What is a WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are tools that adds features to your website without the need for code snippets. WordPress is one of the best plugins because it provides you with a large library of plugins, most of which are free. However, with so many plugins to choose from, it can be hard to know which one is right for you.
That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the top free WordPress plugins. Each tool has been thoroughly researched and tested to ensure its safety and reliability. Whether you’re looking for a plugin for web security or an advanced plugin for eCommerce, this list will help you find the right plugin for your site.
Top 18 Free WordPress Plugins
- Yoast SEO
- Jetpack
- AIOSEO
- RankMath
- WooCommerce
- Akismet Anti-Spam
- MonsterInsights
- WPForms
- Broken Link Checker
- Smush
- UpdraftPlus
- WP-Optimize
- Wordfence Security
- Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA
- Really Simple SSL
- Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed
- Redirection
- Easy Digital Downloads
How to Choose a Free WordPress Plugin
Whether you’re creating a new WordPress site or looking to expand your existing one, here are 30 recommended free WordPress plugins that you might find useful.
Top 30 Free WordPress Plugins and How to Choose the Right Ones for Your Website
Whether you’re creating a new WordPress site or looking to expand your existing one, here are 30 recommended free WordPress plugins that you might find useful.
1. Yoast SEO
It’s easy to argue that Yoast is one of the most popular free WordPress plugins, and there’s a good reason for this.
Every website owner likely knows the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and how it grows their business.
Now don’t get me wrong. This is a complex field, and you need more than some SEO plugins to optimize your site fully. However, Yoast does a great job of managing the following processes:
Key Features:
- Selecting a keyword and optimizing your page
- Gaining access to analytics
- Analyzing your content readability
- Optimizing your content, images, meta descriptions, titles, and keywords
- Checking the length of your sentences and paragraphs
- Enhancing your writing
- Formatting your pages
Although you could use the free version, a premium version is available for $99 per year with extra features. You can now use Yoast Premium with WordPress.com, too.
2. Jetpack
Jetpack Stats:
Rating: 3.9/5
Best for: anyone who wants a WordPress automation plugin for security and speed optimization
Jetpack is one of the best free plugins for WordPress. It’s an all-in-one security, optimization, and marketing plugin developed by Automattic.
You can use it to stop brute-force attacks, optimize images, defer non-essential scripts to improve loading times, track your traffic, and more.
It’s very easy to use. Once you install and activate the plugin, simply use the toggle switches to enable the settings.
With Jetpack, you can manage your site’s security and performance from the same place. You won’t need multiple WordPress plugins to protect and optimize your site.
Key Features:
- A Content Delivery Network (CDN) for images and core static files.
- Lazy loading so that photos load as the user scrolls down the page.
- Brute force protection to stop hackers from accessing your site.
- Downtime monitoring so you know when your site is unavailable.
3. AIOSEO
Rating: 4.9/5
Best for: bloggers, WordPress users, small business owners, content creators, and digital marketers looking to optimize content effectively
AIOSEO is an exceptional SEO plugin for WordPress that can significantly enhance your website’s search engine visibility. In this concise overview, we’ll cover the key features and benefits of AIOSEO, tailored to our no-nonsense, professional style.
AIOSEO simplifies the process of optimizing your website for search engines, making it an excellent choice for bloggers looking to boost their online presence and anyone seeking a powerful SEO plugin for WordPress.
Although AIOSEO is a paid plugin, you can download the free version and enjoy the SEO features it offers.
Key Features:
- Intuitive setup
- Comprehensive SEO analysis
- Keyword optimization
- Schema markup
- XML Sitemap
- Bulk editing
- Unlimited keyword optimization
- Meta description and title optimization
4. RankMath
Rating: 4.8/5
Best for: bloggers who want a more advanced SEO plugin and anyone looking for free WordPress plugins for SEO
Rank Math is a search engine optimization (SEO) plugin that uses AI to help you identify relevant keywords and optimize your posts. It also gives you an advanced search engine optimization analysis of the entire site, highlighting any problems with the content.
It offers many different schema types to help you achieve rich snippets in search engines. You’ll get schema markups for various content types, including books, events, recipes, and FAQs.
The free version of Rank Math offers five AI credits, meaning you’ll get AI suggestions for five keywords. Fortunately, you can purchase more credits.
Key Features:
- Set up redirects
- Create schema markup for custom post types
- Generate XML sitemaps
- Bulk edit post titles and descriptions
- Explore keyword suggestions
- Optimize unlimited keywords
- Choose your pillar posts and pages
- Write powerful meta descriptions and post titles
5. WooCommerce
WooCommerce Stats:
Rating: 4.5/5
Best for: anyone who wants to start an online shop or eCommerce website
WooCommerce is a WordPress eCommerce plugin by Automattic. It helps you build an online shop from scratch and accept payments through Stripe, PayPal, and other secure solutions.
WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin. This means you’ll have full ownership and control of your content, including product data. Plus, it gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of configuring shipping options and tax rates.
Key Features:
- WooCommerce themes for stores in different industries
- WooCommerce Blocks to help you build custom product and shop pages
- A free WooCommerce mobile app so you can manage your store on the go
- Payments through credit cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers
6. Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet Stats:
Rating: 4.7/5
Best for: bloggers and shop owners who want to block spam comments and reviews
Another product by Automattic, Akismet is designed to block spam on WordPress sites. It uses AI to filter out spam comments, form submissions, and other bots.
This security plugin’s best feature is that it analyzes user s
ubmissions in real time. Therefore, any genuine comments are immediately allowed through, while spammy ones are automatically blocked.
Key Features:
- View the number of approved comments for each user
- Comment status history
- URLs shown in full in the comment body
7. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights Stats:
Rating: 4.5/5
Best for: marketers and bloggers who are looking for the best free WordPress plugin to monitor site traffic
MonsterInsights is a popular Google Analytics (GA) WordPress plugin. Once you connect it to your GA account, you can start monitoring your traffic from search engines straight from the WordPress dashboard.
What makes this Google Analytics plugin stand out is its in-depth analytics report. It gives you details about your audience and user behavior and highlights your best-performing content.
Key Features:
- eCommerce report that shows key metrics like total revenue and conversion rate
- Content report with insights into which posts get the most visits
- Audience and behavior reports that help you learn about your audience
8. WPForms
Rating: 4.9/5
Best for: anyone who wants to create simple yet powerful forms
WPForms is one of the best plugins for creating forms. It comes with a drag-and-drop form builder that you can use to create contact and subscription forms, collect feedback, and accept payments.
With this plugin, you can create your first form in just a few minutes. Choose from a wide range of templates and effortlessly customize them to match your WordPress site’s design.
The free version lets you create basic forms. To create multi-page contact forms or add features like conditional logic, upgrade to one of the premium plans.
Key Features:
- Anti-spam protection to stop spammy submissions
- Instant form notifications
- Integration with popular page builders, including Elementor and Divi
9. Broken Link Checker
Broken Link Checker Stats:
Rating: 3.8/5
Best for: anyone with a WordPress blog that contains a lot of content
If you have a lot of posts and pages on your WordPress site, a plugin like Broken Link Checker can help you keep track of all the links in your content. It can also detect missing images and redirects.
Broken Link Checker will scan your site and highlight any broken links and images so you can fix or remove them. The plugin can notify you via email so you can resolve any issues right away.
Key Features:
- Monitors external links and internal links in your posts, pages, and comments
- Detects broken links, missing images, and redirects, and sends instant notifications
- Lets you to edit links from one place
10. Smush
Smush Stats:
Rating: 4.8/5
Best for: image-heavy websites like online portfolios and photography sites
Smush is one of the most popular image optimization plugins. It can compress your images to improve loading times. You can also optimize your images in bulk, which is very convenient if you have a lot of photos on your WordPress site.
Smush doesn’t just compress your photos. You can also use it to enable lazy loading and set maximum image dimensions.
Key Features:
- Choose between lossy and lossless compression
- Identify images that are slowing down your site
- Automate image optimization upon upload
- Defer offscreen images to make pages load faster
11. WP-Optimize
Rating: 4.8/5
Best for: anyone with a large and constantly updated WordPress website
WP-Optimize is an all-in-one performance plugin that you can use to clean your database and compress your images. It also serves as a caching plugin.
Additionally, the plugin can minify and defer CSS and JavaScript to help speed up your site. All of these settings can be easily enabled from your WordPress dashboard.
Key Features:
- Removes unnecessary data from your database
- Compresses your images in bulk
- Stores dynamic data in a temporary storage area
12. Elementor
Elementor is a front-end drag-and-drop page builder. This means it lets you design complicated-looking pages without needing to know a single line of code.
Essentially, it makes web design accessible to anyone.
To create your designs, you’ll use a visual interface. You can arrange layouts and content elements using drag and drop. And to customize how everything looks, you’ll get detailed options to control styles, spacing, and lots more.
Read our Elementor review for more information. You can also check out some Elementor example websites to see what it can do.
13. Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security Stats:
Rating: 4.7/5
Best for: any WordPress site that requires a comprehensive security plugin
Wordfence is one of the leading companies in WordPress security. Its plugin offers a web application firewall, a reliable malware scanner, and two-factor authentication (2FA) to help prevent brute-force attacks.
It also comes with a Live Traffic monitor for identifying hacking attempts in real time. You can then block these attackers by IP address and other criteria, including their hostname and IP range.
Key Features:
- Enforce 2FA for your WordPress users
- Check your site for known security vulnerabilities
- Set up a powerful firewall to block malicious traffic
- Limit login attempts to prevent hackers from breaking into your site
14. Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA
Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR/CCPA Stats:
Rating: 4.8/5
Best for: any website that manages user data
In recent years, privacy laws have made it mandatory for many websites to disclose their data-collection procedures. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that your website complies with data regulations like the GDPR and the CCPA.
This plugin lets you easily display a cookie consent banner on your website. Plus, it gives you access to the latest formatting guidelines and compliance requirements for over 100 countries and legal jurisdictions.
Using this cookie notice plugin helps your site comply with data protection laws. However, you should still check local regulations to ensure full coverage.
Key Features:
- Customizable cookie notice message
- Link to your privacy policy page
- Multiple cookie expiry options
- Integration with WordPress translation plugins like WPML and Polylang
15. Really Simple SSL
Rating: 5/5
Best for: any website that doesn’t already have an SSL certificate
Every website needs a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate. It secures data transfer between your server and the client’s browser.
Typically, SSL certificates are included in hosting plans. However, you can also get one for free with Really Simple SSL.
This tool lets you install an SSL certificate and switch from HTTP to HTTPS with a few clicks. It also provides a server health check to help you ensure that you have the correct configuration.
Key Features:
- Easy migration from HTTP to HTTPS
- Free SSL certificate via Let’s Encrypt
- Vulnerability detection
16. Redirection
Redirection Stats:
Rating: 4.4/5
Best for: sites that have changed their domain names or permalinks
Redirection is a free WordPress plugin for setting up redirects. You can use it to manage 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors.
With this plugin, you can create redirects based on different conditions. For example, you can redirect users who use a certain browser or click on a link from another page.
Key Features:
- Migrate old permalinks
- Set up redirects based on browser, IP address, and referrer
- Track 404 errors and redirect them in bulk
17. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads Stats:
Rating: 4.7/5
Best for: anyone looking for the best WordPress eCommerce plugin to sell digital products
As the name suggests, Easy Digital Downloads is a free WordPress plugin for selling digital products and downloads. You can use it to sell photographs, software, eBooks, and illustrations.
You can upload an unlimited number of products and set up multiple payment methods. Plus, the plugin works with any WordPress theme.
Key Features:
- Highly customizable checkout process
- Secure file protection
- Discount codes and coupons for your customers
- Easy customer management straight from your WordPress dashboard
- Support for Stripe, PayPal, and other payment gateways
18. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus Stats:
Rating: 4.8/5
Best for: any WordPress website that wants a user-friendly backup plugin
Backups are an essential part of running a website. With UpdraftPlus, you can make regular backups of your WordPress site and store them in a secure location.
You can even set up backup schedules so that the plugin automatically performs backups, so you don’t have to do any work. For incremental backups, you can purchase the premium version of UpdraftPlus.
Key Features:
- Choose from various cloud storage options, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3
- Create automated backup schedules
- Easily restore a backup with a few clicks
Conclusion
WordPress is home to a vast selection of free and premium plugins. Make sure you choose top-rated free WordPress plugins that receive regular updates. They should also be compatible with most WordPress themes and other WordPress plugins.
If you want to boost your performance in search engines, install a WordPress SEO plugin like Rank Math or MonsterInsights.
Meanwhile, free WordPress security plugins such as Wordfence, Jetpack, or Akismet are a must to protect any website.
If you’re building an eCommerce store, you’ll need a plugin like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads to start selling online.
We hope this article has helped you learn about the best free WordPress plugins you can install on your website. Good luck.
