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.
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 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 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: wpbeginner25 to get an additional 25% 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.
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 explaination.
Thank you
What pop-up maker would you recommend? I’m looking for one easily customizable, especially on mobile vs. desktop. Thank you.
You would want to take a look at OptinMonster for popups and other conversion tools
Which media library folder plugin would you recommend? Can’t find any that have really good reviews… Filebird is breaking our site…
Unless I hear otherwise, we do not have a recommended plugin for that purpose at the moment
Thanks was just looking for a multilingual plugin and found it here. Great job. Keep on the good work.
You’re welcome, glad our recommendation could help
Hi WPB
Great tutorial, as they all are. I have used your tutorials to learn WP and starting to build my site.
I’ve used most of the plugins you’ve suggested and I’d like to give a shoutout to John from Seedprod who patiently helped me with a query I had a few days ago.
Thank you WPB for your great work and support. You’ve opened up a whole new world to many people!
Thank you, glad our recommendations and John were helpful
I have 4 out of all these plugins in my WordPress site. I am looking to install WooCommerce for my business site this week.
Great guide for beginners really. This will help a lot of people.
Glad you’re using our recommended plugins, we hope this article does help many users
Wow.. Interesting read. I’m getting there step by step
Thank you, we hope our guides can make these steps easier
A great collection of plugins I myself use 5 plugins from this list on my business website and WP SMTP Plugin is happened to be the lifesaver for my emails by protecting them from the scary spam folder
Thank you, glad you use some of our recommended plugins
Great article & thanks for breaking this down. Saves a lot of time not having search thru all those plugins when you guys set me on the right path.
Thank you and you’re welcome, glad our article could be helpful
Hi ! Good and helpful write up
Thank you, glad you like our writeup
Thank you guys, so much for all of your advice. To a newby, it’s so great to have so much help. I’m looking for “something”, i don’t even know if it’s a plug-in. Maybe you can point me in the right direction. I’d like for people to be able to access documents that can be filled out online, and submitted. Like job applications, contracts, and other things like that. Thanks, so much.
It may vary based on your specific needs but you would want to take a look at WPForms
Thanks for awesome post
You’re welcome, glad you liked our post
Such a wonderful article for the proper knowledge about word press
Thanks & keep going
Thank you for your kind words
good day, I want to create a membership website and i want my customers should be registered by group by group and each each of them should have account. please help me am new
For what you’re wanting you would want to take a look at membership plugins that we recommend here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/5-best-wordpress-membership-plugins-compared/
Do you guys have an article that lists the plugins used on this website?
We have our blueprint page you can take a look at here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/
Thank you so much for the detailed list! Must have really taken you a while to compile such a comprehensive list. It was really helpful and I found at least 6-7 plugins here that I can use to increase the functionality of my website.
Glad our list could be helpful
Lets say I have a couple online businesses, is there a plug in to add custom tabs (not just for reviews and specs) or a banner at the top of the web page to redirect traffic? Thank you!
Depending on how your theme is styled you could use the menu to point to your different sites if that’s what you’re wanting.
Nice Article …
Thanks a lot
Thank you, glad you liked our content
I use wpforms for contact forms, yoast for better seo and neuronto for AI translation on my wordpress
Thanks for sharing the plugins you’re using
Hi guys
What do you recommend for creating WordPress cloning and creating staging websites for testing and development purposes? Have you tried WP Staging or Duplicator plugin?
We normally recommend duplicator for moving/copying a site: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-move-wordpress-to-a-new-host-or-server-with-no-downtime/
I’m looking for a PRESS ROOM plugin where we can have on site articles, links to articles elsewhere about us, images to download and more. Suggestions?
Thanks.
Rather than a plugin, you would normally want to manually create that type of page depending on how you want it styled
please I need a plugin that will enable me to create a chat forum for my site. when there can be an interaction or discussion where every member can contribute. what plugin can I use. need a free one, still in the leaning process.
and please, thank you, I have follow you guide and have completed my blog, I want to start adding all the needed plugins. thanks a lot
For options for forum plugins, you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/5-best-forum-plugins-for-wordpress/
I want to build a website where a user inputs data and I report it through tables and graphs. What plugin would I need to use?
Unless I hear otherwise, we do not have a specific plugin to recommend for this at the moment. We will certainly keep an eye out for possible options.
What plugin do you recommend to add in a video…I am wanting to reference a Ted Talk video on my site
You should be able to embed a video without a plugin using the method in our article: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-easily-embed-videos-in-wordpress-blog-posts/
I want to create a professional blog with four features: 1) comments section; 2) subscription service; 3) professional bio; and, 4) email address for me on the blog. Which plug-ins do I need?
Comments are on WordPress by default, for the other questions you may want to take a look at 4 in the list, and our other articles:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-add-an-author-info-box-in-wordpress-posts/
and
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-create-a-free-business-email-address-in-5-minutes-step-by-step/
Amazing, really helpful articles you are always providing us with <3
Thank you
Hey WPB,
Just wanted to say thanks so much for including Beaver Builder on this list. Much appreciated!
Glad we could feature your helpful plugin
Nice Article. Will surely help me in setting up my new website
Thank you
hello sir.. i need function for my website somthing like finding workers and connecting them.. can you suggest me pluging
For what it sounds like you’re wanting, you would want to make a web directory: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-create-a-web-directory-in-wordpress/
What is the reason that you don’t mention the Plugin Contact Form 7?
We prefer using WPForms which is why we recommend it.
I notice that you dont mention Jetpack, what are your thoughts on this often used plugin? I have built a couple of sites but am still a relative newb at this
Jetpack’s primary purpose is to connect to WordPress.com which is why they are not in this article
Very nice information as i am wp beginner and i very impressed .
Glad our content could impress
For months now, I have not been able to paste in the pictures of Tarot cards (a lot of them) that are vital to my blog which is about phrases and words they mean in a sentence. It won’t paste in no matter where I get the images from.
There is a ‘long way’ they can do this – very time consuming, and we could not even do that at first.
None of these plug-ins mention graphics. Is there a solution to our problem? I am suggesting having the blog redone by a professional and getting my own server. (The site is severely hacked by experts.)
Is there an error message you are receiving? You may want to try the troubleshooting steps in: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/beginners-guide-to-troubleshooting-wordpress-errors-step-by-step/
WordPress consists a number of plugins which provide unique features and this articles listed most preferred plugins. Thank you
Glad we could share our recommended plugins with you
You did not mention a plugin for mobile device compatibility and speed for loading/viewing. Can you advise, please?
At the moment we would recommend a responsive theme rather than a specific plugin to make your theme mobile friendly which is why it was not included in this article
Hi, I need to lock my website content (ecommerce site) however as this will be a temporary measure so I can build my customer email database; I don’t want to install ( and spend money) on a plugin. Which plugin do you recommend that is safe & suitable with wordpress/ woocommerce/divi themes?
It depends on what you mean by lock your content. If you want to have a maintenance mode you could use: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-put-your-wordpress-site-in-maintenance-mode/
I seriously love your articles, every time I don’t know how to solve something -I’m a WordPress beginner- I just Google my concerns and you’re always on the top results. Thanks
Glad our articles can help you out
This is great! I use a few of these already, but will definitely check out MemberPress and LearnDash – I have been on the lookout for a good review for these types of plugins. Thanks for the info!
Hope the recommendations help you decide on plugins to use
I am confused as why u never mentioned w3Total cache which is everyone’s all time favorite cache plugin
Hi Jason,
W3 Total Cache is good too but we believe WP Rocket and WP Super Cache are better options.
Thank you, I was just looking for share buttons when your email came through. Perfect timing and I love the buttons. I can now share my products directly to my pages and other folks can too.
Glad you found it helpful Hanna
Is it true that WordPress will only allow plugins on its higher-paid plan/s?
I work with many non-commercial clients who can not afford the increasing costs of using WP.
Hi Roger, I believe you’re talking about WordPress.com (the hosting service). Yes they only allow plugins on their higher plans. However you can use the free WordPress software on a more affordable hosting service like Bluehost and use as many plugins as you need.
See our article on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.
Thanks for this post, super helpful.
Which do you prefer for affiliate link management?
Pretty Links Pro or Thirsty Affiliates?
Thanks!
Both have its advantages. Comes down to personal preference. We’re working closely with Pretty Links and are pretty excited about what’s coming in 2019!
How important is it to get the premium version of Yoast? Or is the free version sufficient?
The free version should be able to handle most use cases and should you run into a feature that you feel you need expanded it would be a good time to look into what the premium version offers.