Looking for the best WordPress plugins to take your business to the next level in 2019?
There are over 54,000+ 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 free and premium 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 2019.
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 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 2 million websites use WPForms, and they have consistently maintained a 4.9 out of 5 star rating average for over 2 years now.
There’s a free WPForms Lite version available for those who are looking for a simple solution.
If you are a 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.
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 Pro 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.
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 lists and send beautiful email newsletters to your subscribers.
It is 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.
WP-Rocket also offer 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 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 get more followers, email subscribers, and website traffic with viral giveaways and contests.
Basically, users participate in a contest or giveaway by performing viral social actions like Tweeting, following social profiles, subscribing to your email newsletter, referring a friend, and more.
RafflePress comes with an easy drag and drop giveaway builder. It allows you to easily connect your social profiles, WordPress form plugins, and all popular marketing platforms and CRMs.
It comes with built-in fraud protection and ready-made templates that are proven to drive huge results. It also has free version RafflePress lite with fewer features.
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.
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 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.
Alternative: Ahrefs is an excellent alternative.
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 stay connected while on the go.
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.
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 who cater to a multi-lingual customer base in different geographic locations.
This is where you’ll need WPML. It is a WordPress multi-lingual 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 – excellent plugin to reduce comment spam on your website 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.
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.
Great great great
Glad you like our content
I was curious why you didn’t mention MailChimp as an option for mailing lists?
We vary our recommendations by article and felt the email providers in this article would be better suited for a business website.
Not a bad list of plugins but I think you need to disclose that 4 of the plugins are owned by you guys. Especially as you have 3 of your plugins mentioned in the first on the list.
Cheers Herb
Apologies that you feel we did not make this clear, we’ll be sure to look into clarifying that
Hi, I found the list useful and an insight as to what is available to improve WP.
One thing that I think that you should have made clear is that the first two plugins are ones that you contribute to.
To avoid a ‘conflict of interest’ scenario perhaps you should mention this in your review?
Thanks
Apologies that you feel we didn’t make this clear enough, we’ll be sure to look into clarifying this more
Great article but what about forums plugin ?
For our recommended forum plugins, you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/5-best-forum-plugins-for-wordpress/
Is there a plugin for creating a gateway page instead of just showing the homepage of my blog?
If you mean a landing page you may want to take a look at our article: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/best-wordpress-landing-page-plugins-compared/
Well, I have really fallen behind the old eight ball… I don’y use any of these particular plugins. I’m also a little amazed I didn’t see Elementor in this list.
There are a lot of good plugins in the repository, and we couldn’t include all of them
Not sure how you can recommend Beaver Builder above Elementor. The latter is now miles ahead – both in terms of features and ease of use.
We find Beaver Builder to be more flexible, and you can create better custom websites with it.
Regarding Elementor, it was recently brought to our attention that Elementor Pro is not GPL compatible, so we have decided to leave it out of this list.
We’re hoping that Elementor respects the WordPress community and adopt the GPL license soon.
I commented only to say I respect you for this move. Elementor Pro should be GPL.
Hey, AJ. It looks like it’s been a while since you’ve had an active Beaver Builder license. If you want, shoot us a message and we can send you a free trial copy of the current version. We’ve added a LOT more features and functionality over the last few months/years.
great article, but I cannot understand why you chose yoast over seopress..
Yoast is widely supported, and they have done a great job in keeping up to date with modern SEO changes.
Thanks to best plugins i am very geatfuly to you
You’re welcome Nicholas
G Suite isn’t a plugin
We mentioned few items in this list that aren’t true WordPress plugins, but are essential for business websites.
Great article, but needs some updates. Shared Count, for instance, has not been updated in 8 months. I guess there are similar, newer plugins that serve the same purpose.
Hey Roberto,
Plugin authors only make updates to the plugins when it’s truly needed. 8 months is an acceptable time. WordPress considers a plugin outdated when it hasn’t been updated in 2 years.
I have just finished my first page and incorporated some of these plugins!!!! Works great, check my work of art
Glad you found these useful Hosein
Updraft plugin is a must have. It save me a lot time. Very simple to use. Back up, then if You will need it to restore just pres a button and your site is up and runing again.
Thanks for sharing how well the plugin worked for you
This is an absolutely great list! i am already using some of these plugins. your efforts are too good. keep sharing this type of valuable content.
Glad we could bring some of the other plugins to your attention
This is very helpful information for best plug in results.. It’s very useful.
Thanksto your efforts for WordPress community.
Glad our article was helpful
Great list of plugins, I agree no more than 20 plugins installed… I tend to have no more than 12
We certainly understand having a lower number of plugins installed but, going by number is not the best method. We would recommend taking a look at our recommendation here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/how-many-wordpress-plugins-should-you-install-on-your-site/
I would suggest 2 other WordPress plugins !
Better Robots.txt to optimize your robots.txt (honestly, the best one) and Bialty to auto-add Alt texts from Yoast !
Cheers !
Thanks for letting us know, we’ll be sure to take a look at them
What is the best plugin to use for building a fallible application from with a signature box. This must comply with the Electronic Transaction Act in Canada.
Hey Matthew,
WPForms comes with a signature addon that you can use to accept electronic signatures.
Is there a blog post on plugins to use to transfer your WordPress to a new site. And a how to guide? I got a new site and I’m trying to transfer or duplicate content without diverting the site. It’s a.com site to the new .co.za site. I’m changing hosts and would like to transfer files on my own. Thank you.
Please see our guide on how to move your WordPress site to a new host.
HI, I am new to this and am having a few issues. We had someone set up our website and I have had little to no training. We are having an issue with our newsletter not working, I believe it is probably because I don’t have a plugin or the right plugin. Can someone answer this question?
Today Syed is my lucky day!!! I found your site!!!!!!
THANK YOU – Can I hug you??
One Question – what plugin (s) [wpDataTables?] would you recommend to establish 150 questions in 10 groups where customer can read questions – open help file to understand Q and answer from 1 to 10 may be in dots 10 is best. . And the result will be shown for each group calculated or in total of 150 answers in graphs being selected by user. That would be full version – I can also as sample say 10 questions and result will be shown in graphs like excel.
If anybody could help me to find that plugin. I would celebrate
and praise your name!
Hi Ben,
We can’t think of any plugin that can help you do that. You’ll probably need to hire a developer to write a custom plugin for this functionality.
it’s really helpful, I’ve installed the header and footer plugin. saving a lot of time easy to install and work. thank you
Amazing plugins for a business website!
Hi,
I am buliding a WordPress Food Blog for my wife , and Have a doubt,
I installed and activated ” Google Analytics for WordPress Dashboard(GADWP)”
Also
Google Analytics for wordpress by MonsterInsights ” is active.
Can you tell me which to keep , or we can keep both , the better one and advantages over each other.
Expect a quick reply
Regards,
Suresh
Hi Suresh,
You should choose one of them.
It’s really helpful. I just installed a few plugins, I will try the rest.
All plugins are really very useful. WordPress has made it really easy to apply different features with the help of plugins.
Thank you for a very detailed article, learned a lot of new services!
hi, my question can i use Yoast seo and jet pack together i am using jet pack for users to follow the comments and to get the analytics reports there in dashboard currently our blog is using cloudflare and wp rocket for speed and security, i am so confused in using jet pack,
another problem is profile images in comments and author box how to set our images and we are using wp monsters settings currently but how to our image in author profile please guide.
Thanks for sharing this informative post. it is very helpful for beginner.
Please am just new in this system.
How do I get this plugin working in my website?
For that paid for a personal plan and business plan, is it possible for the person to use this plugins in his site?
Hi Victor,
You are probably using WordPress.com. Please see our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org vs free WordPress.com blog.
Very good list. Would you be able to create a list of free plugins and services for newbie WordPress developers?
Hi Lance-Desmond,
Some of these plugins have free versions as well. This includes MonsterInsights, WPForms, Yoast SEO, and more.
Thanks for sharing informative post. it is very helpful for beginner
Very nice list! About back up plugin why not consider also BackWPUp plugin? It’s a complete back up solution for WordPress, free and pro version available. give it a try!
Thanks
Hi, Is there a wordpress plugin that would help us post links on our website based on the recent/ general interest of a particular user or whatever the user has been recently looking for.
Hi!
I really need the social sharing viewer! I need the same plugin that you have in your website where all people can see how many times the article is shared. Can you tell me what’s the name of the plugin that you use?
Thanks man!
Hey Lorenzo,
We use a custom plugin made specifically for WPBeginner website. Please see our list of social media plugins that you can try.
Is there a WordPress theme or plugin to create a website like Fiverr but the seller can create its teamwork (all team members can access the seller’s account)?
Hi Bassem,
Please see our guide on how to create a micro-job website like Fiverr in WordPress.
I wanted to use WPForms for my payment form as I don’t need a login or a cart. Unfortunately, it does not handle taxes
What plugin would you suggest that handles taxes, coupons, custom fields and stripe & paypal? I don’t want something complicated like WooCommerce but just a payment form.
Thanks!
You don’t mention the cost of these plug-ins. I’m trying to do a estimation of the start up costs for our new website.
Hi,
I am building my Ecommerce store now and can you recommend a plugin where people can create and/or log in to “My Account” page using their name and email address? This is the place where they get to see their orders status or changing their billing address as such. Do you have one for recommendation? Thank you!
regards
Hi Eden,
If you are using WooCommerce, then it already has that feature.
Hello
Thank you for all your advice. All your videos on youtube are also great and really helpful.
I just need help on a couple of things as I am new to WordPress.
What Facebook Like plugin can I use? I need a widget and plugin for my viewers to access and like my Fb. I had the Facebook Light Box, but it generated a whole lot of problems causing my Pages not to load. Bluehost assisted me in finding the problem, but advised that I remove the plugin.
Also, do you have all you videos on your website or on YouTube. Can you provide me with a link to all your videos on your site as I am finding this difficult to locate. Thanks again.
Hi Risha,
Please see our guides on how to add Facebook like button and how to add Facebook page plugin in WordPress.
You can subscribe to our YouTube Channel and watch all our video tutorials.
It’s really helpful
Thank you. Nice list.
Can I adjust the size of a sound player plugin. I have several installed in our page but when I adjust the lenght of them will always go bcak to their original size.
Also, will you be able to restore a hacked page with no bakcup of it? I, so, please let me know pricing.
Thanks for your help!
can yoat seo and All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets work together ? or must i only have one of them ?
Hi Rivash,
Yes, they can work together.
Hi,
I’ve found your site WP for beginners extremely useful and written in simple to understand non tekky language (awesome as you Americans say). I did find this section re plugins scary however, because of the price of everything and quite off putting. If I used all those plugins recommended here it would cost a small fortune. Would it be cheaper to pay for WordPress.com business plan and have much of the work done for me and with support? It would be nice to see comparisons with the free plugins, if there are any. Somewhat confused!
Hi Bernie,
You don’t need to use all the plugins. You can choose which plugins you can afford. Also some of the plugins also have free versions that would work just fine as well. You can then upgrade to the paid version as your business grows.
Hi, Im looking for a wordpress plugin that can keep a list of customers and remind me and the customer when there boiler is due serviced annually. Iv looked at some CRM plugins but not found anything that can do what i need. Anyone know of anything that could do that?
Hey, can anyone suggested must tools or plugin for wordpress personal site. just started a new one, and really lost now.
Using Elementor page builder . so easy make a website without write a single code
Hi,
Usually, I never left comments on posts but this one is just perfect.
All these plugins are just pure gold.
Thanks again !
Is jet pack and yoast plug in same?
Do I need to install both ?
Hey Ashu,
No they are not. Yoast SEO is a WordPress SEO plugin. JetPack is a suite of many different plugins and tools packed together. You can install JetPack at any time. However, you should install Yoast SEO right away as it will help you improve SEO as you add new content to your site.