Many of our users are business owners who often ask us for plugin suggestions. Having the right set of tools can help you take your business to the next level. In this article, we will share the must have WordPress plugins for business websites in 2018.
1. WPForms
As a business owner, allowing your customers to contact you should be your top priority. WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. This drag & drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other type of online forms with just a few clicks.
We use it on WPBeginner and all of our other sites. There’s a free WPForms Lite version available for those who are looking for a simple solution.
If you want more advanced features, then get the Pro version. Use this WPForms coupon to get 10% off your purchase.
2. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to connect your website with Google Analytics, so you can learn more about your website visitors such as where are they coming from and what are they doing on your website.
You can then optimize your site accordingly to improve your earnings. We have detailed guides on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress and how to use Google Analytics.
MonsterInsights also has a free version. If you would like to take advantage of the advanced features, then you should get the Pro version. Use this MonsterInsights coupon to get 10% off your purchase.
3. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. If you want to grow your email list, then this is a must have WordPress plugin in 2017. Read these case studies to see how much success other businesses are having by using OptinMonster.
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the best email marketing service providers. It allows you to build an email lists and send emails to your subscribers.
It is by far the most beginner friendly platform, with quick and easy setup. It comes with built-in tools to add signup forms and also works well with lead generation software like OptinMonster.
5. Sucuri
Security is going to be a big concern for online business owners in 2017. Sucuri’s web application firewall is probably one of the best protection you can get for your site.
They monitor and protect your site from DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, brute force attacks, and basically every other type of attack.
If you don’t have a firewall on your website, then add one today.
6. BackupBuddy
While we’re talking about security, there’s no better security than having a reliable backup system.
As a business owner, you cannot afford to lose your business and customer data in case of a hardware failure or an attack on your host’s servers. The first thing you should setup on all your WordPress sites is a backup plugin. We recommend using BackupBuddy because it is one of the most reliable and easiest way to backup and restore your WordPress sites with just a few clicks.
7. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It allows you to optimize your WordPress site for search engines.
It not only helps you add meta tags, it optimizes your site as a whole. We have a complete step by step guide on how to install and setup WordPress SEO by Yoast.
8. W3 Total Cache
Speed is one of the most important SEO factors. Faster websites rank higher in Google, this means more visitors for your business website and more conversions.
W3 Total Cache allows you to serve compressed and cached files to your visitors. This reduces the load on your server and your website becomes faster. Take a look at our beginners guide on how to install and setup W3 Total Cache.
9. MaxCDN
Images and other static content on a website take the longest time to load. If you want to make your website even faster, then you will need to use a CDN to deliver your static files. MaxCDN is the most reliable CDN service, and it integrates easily with WordPress. See our guide on how to install and setup WordPress CDN solution MaxCDN on your site.
10. Envira Gallery
While you can easily create image galleries in WordPress without using a plugin, these galleries are fairly basic. Envira Gallery allows you to create beautiful responsive galleries in WordPress.
You can create multiple galleries, add them anywhere on your site, create albums, open images in lightbox popups, and much more. Take a look at our tutorial on how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries with Envira.
11. MemberPress
MemberPress allows you to build online communities on your WordPress website. It is the best WordPress membership plugin that allows you to easily add membership options to your WordPress website.
You can create subscriptions and restrict content to users based on their subscription plans. It works with all popular payment ways and plays nicely with online stores using WooCommerce.
12. Shared Counts
Shared Counts is the best WordPress social media plugin. It allows you to easily add social media sharing buttons to your website. Unlike other social sharing plugins, Shared Counts is super-fast and comes with only the social platforms you actually use.
13. LearnDash
LearnDash is the best WordPress LMS plugin to create and sell online courses from your WordPress website. It has a drag and drop course builder that allows you to quickly add lessons, quizzes, assignments to build your course.
For detailed step by step instructions, see our guide on how to create online courses in WordPress using LearnDash.
14. Quick and Easy FAQs
When launching a new product or website, you may need to add a FAQs section in WordPress. You can add a new page with all the frequently asked questions (FAQs), but in most cases FAQs grows as your product evolves and as your customer base grows.
By adding the FAQ section, you can significantly reduce your support overhead and improve conversion. Take a look at how to add a FAQs section in WordPress.
15. Insert Headers and Footers
While managing your WordPress sites, you may sometimes need to add code snippets to your WordPress site’s header or footer. This means you will have to edit the theme files which could get messy and break up your WordPress theme. Insert Headers and Footer allows you to easily add code snippets to your WordPress site without editing your theme files. Take a look at our tutorial on how to add header and footer code in WordPress.
16. CSS Hero
WordPress themes rely on CSS for the visual appearance of your website. If you want to make customization to your theme, then you will have to learn CSS. This can be time consuming for a business owner.
CSS Hero is a WordPress plugin that allows you to customize any WordPress theme without writing a single line of code. Check out our review of how CSS Hero makes WordPress customization easy for more information.
17. Beaver Builder
As a business owner you may soon realize that placing things differently on your pages can result into more conversions and sales. But how do you create those landing pages without learning to code?
Beaver Builder is a powerful drag and drop page builder tool for WordPress. It allows you to easily create your own page layouts using a simple user interface. See our comparison of the best drag and drop page builders for WordPress for more information.
18. Google Apps for Work
Google Apps for Work is a suite of web applications like email, docs, spreadsheets, etc. Created by Google, this powerful suite of office applications is cheaper, easy to deploy, and hassle free. Most importantly, it allows you to use your own business domain name for emails.
19. Freshbooks
Freshbooks is a cloud based accounting software for professionals, freelancers, and agencies. It allows you to easily send invoices to clients, receive payments, and manage your finances. Take a look at our article about creating invoices for clients using WordPress.
20. SEMRush
As a business owner, you need data to find out what your competitors are doing for their websites. SEMRush allows you to look at the keywords where your competitors are ranking. You can checkout their paid keywords as well as their organic traffic. This way you can optimize your own content and marketing strategy. Also checkout our list of best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use.
21. All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets
Rich Snippets are special markup that you can add to your content and describe your content more precisely to search engines. This information is then used by search engines to show your content differently. For example, star ratings below your product listings, maps when someone searches for your business, and so on. All in One Schema.org rich snippets plugin provides you an easy user interface to generate that markup and use it in your WordPress posts and pages.
Check our guide on how to add rich snippets in WordPress.
22. BirchPress
If you need a solution for your business website where your users can book and pay for appointments, then BirchPress is the solution for you. It allows you to easily add a complete online booking system to your WordPress site.
You may also want to see our guide on 5 best WordPress appointment and booking plugins.
23. OutreachPlus
OutreachPlus is the best email outreach software in the market today. It allows you to manage your email outreach campaigns from a single dashboard like a pro.
You will be able to manage followups, send peronalized emails, send trigger based responses, and more. It is super easy to use and allows you to connect multiple email accounts and see all your outreach emails in one inbox.
24. Slack
Slack is a team management, productivity and communication tool. We use it to communicate with our team spread across different timezones and locations. Slack is more convenient than email, and it can integrate with tons of other online tools you may be using. See our guide on how to integrate Slack with WordPress for more information.
We hope this article helped you find some of the best WordPress plugins for your business website. You may also want to take a look at our guide on 25 most common WordPress mistakes that you want to avoid.
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I heard to many plugins are not good. How many plugins can one safely load on to a website ?
I’m a rookie?
Each website is different so the demands for resources is different (I.e., ecommerce site vs a simple blog site). A common guideline is no more than 20. But the less the better. Regardless of how many you use, after your website is built you need to test it to ensure it runs flawlessly. A big consideration is speed. Speed is important as a lot of people use their smartphones. If it’s slow, not many people will wait for your site to render. Go to Google PageSpeed Insights to test each page. Good luck!
A great list recently republished.
Answering this question: when it comes to WordPress plugins the concern is quality, not quantity.
This list contains some of the highest-quality plugins available for different uses.
Well-made plugins will not noticeably effect or even improve your website’s load time. Poorly-made plugins slow down the website, load unnecessary scripts and code, and even open your website to new vulnerabilities.
Performance is a big giveaway for the novice webmaster. Learn to use browser developer tools and you’ll be able to spot other surprising places poorly-made plugins impact your website. For instance, a client recently asked for a project management plugin. We used one plugin more than a year, but it forced its javascript and css into the front end despite we were only using it in the admin.
Ultimately, if you cannot test the plugin adequately yourself, rely on the community to guide you to reputable developers and plugins. Websites like this weed out undesirable plugins.
DO NOT rely on customer reviews and popularity rankings on theme / plugin websites. These can be inflated and often given before users truly vet the plugin.
Yoast seo is really helping,thank you and i will try other plugin too
This is very helpful information for best plug in results.. It’s very useful
Hi. This is really useful and I do use some of the plug ins you mentioned. However most of the plugins seem to be geared towards blogs or shopping websites. I just want a plug in where my customers can click on a few products they like the look of to either compare them side by side or add them to a list of ‘favourites’. I only seem to be able to find these plug ins if you have a full suite which allows customers to purchase online which my website doesn’t. I wonder if anyone can suggest anything to help me out?
Thanks!
hi, you can use woocommerce and u can use alot of gateway for payment.
This is a great list, but would someone who is a solo blogger who just started blogging last week need all of the applications out of the gate? It seems excessive if that is the case.
If not is there an article that directed towards beginners?
Hey ikomrad,
We believe that these are essential plugins for all users even those who are just starting. If you feel that these are too many, then add those that you need right now, and add others as your website grows.
This is certainly a great list! Take it week by week and build upon what you’ve got. You’ll grow to love everything WP can do
Hi
I’d like to purchase a travel wordpress theme. Everything is ok with the theme exept a layout. I am not so happy with it. It has a wide layout while I need a layout with 2 columns. Is it possible to chenge the layout option of a premium theme with Beaver Builder or another page builder plagin?
Yes, it is possible to change layout of a single page. To change layout across the theme you will need to use theme options. Ask theme developers if their theme supports two column layout before making the purchase.
Thanks, already using some of these plugins. Salute to your efforts for WordPress community.
Thank you, these lists are awesome
You mention Slack. I use it at work. But which slack plugin excactly do you advice using, and for what usage?
does optinmonster do same functions as contact forms? or can 1 use them both?
Just use one of them, they are the same.
I have just finished my first page and incorporated some of these plugins!!!! Works great, check my work of art
So, if we must have this 24 plugins for business.
And some plugins are free and some are paid.
After a quick research… We Need To Invest Around $4,379 Annually?
Hi Carlos,
Some businesses may not need some of these plugins, while others will find them absolutely must have. You will need to find the perfect balance that fits in your budget while giving you best results.
Nicely done! I’d say you missed a few, but well done!
I would like for my home page to show posts. In addition, show the ABOUT page. How can I get a connection for that page?
Sco
Sir, I want to increase the upload file size which is just 2MB and I tried the code memory-limit -100M
Upload max size -100M and so on in wp-admin but the file size remains as it is. Can you help me
why my head menu is showing invalid. please help me i am a newbie to website.
Hello,
Thank you for sharing this awesome collection of 20 must have WordPress plugins.
Yoast SEO is one of my favorite plugin. It helps you to optimize your meta tags without entering into coding. I use this plugin in my website.
Keep updating!!!
thanks.
it really helpful
Do you know of a plugin that creates images that flip to another image? that is free?
Quite Helpful !!
Thankyou
Thank you. This is extremely helpful. I am not a beginner to websites, but I am to Word Press, so this helps.
quick question:
Does Word Press have online chat? I work in Africa 6 months a year as a volunteer and sometimes I get stuck without any help.
Thanks
Kathy Slamp
Hi Kathy,
Wordpress unfortunately doesn’t have an online chat but there are support forums.
Wow, what an awesome, informative and insightful post! Lol
Love it!
Download most of the plugins, didn’t know some of these exist.
Thanks
Ralpheal
Hi, I am looking for a FREE contact form that gives you an option to upload a file.
Hi Loren,
“Contact form 7” is one of the best plugins available.
It has an option to add a file upload section as well and is quite easy to setup.
-Ollie
Are all these plugins free?
No, some of them are paid plugins and services.
If you mention whether it’s paid or free in the title/heading itself, it would save readers’ time to find the same out themselves, and it’d add to the beauty of the article.
hmm good
Thanks, i appreciate.
Thanks for Sharing about CSS Hero. Please suggest plugins/themes for making a tutorial site with page navigation,pagination and left/right frame for easy navigation.
hello…I make use of a very good page scroll id named from the wordpress plug in . It is easier for me for Vertical and/or horizontal scrolling,simple back-to-top links or complex single-page website navigation and so on .It is absolutely free,and would be very helpful in making a tutorial site.
Very nice list
Thanks mate for your advice!! It’s very helpful
Such great information. So glad I found this site!
Life seems so easy after reading this post. Great resource seriously
Thanks.
Thank you for you post. I can not download Back Up Buddy Plugin. Can you please help? I just can’t find it. Thanks!
Helpful. Thank you.
Plugins add additional functionalities to sites . This is why for any site using plugin is compulsory . Now question rises up which plugins are very essential ?
There are many source from where we can get answers .
Here the answer is on wordpress plugins must have for business websites .
This article is very much tonic for which purpose it has been written . Thank you author for sharing such nice article here . One can also jut have a look
for getting some of the best plugins
Hey man great post!
I’m new to word press and some of these plugins will come in super handy. Going to mess around with OptinMonster and experiment with some of the others.
Great Post!
Thanks for sharing top word press plugins and these plugins are necessary
for new blogger for SEO purposes as well as designing their website
I am currently using Optin Monster plugin and so far it is good. Will try these plugins as experiment.
I would definetly add Trello to this list but overall a complete list. Also another great plugin to display live, updating data from your desktop Excel spreadsheets in your WordPress website or blog … that is iPushPull WordPress plugin
So.. Why optinmonster and not SumoMe or Thrive Leads?
Primarily because OptinMonster is more powerful and the best performing one in the market. See the full comparison here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/best-wordpress-popup-plugin/
That’s not to say that SumoMe or ThriveLeads are bad options. But in our list, we picked the ones that we like. There are dozens of alternatives to just about every single tool mentioned in the article
Thanks for sharing!!!
I would definitely use BirchPress and Slack plugins.! Thanks for the list. Is there any plugin available to dynamically change Home page ? (Instead of showing recent posts OR static home page!) Thanks.
A couple of plugins I’ll definitely be looking at thank you. Also, do you have a suggestion for a plugin that will allow me to post PDFs on a page so that visitors can view and download if needed. Having trouble finding one to do it. Thanks
Please take a look at how to add a PDF viewer in WordPress.
Great resources! Thanks for the list! There are tons that will really stand out. I think I’ll test out that testimonial widget.
Shareaholic plugin for content amplification!
if we add these plugins in newly host site.. these will make the website more heavy. and take lot of time to load the page..
No, actually that’s not true. Please see how many plugins should you install on your WordPress site for detailed explanation.
I’d like to have seen any of the thrive themes landing page plugin in that list.
The first Q from SILVIA, the thrive themes has some ‘themes’ within the collection that allow “apprentice pages” effectively private for members only.
& Totally agree with Mark wordfence is rocking right now.
Great list, I use many of these and they work great. I might add Trello for organising tasks and business related activities.
I am now considering whether I should start using OptinMonster, looks like a useful tool and at an appealing price, thank you!
Excellent post, very informative.
I would like to add a Login configuration for my clients.on my WP site.
I need to have a private contact with them to share documents such as graphics and drawing.
I can’t see in the list above.
Thanks ahead for your feedback.
I will recommend “custom login form”. I also use it for my website and so far it has been great using this plugin.
Good list of plugins. Everyone has opinions. IMHO the best backup system is Blog Vault. The best security is Wordfence Premium.
Don’t think you should add them all at once. Some nice plugins but adding them all will slow your website down en drop in the SEO rankings. Test with plugins and if you don’t use them delete them from your WordPress site.