam Bee

Suffering spam in comment columns is everyday life for every blogger and is neither beneficial for the search engine ranking nor for the user experience. Use tools like Antispam Bee to put an end to the annoying spam: The WordPress plugin blocks spambots before they can gain access to forms or comment fields. Optionally, the extension can also check archived blog pages for spam.

In the dashboard, the daily updated spam statistics show values ​​for the detection rate and the total number of blocked comments. Another plus from Antispam Bee: It expressly complies with European data protection guidelines.

The best free WordPress extensions for content creation

When it comes to WordPress websites, choosing the right hosting is paramount. Shared hosting and WordPress-specific hosting are two popular options, each with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. Understanding the differences between shared hosting vs WordPress hosting is crucial in ensuring your website’s performance, security, and scalability align with your content creation goals.

LuckyWP Table of Contents

Tables of contents are a tried and tested means of structuring a blog or the pages of a homepage. They help the reader grasp the structure of texts more quickly and also serve as classification aids for search engine crawlers. A WordPress extension that automatically creates a table of contents on the desired page is LuckyWP Table of Contents.

For this purpose, the plug-in uses the defined headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). In the settings, the user can also determine the design and positioning of the content or specify the number of headings from which the plugin should create a directory.

Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP)

Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP) – sounds complicated. The WordPress plugin basically offers a very simple but practical function to list topic-relevant posts or pages under articles. This is a simple trick to increase the length of stay of the visitors by offering them additional suitable content.

In order to adapt the recommendations of YARPP optically as best as possible to your own site, basic knowledge of CSS is recommended.

Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider

If you want to present a series of images or photos, gallery plugins like “Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider” are the perfect solution. The practical WordPress extension helps you publish your image material in galleries, sliders, or carousels on your website.

Use drag and drop to select images and photos from your WordPress media library and then drag them into the desired MetaSlider template, which you can also place anywhere in your project. You can then use the plug-in to define suitable meta information and links.

TablePress

The free TablePress plugin is ideal if you plan to create tables on your WordPress website. In terms of content, these can be filled with texts and images as well as with links and scripting languages ​​such as JavaScript. It is also possible to import and design tables using CSS.

The best free WordPress plugins for integrating forums and shops

bbPress

bbPress turns your own project into an individually adaptable forum or adds one to the existing website. It is up to the operator whether the forum should be accessible to all visitors or whether registration is necessary to read or write contributions. The WordPress forum plugin also enables certain topics to be highlighted (“Sticky”) or closed (“Closed”).

Setting up a forum with bbPress is uncomplicated via a central admin account – with just a few clicks, the desired community area is installed and adapted to your own ideas.

WooCommerce

A complete online shop can be implemented with the help of the WordPress shop plugin WooCommerce. In particular, beginners with a manageable range benefit from the possibility of being able to manage all important e-commerce processes – such as the product range, shipping, or purchase processing – via the familiar WordPress interface.

The navigation and design of your own WooCommerce WordPress store can be customized – the installation assistant only generates the main navigation with the four menu items “Shop”, “Shopping cart”, “Checkout” and “My account”. In order to meet the requirements of larger, professional online shops, the developer Automattic offers (paid) premium functions for the WordPress shop plugin. You can find out more about setting up a WordPress shop with WooCommerce in our article “Creating an online shop with WordPress”.

Ultimate Member

Whether forum or online shop: a web project that includes user registration as a central element depends on excellent user management. The WordPress extension Ultimate Member replaces the standard user administration of the Hosted CMS and makes the registration of users or customers on your site child’s play.

With Ultimate Member you can quickly and easily create registration and login areas as well as customizable user profiles – directly in the front end. Own directories for registered users can also be set up if necessary.

Contact Form 7

For the success of your online business project, it is essential that you are available to your users if they have any questions or problems. Since WordPress does not provide any forms by default, the use of a WordPress contact form plugin such as Contact Form 7 is highly recommended.

Ninja Forms

There is another form plugin that not only has a cute name but is also extremely practical: With Ninja Forms, you can add (contact) forms to your WordPress website in which users can enter their data such as B. Enter name, email address, and telephone number. These forms can also be supplemented with payment options. In this way, your website visitors have the opportunity to make payments to you very easily using PayPal, credit cards, and the like.

The extension can be integrated quickly and easily and has all the important functions. In order to be able to adapt the contact form optically to your own ideas, basic knowledge of CSS is required.

The best free WordPress extensions for more security

Really Simple SSL

For security reasons and for an optimal rating by Google, it is urgently necessary to encrypt the data transmission on your website with SSL / TLS or HTTPS. The Really Simple SSL plugin supports you in this endeavor – all you need is a valid certificate.

As soon as you have a certificate ready and Really Simple SSL installed, activate SSL / TLS with just a single click. If you want to set up additional security mechanisms such as HTTP Strict Transport Security, you need to use the paid Pro Edition.

Loginizer

Brute force attacks have been one of the most popular methods of cybercriminals for years because of their simplicity. With the free basic version of the WordPress extension Loginizer, you can effectively protect your web project against this type of attack.

If you activate Loginizer in your WordPress project, the plugin automatically blocks all IP addresses from which more than three incorrect login attempts have been made for 15 minutes. In the event of multiple locks of this type, the period is increased to 24 hours. Of course, you can manually remove IP addresses from the blacklist at any time.

All In One WP Security & Firewall

WordPress has become steadily more secure over the years, but due to its growing popularity, it has increasingly become the focus of cybercriminals.

With the free WordPress extension All In One WP Security & Firewall, you raise the security level of your project to a new level – thanks to features such as your own firewall, brute force protection, security scanner, and spam protection.

For particularly critical security elements such as the admin username or the file share (s), the premium plug-in shows a specific overview in the panel with an on-and-off switch. In the extension’s own dashboard, you can also see a specific security score for your pages, which you can use to read the current status of your project.

The best (paid) WordPress premium plugins

After our recommendation of the fifteen best free WordPress plugins, the top 15 paid extensions should now follow. Often these are also referred to as premium plugins, as they are sales products that usually offer a wide range of functions and are often linked to a special support offer from the manufacturer.

The best WordPress premium plugins for search engine optimization

WPtouch Pro

With the paid WordPress plugin WPtouch Pro, the layout and functionality of your own website on mobile devices is fundamentally optimized. The use of this extension ensures that a mobile-friendly variant of the desktop version is offered under the same URL – the original version remains unchanged.

Optionally, the entire content can be transferred one-to-one or adapted individually. So it is B. possible to generate alternative menus or landing pages that are better suited for the various mobile devices.

WPtouch Pro is one of the mobile solutions supported by Google, which is why the website is automatically marked as “mobile-friendly”. Depending on the chosen package, you can use the plugin for a different number of 1, 5, 20, or 50 WordPress projects.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is the first choice for many experts when it comes to improving performance for an optimal Google ranking. The WordPress Premium Plugin ensures, among other things. ensuring that all pages of a project are loaded into the cache, which means that they can be delivered more quickly. For this purpose, a “preload” bot simulates visiting the website at regular intervals.

Furthermore, WP Rocket reduces the loading time by the WordPress extension automatically compressing all static files such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS documents. Thanks to the LazyLoad feature, the website visitor’s browser only loads all integrated images when they reach the user’s viewport.

Squirrly SEO Pro

Squirrly SEO Pro makes search engine optimization of your WordPress project a breeze. For this purpose, the WordPress Premium Plugin provides a multitude of useful and powerful SEO features such as regular keyword suggestions, a blogging assistant, content marketing analytics, or the “Focus Pages” function, which automatically shows the most promising pages on your website or your Stores highlighted for optimization.

With the “Business” and “Agency” packages, you can activate additional Squirrly features such as advanced analyses, more in-depth keyword research, or an overview of the top-ranking websites in your division.

WP Fastest Cache Premium

When it comes to caching, there is hardly a plugin with WP Fastest Cache in the premium segment. The plugin generates static HTML content via Mod_Rewrite in order to optimize the loading time of your web project. If you publish new content, the existing cache of the relevant pages is automatically deleted. You can also exclude any pages from caching if necessary.

WP Fastest Cache Premium also provides various features that go far beyond caching. The WordPress Premium Plugin also helps you in your SEO efforts with functions for merging and minimizing CSS and JavaScript code and for converting image material into WebP.

wp SEO

The provider Easy UG describes its WordPress premium plugin wpSEO as the “Swiss Army Knife for WordPress SEO”. The extension optimizes WordPress for search engines and pursues the goal of making SEO so easy that authors can concentrate fully on creating content: Preconfigured standard settings are activated immediately after installation – the extension, for example, automatically generates metadata for everyone written article. Adjustments in the WordPress themes used are not necessary for this.

wp SEO is available in three variants “Classic” (1 domain), “Deluxe” (any number of domains), and “Premium” (any number of domains, used in customer projects permitted). There is also a demo version for testing the plug-in free of charge.

Rank Math SEO

The Rank Math SEO WordPress plugin gives you access to numerous features that support you in the search engine optimization of your website: From a rank tracker that reveals how your pages are doing in search engine rankings, to a content AI that gives you Suggested keywords and more. The plugin has a total of three paid upgrades – Pro, Business, and Agency. There is also a free version, but it lacks almost all useful features.

OptinMonster

Without returning visitors, long-term success for your own web project is difficult to achieve. Well-functioning lead management is therefore very important when looking after a website.

In particular, operators of online shops and blogs are dependent on the best tools in the battle for regular customers and readers. The WordPress premium plugin OptinMonster is one of the best solutions in this regard.

With the help of the integrated drag-and-drop editor, appealing forms can be created within a few minutes, for example, to obtain the user’s email address for initial contact. With simple A / B testing and detailed statistics, you can also measure and analyze the success of different variants.

Taqyeem

An evaluation function on the website or under the various articles offers a good way of measuring the satisfaction of website visitors. In e-commerce, reviews also serve as a sales recommendation for potential buyers. In addition, ratings that can be presented in the results of Google and Co. also offer added value for search engine users.

The Egypt-based company TieLabs has launched Taqyeem, one of the most successful and best WordPress plugins for integrating a user rating system and for presenting product ratings (e.g. as part of test reports).

The presented ratings can be individually designed with the premium plug-in, with more than 500 Google Web Fonts, various typography options, and three rating schemes (stars, points, and percentages) available.

MonsterInsights

If you want to measure the success of your web project in numbers, the WordPress premium plugin MonsterInsights offers the right basis for this. In combination with Google Analytics, the extension presents you with all relevant figures in real-time – whether page views, bounce rate, average length of stay, or user devices – in a clear dashboard. ECommerce tracking for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, and MemberPress is also possible.

Various other areas of your WordPress project can also be tracked with MonsterInsights. These include B. file downloads, contact forms, links, and tags as well as the development of SEO scores and focus keywords.

The WordPress extension regularly displays clear reports for each tracking category. Caseproof also offers a free plug-in version called MonsterInsights Lite, which has fewer features, but is good for testing before you decide on a chargeable upgrade.

SearchWP

Since the search function on WordPress is not optimal and, above all, does not make it easy to find older website content, the SearchWP plugin was launched. But not only does the search on your website improve. For example, with a Pro upgrade, you have B. Access to Metrics – a feature that shows you what users are looking for. And with this information, in turn, you can change and optimize the content of your website accordingly. This is especially interesting for online shop owners who want to find out which products arouse the most interest.

Read Also: The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Affiliate Plugins for Beginners

The best WordPress premium plugins for content creation

WPML

If you want to offer your web content in several countries, you usually need different language versions in order to provide all visitors with the best possible user experience. The WordPress premium plugin WPML from OnTheGoSystems provides the right functions for this: With translation aids for posts, pages, taxonomy, and menus as well as automatic browser speech recognition, the basic package offers all the features for a multilingual blog.

The more expensive “Multilingual CMS” package gives users access to add translation options in order to translate widgets or texts from themes, plugins, and other WordPress extensions. In order to coordinate work on multilingual projects, WPML also allows translation management with several users in this variant.

The Events Calendar

If you want to showcase a calendar on your WordPress website, you can do it with the premium plugin The Events Calendar. You can choose to use the extension to create a calendar with new events or to integrate existing data from Meetup, Eventbrite, Google Calendar, iCalendar, or other sites or apps.

In order to be able to optimally adapt the calendar to your own ideas, the code of The Events Calendar was designed to be particularly developer-friendly. In addition, different views are available in order to present the entered events, for example daily, weekly, or monthly, or in a list. There is also a free plug-in version, but it lacks essential features such as premium support and event management.

Restrict Content Pro

Well-structured membership management is essential for offering premium content. The WordPress extension Restrict Content Pro supports users in implementing such a paywall and also offers functions for member organizations. With the tool, you can create an unlimited number of membership packages, which can easily be given different access rights.

Restrict Content Pro has interfaces to payment services such as 2Checkout, Stripe, and PayPal.

MemberPress

MemberPress is another WordPress premium plugin for managing exclusive website content. The properties for the various membership packages such as the price, the available content or the duration of the subscription, or the test phase can be defined in detail. MemberPress then automatically generates the registration page via which visitors purchase the respective offer – including a button for the desired payment option.

If desired, the extension sends notifications by email, for example when a new member has been concluded or membership has been terminated, a transaction has failed or a user has changed the package. Under the heading “Reports”, the WordPress membership plugin shows detailed statistics on all active and previous subscriptions and payments.

Gravity Forms

The Gravity Forms plug-in is a WordPress tool that you can use to create forms in no time at all and embed them in your website using the drag-and-drop function.

In addition, you can easily collect and manage the data that users give you in this way. Gravity Forms offers three license plans – Basic, Pro, and Elite – for you to choose from. If you upgrade to the basic version, you will receive Pro and/or Elite add-ons that can be used to add additional expansions. Including z. B. Capsule CRM – a software component that provides you with a customer relationship management system.

The best WordPress premium plugins for more security

Akismet

Akismet from Automattic is the premium solution for combating website spam. The filter service has existed since 2005 and is available in the basic version by default to all users who host their projects at WordPress.com.

In order to be able to use the features of the WordPress Premium Plugin for commercial sites as well, you have to take out a monthly subscription. The two fee-based packages “Plus” and “Enterprise” (or “Enterprise Plus”) offered for this purpose are characterized by extended statistics and prioritized support from the manufacturer. The extension is updated regularly in order to be able to react promptly to current spam trends.

Wordfence Pro

With Wordfence you get a WordPress security package that protects your project around the clock against malware and other attacks by cybercriminals.

The heart of the system is the WordPress firewall, which receives regular updates in order, for example, to immediately recognize known harmful malware signatures and to be able to remove the relevant malware from the server immediately.

An integrated malware scanner, regular checks of the WordPress core files, and vulnerability checks provide additional protection. If necessary, you can use Wordfence Pro to limit the number of login attempts on the server in order to set up basic brute force protection.

iThemes Security Pro

iThemes Security Pro is another WordPress premium plugin that is dedicated to protecting WordPress projects. As soon as you have installed the extension, you can overlook the various security features via the “Security Dashboard” in the backend and configure them as you wish. Among other things, iThemes Security Pro offers a malware scanner, 404 error detection to combat bots, and the option to replace the standard URL for logging in users and admins

iThemes Security Pro also offers various features to make the login in your WordPress project as secure as possible for all parties. For example, you can use the plug-in to ensure that users have to set strong passwords when registering. The registration itself can be secured with two-factor authentication (mobile app, email, or backup code).

What is a WordPress plugin?

Even in the basic version, WordPress offers the most important functions for creating new pages, linking them to one another, and immediately starting to create new pages.

However, the content management system only unfolds its full strength with the plugins, which significantly expand its functionality.

Regardless of whether it’s extensions for shops, security, search engine optimization, or social media links: WordPress extensions make it possible to expand the open-source platform in such a way that it is perfectly tailored to the needs of the respective webmaster.

A WordPress plugin is an additional program. It extends the code of the web application, which adds a new function. Strictly speaking, every extension or adaptation of the WordPress code is a plugin.

An experienced user with programming skills also has the option of changing the code on their own and adding new functions to the functions.php file of their theme. When downloading WordPress extensions, you should always make sure that the source is trustworthy and secure (e.g. the WordPress repository or the IONOS app center).

The best sources for WordPress extensions

To speak of the “best WordPress plugins” is, strictly speaking, a bit difficult: Since interests and needs vary greatly from operator to operator, in most cases only one or the other of the plugins presented is relevant at all. For this reason, the independent search for suitable extensions is definitely recommended.

The aforementioned official WordPress repository, which can also be accessed directly via the content management system, is without a doubt the most important source for WordPress plugins.

As with the IONOS App Center, every new extension is checked for functionality and trustworthiness, so that the WordPress plugin download can be classified as very secure.

However, there are also other sources for extensions – especially for WordPress premium plugins, which are chargeable from the start and are not listed in the official directory:

• CodeCanyon: When it comes to highly functional, chargeable extensions, there is no getting around CodeCanyon. The directory of the online platform includes over 4,900 WordPress plugins, which also sell extensions for other content management systems such as Joomla or Drupal. The results can be restricted in terms of price, category, sales figures, or rating using a filter search.
• MOJO Marketplace: The WordPress plugin directory of MOJO Marketplace includes around 60 extensions. The web platform, which provides a live demo for every expansion, also has over 700 themes and templates for the content management system on offer.
• accessPress: accessPress offers a mix of over 100 free and paid WordPress plugins for download or purchase. You can call up detailed information (description, publication date, price, license, time of the last update, etc.), documentation, and a live preview of all listed extensions.
• GitHub: New WordPress extensions are also regularly published on GitHub. The search turns out to be relatively complicated, however, since only the entire developer platform can be searched. However, if you take the effort and look in the over 110,000 available repositories with WordPress extensions, you will find a lot of useful plugins.

Read Also: Website Creation: 7 Vital Checklist Points for Success

How many WordPress plugins can you install?

There is no limit to the additional add-ons that can be installed for WordPress. The quantity of plugins does not necessarily have an impact on the performance of a website. So it is quite conceivable that the project will still be as fast as usual, even with a large number of extensions.

Much more important than the number is the quality of the individual WordPress plugins. Under certain circumstances, a single incorrectly programmed extension can significantly worsen performance or cause other problems.

In order to avoid such technical problems, plugins should always be chosen consciously and checked regularly for their necessity.

Otherwise, it can quickly happen that the overview of the installed extensions is lost – a problem that can be avoided entirely with managed WordPress hosting. With such hosting packages, you only have a fixed selection of high-quality, functional plugins available.

Where does WordPress store extensions?

The fact that the installation of new plugins is carried out directly within WordPress simplifies the expansion of the content management system enormously.

Regardless of whether the respective package is found and downloaded via the integrated search or integrated via the import function – the user only has to follow the instructions of the wizard to add and activate the desired function.

The practical list of all implemented WordPress extensions also helps with their management. The CMS also automatically classifies the installed plugins in the folder structures by placing all extensions in the wp-content / plugins folder. Language files and translations for the extensions, however, end up in the wp-content / languages ​​folder.

Notice:

The files of a WordPress plugin can also be copied manually into the listed folders in order to install them.

WordPress: Install plugins carefully

There are numerous free WordPress plugins, and new ones are added every day. But too many plugins lead to a confusing backend. In addition, there is a risk of unpredictable “interactions”.

The incompatibility of various programs and components can quickly result in security gaps. So you should only install plugins that you actually use on a regular basis. Many administrative plugins can be uninstalled after a single use. The plug-in security scanner can be used to check whether installed plug-ins offer security gaps.