Are you looking for the best alternatives to the Jetpack plugin? Jetpack is a powerful WordPress plugin suite that adds various features to your WordPress website. Recently one of our readers asked us to share possible Jetpack alternatives for WordPress. In this article, we will show you the best alternatives to the WordPress Jetpack plugin.
What is Jetpack WordPress plugin?
Jetpack is a plugin suite which combines essential WordPress features into one large plugin. It allows you to manage the features you want to use, and you can turn off the features you don’t need.
However as your website grows, you may want to expand beyond Jetpack. You might need advanced functionalities that are offered in other third-party WordPress plugins.
In these cases, it makes sense to look at Jetpack alternatives for specific features that you need.
Pros and Cons of Jetpack Plugin
Like all things in life, Jetpack plugin comes with its own advantages and disadvantages that you need to keep in mind when choosing Jetpack alternatives.
Pros of Using Jetpack Plugin
These are the advantages of using Jetpack plugin on your WordPress website.
- One plugin to rule them all. You get all essential features in one easy to manage package.
- Jetpack is highly optimized for performance with Automattic’s (company behind Jetpack and WordPress.com) powerful infrastructure running in the background.
- It has a nicer user interface than your typical WordPress plugins.
Cons of Using Jetpack Plugin
Following are the disadvantages of using WordPress Jetpack plugin on your website.
- Using Jetpack requires you to create a WordPress.com account.
- The Jetpack core is free but many of its features require a paid subscription.
- It has limited email functionality. You cannot email your subscribers without publishing a blog post.
- Your website becomes dependent on one plugin which makes it harder to replace in the future.
That being said, let’s take a look at the best Jetpack alternatives that you can install on your website.
1. WPForms Lite
WPForms Lite is the best alternative to Jetpack’s feedback form. WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin, and it comes with a free lite version that allows you to easily add contact form in your WordPress website.
WPForms comes with a beautiful drag and drop form builder and ready-made form templates. Adding form into your blog posts and pages is simple with shortcode or by using the Add form button in post editor.
We built WPForms to make it beginner friendly while offering advanced functionalities like email subscription, payments, user registration, and more in the Pro version.
2. MonsterInsights
Jetpack comes with a built-in stats module. However it’s no where near as powerful as Google Analytics. If you want Google Analytics integration in Jetpack, then you have to upgrade to the professional plan which costs $299/year.
MonsterInsights is the top Google Analytics plugin for WordPress with more than 1+ Million active installs, and it has a free version available for all WordPress users.
MonsterInsights allows you to easily install Google Analytics in your WordPress website. It comes with beautiful reporting tools that make it easy for beginners to see where their users are coming from and what they are viewing.
3. UpdraftPlus
Jetpack offers automated daily backups, but they are only available for paid plans. UpdraftPlus is one of the best WordPress backup plugins in the market and a free alternate to Jetpack’s backup feature.
It allows you to easily set up automatic backups for your entire WordPress website.
You just need to set it up once, and then it will automatically create backups. Your backups are stored in remote locations such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and more. You can also restore your website from any previous backups with few clicks.
For details, see our guide on how to How to backup and restore your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus.
4. Akismet
Jetpack has spam filtering feature for paid plans, but you will need at least the personal plan to access basic spam filtering.
Akismet is the best WordPress spam filtering plugin in the market. It automatically filters all your WordPress comments to catch spam. This significantly reduces the number of spam comments that you’ll have to moderate.
For complete set up instructions, see our Akismet guide for WordPress beginners.
5. Sucuri Scanner
Jetpack only scans for malware if you have professional or premium subscription plans. Sucuri scanner provides free malware scanner, blacklist monitoring, file integrity check, post-hacks security actions, and security hardening.
Sucuri is the industry leader in WordPress security and website monitoring. It also offers the best WordPress firewall which blocks suspicious activity even before it reaches your website.
6. Yoast SEO
Jetpack offers limited SEO functionality even for premium plan users. You will need at least professional plan to access all of Jetpack’s SEO features. Yoast SEO is the perfect alternative to Jetpack’s SEO features, and it is the most popular SEO plugin in the market.
The free Yoast SEO plugin gives you complete WordPress SEO tools including site verification, XML sitemaps, SEO preview, Facebook and Twitter preview images, title and meta descriptions, and more.
For complete step by step instructions, see our guide on how to install and set up Yoast SEO plugin.
7. WP to Buffer
WP to Buffer plugin allows you to connect your WordPress site to Buffer and automatically schedule your WordPress posts to share on your social media profiles. It is the best alternative to Jetpack’s publicize feature, which does the same thing.
Buffer is a social media management platform that allows you to schedule your social media posts throughout the day. This saves you time you would otherwise spend on sharing your articles manually on social media.
8. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Yet Another Related Posts plugin is the best WordPress related posts plugin in the market and the perfect alternative to Jetpack’s related posts feature.
It offers more customization options and full control on how and where you display related posts on your website. It even supports custom post types and can add related posts in RSS feeds as well.
9. De:Comments
Decomments is a paid WordPress plugin, which allows you to transform your WordPress comment area by adding more social features to it. Your users can rate comments, share comments on social media, login with their social profiles, earn badges, and more.
This offers a very engaging user experience for comments on your WordPress site. For detailed instructions see our article on how to improve WordPress comments with De:comments.
10. Envira Gallery Lite
WordPress comes with a default way to easily add image galleries. However, the default WordPress gallery is quite limited in functionality. If user clicks on a image it loads in a new page.
Envira Gallery Lite offers the free alternative to Jetpack’s responsive galleries. It allows you to easily create responsive image galleries with carousel popups.
11. Pingdom
Pingdom is not a plugin but a website monitoring tool that you can use as an alternative to Jetpack’s monitoring tool. Pingdom’s free account allows you to monitor 1 website.
It sends instant email notification when your website is down and notifies you when it is up again. You can also monitor your website’s historic uptime by logging into your account.
12. MailChimp
Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to your audiences. If you haven’t started it yet, then see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.
MailChimp is one of the best email marketing services in the world and the perfect alternative to Jetpack’s email subscriptions. The downside of Jetpack’s subscriptions is that it only emails users when you publish a new post. Unlike a real email list, where you can send users weekly or monthly newsletters.
MailChimp is a paid service but they offer a free forever plan for upto 2000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.
13. Cloudflare
Cloudflare is one of the best CDN services that offers free CDN and basic protection against DDOS attacks.
It improves your website’s speed and performance by serving static content through their global CDN. Cloudflare is the perfect replacement for Jetpack’s CDN service which serves your images through their CDN server to optimize performance. It also provides a free alternative to Jetpack’s brute force attack protection.
For detailed instructions see our guide on how to setup free Cloudflare CDN in WordPress.
14. Easy Updates Manager
Easy Updates Manager allows you to replace Jetpack’s automatic plugin update feature. It helps you easily manage all WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates.
From a single dashboard, you can enable or disable automatic updates. You can set specific or all plugin updates to be automatically installed. It can also automatically install theme updates.
For more details, see our guide on how to better manage automatic WordPress updates.
15. WordPress Infinite Scroll
WordPress Infinite Scroll is the perfect alternative to Jetpack’s infinite scroll feature. Just like Jetpack, you will need to add a little code snippet into your theme.
It allows you to add a button that users can click to load more posts, you can also choose to automatically load posts as user scrolls down a page.
For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add load more posts button in WordPress.
16. Shared Counts
Shared Counts is one of the best social media plugins for WordPress. It is super fast and only loads a limited number of top social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Stumbleupon, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
It has multiple button styles, social share count, and total share count feature. You can rearrange the button display order and the plugin can automatically insert buttons in your WordPress posts, pages, and custom post types.
We hope this article helped you find the best alternatives for the Jetpack plugin on your WordPress site. You may also want to see our list of essential WordPress plugins to find other must-have plugins for your website.
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I am a newbie to WP and am building a site following a code-along from a Udemy class. The theme he had us use requires Jetpack. My question is, how can I get around using Jetpack if the theme requires it? I don’t want to use Jetpack and also, if I do ever use Jetpack for a client, do they have to have a WordPress.com account to use that site that has Jetpack installed?
You would want to start by reaching out to the theme’s support for what workarounds are available so you wouldn’t need Jetpack first. If you are forced to require Jetpack then having the users create a WordPress.com account would normally be the best option.
We have a WordPress.com hosted site now $128 / year up from $99. Are all the alternatives to jetpack in your “ultimatewptoolkit’ functional in a WP hosted site? It’s an idle site and we’d like to start building on it. Is there a list of wordpress.com only plugins? I recall that wordpress.org sites are unlimited regarding plugins. If we are limited in plugins, then can we backup and create a hosted wordpress.org type site and dump the backup to the new host?
Yes, our tutorials are for the hosted/WordPress.org sites, all of these should work on a WordPress.org site. We do not have a list for WordPress.com. For transferring your site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-properly-move-your-blog-from-wordpress-com-to-wordpress-org/
I have Jetpack but it’s such a problem to use and even on my wordpress app so I have to go in to the old dashboard anyway. Will these work well with the wordpress app as well?
They shouldn’t cause any issues with the app but if you’re concerned then you can reach out to the plugin’s support to ask if there are any issues
Thanks for the information. Jetpack has been an unmitigated disaster for us – login buttons with broken links and going on corporate retreats with the entire staff. Can’t wait to try out some of the plugins above!
You’re welcome, hope they help
One of the things I like the most about Jetpack is the ability it has for users to subscribe to my blog – they get an email whenever I create a new post. I don’t know of another plugin that does that. I’ve spent the last several hours replacing all of the other features I used Jetpack for except that one feature.
You appear to be using “Subscribe To Comments Reloaded.” Are you satisfied that is working as good or better than the feature Jetpack uses? Will it notify your subscribers automatically whenever you make a post?
Thanks for the helpful article.
For what it sounds like you’re wanting, you would want to look into creating a newsletter. Comments reloaded is to let people know when someone replies to their comment: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-a-daily-and-weekly-email-newsletter-in-wordpress/
One minor correction. Google Analytics is available in JetPack at the Premium level which is only $99/year.
I had the speed problem and one expert suggested to remove Jetpack if not necessary. I removed jetpack, now problems are Top Posts widget, related posts with thumbnails, WordPress dot com connection. Rest I think not necessary. One group member gave your link https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/how-to-add-related-posts-with-a-thumbnail-without-using-plugins/ but that code showing featured image instead of thumbnail. YARPP plugin closed.
Hi Mathukutty,
You can try these other related posts plugins and popular posts plugins.
I have jetpack already installed and using it from 2 years. What are the necessary steps to migrate to alternative plugins.
I really enjoyed this article.
I didn’t realize all the things that JetPack did, because I had almost every one of the alternative plugins already installed!!
So, after uninstalling JetPack, I quickly learned that I NEED JetPack for my WooCommerce shop! Is there any way around that?!
Hi Jackie,
You don’t really need JetPack for your WooCommerce shop. During the set up when it asks you to install JetPack you can just click on Skip this step and continue.
There is no option to skip installing Jetpack with Woocommerce. Nothing works within my Woocommerce settings if I deactivate/uninstall Jetpack. It’s infurating.
Hi Laura,
You can try this, first deactivate JetPack and then make a list of things not working. Then go through them one by one.
Thank you. I am curious if you use jetpack? I use it, but not sure if I want it. I do like that you have posted alternatives.
I’m looking for your review on wordfence, can’t find anything. Thanks
Hi Colleen,
Please see how to install and setup Wordfence Security in WordPress.
Thank you!!
MailChimp is not tied to blog posts. It is an extremely functional email marketing system.
I didn’t know about Sucuri. Also, Pingdom is no longer free and Uptime Robot is probably the best free alternative for monitoring.
Hi Ted,
Pingdom is still offering free uptime monitoring for one website. We have updated the URL so that it takes you directly to that page. Uptime Robot is good alternate as well.
There is one even more important “Con” for Jetpack, at least for Non-US-people:
JetPack collects a lot of data and stores them on US-servers
This is against EU-law (European Union), so it should not be used in EU-Countries
Thanks for sharing that Connie.