Looking for the best WordPress plugins to take your business to the next level in 2020?
There are over 55,000+ WordPress plugins that you can choose from. This makes it extremely overwhelming for new users to find the right plugin for their website.
We are often asked by readers for the best WordPress plugin suggestions for SEO, social media, backups, speed, etc.
Being the largest WordPress resource site, our experts test over a thousand best paid and free WordPress plugins every year, so we can make it easy for our users (you) to find the best solutions.
Having the right set of WordPress plugins and tools can help you grow your online business. In this article, we have shared our expert pick of the must-have WordPress plugins for business websites in 2020.
Note: these are the plugins that our team installs when we start a new blog or make a new website for our own businesses.
1. WPForms
Every website needs a contact form because it makes it easy for your visitors to get in touch with you. WPForms is the most user-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress.
This drag & drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, payment forms,
surveys, polls, and basically all other types of online forms with just a few clicks.
WPForms integrates with all popular marketing and payment platforms, so you can build powerful forms in less than 5 minutes.
It even comes with options to help you create a custom WordPress user registration form and login page.
We use WPForms on the WPBeginner website and all of our other websites. But we’re not alone. Over 3 million websites use WPForms, and they have consistently maintained a 4.9 out of 5-star rating average for over 3 years now.
There’s a free WPForms Lite version available for those who are looking for a simple solution.
If you are seriously looking to grow your business, then we recommend getting the Pro version because it comes with all the powerful features you need to boost your lead generation efforts. Use this WPForms coupon to get 50% off your purchase.
Alternative: Formidable Forms is an excellent alternative for creating advanced solution-focused WordPress forms.
2. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to “properly” connect your website with Google Analytics, so you can see exactly how people find and use your website.
The best part is that it shows you all the important stats that matter right inside your WordPress dashboard.
You can then optimize your website accordingly to increase your traffic, subscribers, and revenue. We have detailed guides on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress, how to use Google Analytics to enable eCommerce tracking, and how to track user engagement.
MonsterInsights has a free version, but the true power of it only unlocks when you upgrade to the premium version.
You can use our MonsterInsights coupon to get 50% off your purchase.
MonsterInsights is used by over 2 million websites.
3. Yoast SEO
SEO helps you get more visitors from search engines to your website. While WordPress is SEO friendly out of the box, there is so much more you can do to increase your website traffic using SEO best practices.
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugin of all time. Out of all the WordPress SEO plugins, Yoast offers the most comprehensive solution with all the features and tools that you need to improve your on-page SEO.
It helps you add meta tags, generate sitemaps, connect your site to Google Search Console, optimize it for social media, and more.
Yoast comes with a powerful Redirect feature that lets you easily create 301 redirects which is extremely helpful. It also detects change of URLs and create auto-redirects, so you don’t have any broken links on your website.
For complete SEO setup on your website, follow our ultimate WordPress SEO tutorial for beginners with step by step instructions.
Alternative: All in One SEO Pack is a great alternative for Yoast SEO.
4. Constant Contact
Email is the most effective and most reliable marketing tool at your disposal as a business owner. It allows you to stay in touch with your users even after they leave your website. This is why we recommend every business owner to start building an email list right away.
Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world.
Their platform allows you to build an email list and send beautiful email newsletters to your subscribers.
It offers a quick and easy setup for non-techy users. It also works well with popular lead generation plugins for WordPress like OptinMonster and WPForms.
Alternatives: SendinBlue and ConvertKit are good alternatives if you want something more advanced, but they are more pricey.
5. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software in the market. It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers.
This WordPress plugin and application helps you get more email subscribers, fast.
OptinMonster comes with pre-made high-converting opt-in forms that you can easily customize with their drag & drop builder. Their powerful display targeting features allow you to personalize the campaigns for each user, so you can show the right message at the right time.
It’s a great solution for bloggers, business websites, and eCommerce websites. Basically, if you want to make more money from your website traffic, then you need OptinMonster.
It helps you recover abandoned cart sales, convert website visitors, and grow your email list. Read these case studies to see how much success other businesses are having by using OptinMonster.
We use OptinMonster on WPBeginner and our other websites.
6. Sucuri
Security should be a top priority for all online business owners. Sucuri offers a WordPress security plugin and web application firewall that 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 you need to add one today.
To learn more on how to strengthen the security of your website and protect your business, see our ultimate WordPress security guide with step by step instructions for beginners.
Sucuri help us block hundreds of thousands of attacks every month on WPBeginner.
7. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the most popular WordPress backup plugin on the market. It allows you to set up automatic backups and safely store them on a remote location like Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Rackspace, FTP, email, and more.
It also makes it super easy to restore your website from a backup. Their base plugin is free, but they also have a paid plan with extra features and priority support.
Alternative: BackupBuddy and VaultPress (Jetpack Backups) are also excellent solutions, but they are paid only.
8. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. It allows you to instantly improve your WordPress website speed and performance with no technical skills required.
It automatically turns on recommended WordPress caching settings like gzip compression, page cache, and cache pre-loading. You can also turn on optional features like lazy loading images, CDN support, DNS pre-fetching, minification, and more to further improve page load times.
Most importantly, WP Rocket doesn’t wait for someone to request a page to save it in the cache. It automatically crawls and build your website cache which results in an instant performance boost.
WP Rocket also offers Imagify which is a free image optimization service to help you speed up your website even further.
This is by far the easiest and most beginner-friendly caching plugin. The only downside is that it’s paid only.
Alternative: WP Super Cache is free, but it’s not as powerful or easy.
9. Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is the best drag and drop page builder for WordPress. It allows you to easily customize your website design and create custom page layouts without writing any code.
Business owners love it because it lets them create completely custom landing pages within minutes without having to hire a developer.
Alternative: Divi page builder plugin is a great alternative.
10. MemberPress
MemberPress allows you to build online communities and membership sites using WordPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin in the market.
You can create subscriptions and restrict content to users based on their subscription plans. It works with all popular payment solutions and plays nicely with online stores using WooCommerce. For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to make a membership website in WordPress.
11. RafflePress
RafflePress is the best WordPress giveaway plugin on the market. It allows you to instantly increase your website traffic, get more social media followers, and email subscribers with viral giveaways and contests.
RafflePress comes with an easy drag and drop giveaway builder along with proven giveaway templates that you can use to create a giveaway that attracts visitor’s attention.
To enter the giveaway, website visitors must use their email address. This helps you get more subscribers for your email newsletter.
RafflePress incentivizes users to follow your social profiles and share the giveaway with their friends to get more entries into the contest. This helps you increase social media engagement.
The word-of-mouth marketing helps you get more traffic, FASTER! This results in more followers, more sales, and more revenue!
You can easily connect your social profiles, WordPress form plugins, and all popular marketing platforms and CRMs.
RafflePress has a free version called RafflePress lite that you can get started with. If you want more powerful features to skyrocket your growth, then you need to use RafflePress Pro.
WPBeginner users can use our RafflePress coupon code: wpbeginner20 to get an additional 20% off.
12. 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.
It’s not a drag & drop page builder like BeaverBuilder that helps you build custom layouts. Rather it helps you customize any WordPress theme available in the market within minutes to match your needs.
13. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best WordPress maintenance mode and coming soon page plugin that helps you collect leads and grow your followers even when your website is not available.
If your site is under construction, then you can use it to create beautiful coming soon landing pages. It includes features like integration with your email marketing services, countdown timer, social media integration, and dozens of templates to choose from.
14. 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, and assignments to build your course.
For detailed step by step instructions, see our guide on how to create online courses in WordPress using LearnDash.
15. G Suite
G Suite is a suite of web applications like email, docs, spreadsheets, etc. Created by Google, this powerful set of office applications is cheaper, easy to deploy, and hassle free.
It allows you to save costs on software licenses, hardware, hiring IT staff, managing backups, and more. Most importantly it allows you to use professional email addresses with your own business domain name right inside Gmail.
Alternative: You can also get a free business email from your WordPress hosting provider or use Microsoft Office365.
16. SEMRush
SEMRush is an all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals and business owners. It comes with powerful tools to help you improve your SEO, paid traffic strategy, social media, and content & PR strategy.
It also helps you gather competitive intelligence on your competitors, so you can outrank them and dominate your industry.
It helps you do keyword research, backlink audit, track brand mentions, spy on competitors, discover best-performing posts and pages on social media, ad strategy analysis, and more.
These short paragraphs are not enough to describe the true power of SEMRush. It’s a must have tool in our list for serious business owners.
17. LiveChat
LiveChat Inc is the best live chat support software for businesses and e-commerce websites. It is super easy to use and allows you to quickly add live chat on your WordPress website.
It has tons of customization options, and it comes with a mobile app, so you can provide real-time support.
It integrates with your existing support software, CRM, email marketing, and other tools. Most importantly, it loads fast and offers a great user experience.
Alternative: Sendinblue Chat is another popular service which lets you connect chat, CRM, SMS, Facebook, and email in one platform.
18. Pretty Links Pro
Pretty Links Pro is one of the best link management plugins for WordPress. It allows you to easily manage affiliate links while making it easy make your affiliate links short and memorable for sharing.
It is the perfect tool for affiliate marketers, podcasters, business owners, and others who want to easily create short URLs in WordPress.
Alternative: ThirstyAffiliates is an excellent alternative with lots of powerful features.
19. Shared Counts
Shared Counts is the best WordPress social media plugin that allows you to easily add beautiful social sharing buttons on your website.
It also shows share counts, which helps you add social proof to your website.
While there are many paid solutions available, this free plugin beats them all in code quality and performance.
We use SharedCount on a lot of our website because it offers an easy out of the box solution for both beginners and developers.
20. WP Mail SMTP
By default, WordPress uses the PHP mail function to send emails. The problem is that either WordPress hosting companies don’t have this feature setup properly, or they block it to prevent abuse.
This basically means that you and your users may not receive important email notifications from your WordPress site.
WP Mail SMTP solves this problem by sending WordPress emails using a proper SMTP mail server. To learn more, see our article on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.
Pro tip: The paid version called WP Mail SMTP Pro comes with white glove setup and more features. Basically, their support staff will set it up and connect it to use your SMTP service provider.
21. Insert Headers and Footers
While managing your WordPress site, you may sometimes need to add code snippets to your WordPress header or footer for verification, inserting ad retargeting scripts, etc.
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.
This free plugin is extremely handy for business owners.
22. WPML
By default, WordPress does not allow you to easily create a multilingual website. This is a challenge for businesses that cater to a multilingual customer base in different geographic locations.
This is where you’ll need WPML. It is a WordPress multilingual plugin that allows you to easily create multi-lingual websites with WordPress.
It is very easy to use, SEO friendly, and helps you easily create content in different languages.
Alternative: TranslatePress is an excellent alternative that’s growing fast.
23. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress used by over 4 million websites.
It comes with all the powerful features that you need to create an online store.
Over the last few years, WooCommerce has established itself as the most dominant eCommerce plugin for WordPress. There’s even a WooCommerce ecosystem now with dedicated WooCommerce hosting, WooCommerce themes, and WooCommerce plugins available.
Companion plugin: TrustPulse helps you instantly win customer trust with social proof and FOMO.
Alternative: BigCommerce is a fully-hosted headless eCommerce platform for WordPress. It offers high scalability and low maintenance for serious store owners.
24. Nextiva
Nextiva is the best business phone service in terms of features and ease of use. They allow you to get a business phone number for your website which comes with advanced call routing, unlimited free domestic calling, voicemail to email or text, online faxing, and more.
The best part is that you can receive calls from your business phone number straight to your cell phone which is excellent for small businesses. You can also set business hours, so you are not getting disturbed during holidays or non-work hours.
Their platform also offers CRM, live chat, online surveys, and other communication features. You can manage it all in a simple web-based admin panel which makes it easy for small business owners to easily manage everything like a pro.
We use Nextiva VOIP for our business because it’s one of the most affordable and most reliable business phone service that grows with your business.
Alternative: RingCentral is another highly recommended phone service and business voip provider.
Bonus Tools
Aside from the top 24 WordPress plugins and tools that we mentioned above, we also use and recommend the following tools to better manage our WordPress sites:
- Grammarly – excellent grammar checking tool that comes with plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement, and more.
- PublishPress – this plugin makes it easy for us to manage our editorial workflow in WordPress.
- Antispam Bee – An excellent plugin to improve comments section with reduced spam on your website. It works particularly well when used alongside with Akismet.
- Adobe Photoshop – this makes it easy for us to create blog thumbnails and other images for our articles.
- MaxCDN – this helps us speed up our website by geographically spreading our content to multiple servers (see: what is a CDN)
- Envira Gallery – we use this plugin to help us create better galleries with albums.
- Codeable – a platform that helps you work with vetted WordPress developers to troubleshoot problems and make customizations.
This concludes our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.
Depending on your business, you may not need to use all the WordPress plugins and tools mentioned in our list, but it’s pretty common for our readers to end up using at least 15 to 18 solutions that we have mentioned.
Now that you have the best WordPress plugins, you may also want to see our article on how to increase your website traffic (27 proven tips).
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
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.