Jetpack

Are you looking for a Jetpack review to help you decide whether it’s worth it?

Jetpack is a powerful WordPress plugin suite that adds a ton of important features to your site. These features will help keep your website safe and spam-free, while also growing your audience and boosting performance.

In this Jetpack review, we’ll see whether it’s the right security, performance, and marketing plugin for your WordPress website.

What is Jetpack?

Jetpack is a powerful WordPress plugin suite that combines essential security, performance, and marketing features into a single plugin.

Instead of installing and managing multiple WordPress plugins, you’ll get a ton of features in a package that’s designed to work together seamlessly.

Simply install and activate Jetpack and you’ll get access to a security scanner, downtime monitoring, and brute force protection. It also has features that are designed to improve your site’s performance such as image optimization and a global CDN.

There’s also content that you can add to a site’s front-end, such as Facebook-style ‘like’ buttons that allow visitors to interact with your content.

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then you can download the free version of Jetpack from the official WordPress repository.

This plugin has many essential features including SEO tools and blocks that you can use to create beautiful image galleries, slideshows, and contact forms.

However, if you want to unlock more advanced features such as automatic backups and security scans, then you’ll need to upgrade to the premium plugin.

Jetpack Review: The Right WordPress Plugin Suite for You?

As one of the world’s most popular content management systems, WordPress comes with a ton of advanced features and tools built in. However, most website owners still extend the core CMS with extra WordPress plugins.

Instead of installing multiple separate plugins, you can install a plugin suite and potentially add a ton of features that WordPress is missing by default. With that being said, let’s see if Jetpack is the right plugin suite to boost your website’s security, speed and performance, and more.

1. Automated Backups

Creating regular WordPress backups can help keep your website safe. If something goes wrong, then you can simply restore the most recent backup and get your website working again.

Jetpack allows you to create automatic WordPress backups and store them in the cloud.

It also offers one‑click restores from VaultPress Backup, so you can recover a hacked or broken website with ease.

2. Brute Force Protection

A brute force attack is a hacking method that uses trial and error to break into a website, network, or computer system.

The most common type of brute force attack is password guessing. This is where hackers use automated software to keep guessing your login information, until they get access to your site.

To keep you safe, Jetpack collects information about failed attempts from millions of sites and then uses this to identify and block brute force attacks against your website.

3. Improve Your Website’s Performance

Your site’s speed affects the user experience, your SEO, conversion rates, and much more. With that said, Jetpack can improve your website’s performance in a few ways. To start, it optimizes your images so it’s ideal for websites that have lots of large, high-resolution visuals.

Jetpack also comes with a built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN).

 A CDN is a network of servers that are spread throughout the world. When someone visits your site, Jetpack will deliver your content from the server that’s physically closest to the visitor. Depending on the server location, this can have a big impact on your website’s performance.

4. Filter and Block Spam

Spam can hurt the visitor experience, your reputation, and your WordPress SEO. If your site has lots of spam then you may even get de-indexed by search engines such as Google. However, monitoring your site for spam and removing it manually can take a lot of time and effort.

Thankfully, Jetpack can automatically filter out spam comments, product reviews, and contact form submissions. This can save you a ton of time and effort.

Since Jetpack blocks contact form spam, you may not need extra security measures such as CAPTCHAs. This can remove friction from the user experience, so you may even get more form submissions as a result.

5. Scan for Security Threats

Jetpack can scan your site for security threats and then notify you about any issues it discovers. This can help you spot problems early and fix them before they hurt your conversion rates, WordPress SEO, and the visitor experience.

Jetpack also keeps a complete record of any threats it discovers, so you can identify any recurring problems that you may need to address.

6. Optimize Your SEO

Jetpack offers essential search engine optimization features like XML sitemaps, social previews, and customizable meta descriptions.

These features can improve your search engine rankings, and help sites such as Google show your content to the right people, at the right time.

7. Basic Stats and Google Analytics Support

To grow your business or blog, it’s important to monitor key metrics such as how many people are visiting your website, the content they’re engaging with, and more.

To help you out, Jetpack displays basic stats in the WordPress dashboard.

If you need more detailed information, then Jetpack can help you add Google Analytics to your WordPress website, thanks to its user-friendly set up wizard.

8. Collect Payments Online

Do you want to sell digital downloads or physical products online?

Jetpack allows you to add a payment button to any post or page and then collect payments using Stripe or PayPal.

Both the Stripe and PayPal buttons work for one-time payments, recurring payments, and donations. This makes them ideal for all kinds of businesses, such as online stores, freelancers, and nonprofit organizations.

9. Verify Your WordPress Website

Many external services ask you to verify that you’re the website’s owner. For example, if you want to track search rankings using the Google Search Console, then you’ll need to verify that you own your WordPress website.

Typically, you’ll either need to add a meta tag to your page, or change your DNS configuration. Both of these methods can be complicated, so Jetpack comes with built-in Site Verification settings and setup wizards.

Here, you can enable and configure a few different services, including services provided by Bing, Facebook, Google, and Pinterest.

10. Share Blog Posts Automatically

With Jetpack Social, you can automatically share new blog posts across Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Mastodon.

Jetpack can share your latest content as soon as it goes live, or you can set a schedule. For example, you might target different timezones to try and drive more traffic to your website.

You can even schedule Jetpack to share your old posts. In this way, you can keep your social profiles active, even when you’re not publishing new content.

11. Like and Sharing Buttons

Jetpack can add a ‘like’ button to your posts and pages, so readers can leave feedback without having to type a full comment.

Jetpack will also notify you every time someone likes a post on your site. In this way, you can see how visitors are reacting to your content without having to manually check each post.

Jetpack also adds social sharing buttons, so people can easily post your content to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and more.

12. Pinterest Block

Pinterest is a popular social media website that allows users to organize visual content into boards. If you use this social platform, then Jetpack comes with a Pinterest block that allows you to embed Pinterest pins, boards, and profiles on your WordPress website.

This can get you more Pinterest followers, while also providing interesting content for the people who visit your website.

13. Enhanced Comment Section

Comments are an easy way to encourage user engagement, get more pageviews, and build a community around your website.

By default, visitors will need to type in their email address and name before leaving a comment. Jetpack removes this friction by allowing visitors to comment using their existing WordPress.com or Facebook login details.

Often, this will help you get more comments on your WordPress blog posts.

Your readers can also click to ‘like’ comments, which gives them another way to get involved in the conversation.

14. URL Shortener

Long, complicated URLs can be difficult to share on social media, and may be off-putting to some users. That’s why many website owners use a URL shortener to create more shareable links.

Jetpack’s WP.me tool allows you to create short links directly in the WordPress content editor. You can then share these URLs across many different platforms, including social media sites.

15. Automatically Suggest Related Posts

By suggesting some related posts, you can help visitors find new content, keep them engaged, reduce your bounce rate, and increase your pageviews.

While you can find and then add related posts manually, this can take a lot of time and effort, especially if you have lots of content. Instead, Jetpack will scan and analyze all your content and then automatically display some related posts that the visitor may want to read next.

16. Repeat Visitor Block

Sometimes you may want to show different content to first-time visitors, compared to repeat users. With the Repeat Visitor block, you can show or hide content based on how many times the person has visited this page.

For example, if you set the ‘Visit Count Threshold’ to 3, and select ‘Show after threshold,’ then the block will only be visible to people who’ve visited this page more than 3 times.

This can be particularly useful for landing pages, as you can show a different call to action every time the visitor arrives on this page.

17. Improved WordPress Search

WordPress comes with a built-in search system so visitors can find interesting blogs, products, and other content. However, the default search doesn’t look at all your site’s content and may not display the most relevant results.

With that in mind, many WordPress website owners replace the built-in search with an advanced search plugin.

The good news is that Jetpack can improve the default WordPress search, by looking at content that WordPress ignores by default. This includes WooCommerce products and the metadata of the publicly-accessible items in your Media Library.

This can help visitors find what they’re looking for, which will improve their experience and keep them on your website for longer.

18. Infinite Scroll

Infinite scroll automatically loads more content when the reader reaches the bottom of the screen. This means they don’t need to click on a numeric pagination link or ‘load more’ button.

Jetpack comes with an infinite scroll feature that you can enable with just a few clicks.

However, just be aware that this Jetpack feature only works with WordPress themes that support infinite scroll.

19. Custom Post Types

Custom post types allow you to go beyond posts and pages and create different content types for your website. 

Jetpack adds a few popular custom post types to your site, including Testimonials and Portfolios, which are perfect for business websites.

20. Extra Sidebar Widgets and Settings

Sidebar widgets allow you to add features and information to your website, without taking up the main content area. Jetpack gives you access to some additional widgets, including an Authors widget. This allows you to display the author’s avatar and name in a nice layout, so it’s ideal for multi-author WordPress blogs.

There’s also widgets that display upcoming events, your Goodread books, your total number of views, and more.

No matter what widget you use, Jetpack allows you to show or hide widgets on specific WordPress pages. You can also show different widgets based on the visitor’s user role.

21. Gravatar Hovercards

Gravatar is a popular web service that allows people to create a profile and link an avatar to their email address.

Many platforms come with built-in Gravatar support, including WordPress. For example, when a user leaves a comment WordPress will automatically fetch and display their Gravatar next to that comment.

Jetpack has a Hovercard feature that can show additional Gravatar content. When a visitor hovers over a Gravatar, Jetpack will display a short bio and any other profile information that it has access to.

This can help visitors learn more about you, your guest bloggers and authors, other visitors, and anyone else who uses your WordPress website.

22. Display Your Business Hours

If you have a physical venue such as a restaurant, then displaying your business hours will help customers plan their visit.

Even if you don’t have a physical location, knowing your business hours is still helpful for customers who need to contact your help desk, sales department, or similar. The good news is that Jetpack has a business hours block that can show this information in a nice layout.

23. Contact Information and Forms

Sometimes visitors may need to contact you directly. For example, they might request a callback, or send you valuable feedback.

Jetpack has a Contact Info block that allows you to display your business email address, physical address, and phone number in an organized layout. This allows visitors to get the information they need, at a glance.

Another option is adding Jetpack’s contact form to a page or post.

Jetpack even has several ready-made contact forms, including RSVP, Appointment, and Feedback forms.

24. Find and Add Giphy GIFs With Ease

GIFs can help capture the visitor’s attention and boost engagement. However, finding the right GIF and then uploading it to your website takes time and effort.

Instead, you can search the Giphy database directly from your WordPress admin area using Jetpack’s GIF block.

You can then add any animated GIF to your page or post, with just a few clicks.

25. Add a Map

If your business has a physical venue, then a map can help potential customers find it. A map can also improve your site’s search engine visibility and increase your traffic.

There are a few different ways to add maps to WordPress, but Jetpack has a Map Block that displays content from Mapbox. After embedding a map, you can add location markers to show your business, or even highlight points of interest nearby.

26. Carousel and Slideshow Blocks

A carousel slideshow allows visitors to take a closer look at your images, so it’s a great option for photography websites, or any site that sells digital art or graphics online.

Rather than installing a separate WordPress gallery plugin, Jetpack comes with a simple carousel block that converts your standard WordPress galleries into a full-screen carousel.

Another option is to use the Jetpack Slideshow block to add a slideshow to any page or post.

Finally, you can create a tiled gallery and then display your images as either a rectangular mosaic, a square mosaic, or a circular grid.

27. Markdown Block

Markdown is a markup language that converts plain text into HTML code. This allows you to create formatted content such as links and numbered lists using only regular characters.

Jetpack has a markdown block that you can add to any page or post. With that done, you can type properly formatted content without taking your hands off the keyboard.

28. Built-in Notifications

Jetpack can keep both visitors and site admins up to date using a system of alerts and emails.

To start, Jetpack’s downtime monitor will scan your site and then notify you if it goes offline. This allows you to fix any problems as quickly as possible, and get your site back online before you miss out on traffic, conversions, and sales.

Jetpack can also notify you about new comments and likes, so you can monitor how visitors are engaging with your content.

Meanwhile, Jetpack can notify your audience about new posts and comments by adding a subscription form to your site.

29. Post By Email

Jetpack has a unique ‘posts by email’ feature that allows you to publish content without even logging into the WordPress dashboard. Instead, Jetpack creates an email address that you can send your blog content to.

Jetpack will then create a new post using the email subject line as the title, and the email body as the post’s content.

30. Single Side-On

Do you allow user registration on your WordPress website?

Jetpack’s single sign-on lets users log into your site using their existing WordPress.com credentials. This process also creates an account for the user, so it’s an easy way to onboard new employees, members, and anyone else who needs access.

31. Community and Professional Support

Jetpack is designed with ease of use in mind, so you can often enable and configure important features with just a few clicks. However, sometimes you may have questions you want answering, or need additional help.

To start, Jetpack has a detailed online knowledge base that you can access 24/7.

There’s also a blog where Jetpack covers a wide range of topics, such as how to use WordPress block patterns, and how to securely manage your passwords.

Finally if you prefer one-on-one support then all the paid Jetpack plans come with professional customer support.

Jetpack Pricing and Plans

If you run a small business website or have a limited budget, then you can download Jetpack for free from the official WordPress repository. This plugin comes with many must have security, marketing, and performance features so it’s a great fit for blogs and websites of all sizes.

However, if you want more advanced features such as VaultPress backups and security scans, then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.

There are 2 plans to choose from:

• Security. For $9.95 per month for the first year, you’ll get real time backups, one-click restores, and 10GB of storage. You’ll also get access to a web application firewall and automated security scans to help keep your website safe. In addition, Jetpack Security keeps an activity log of everything that happened across your website during the last 30 days. With its focus on security features, this is a great option for websites that process sensitive information, such as credit card payments, or any site that needs extra protection.
• Complete. Priced at $24.95 per month for the first year, this plan increases your backup storage to 1TB and records all activity across your website for a full year. It also shows advanced stats directly in the WordPress dashboard, so you can see exactly what’s happening across your site, even if you don’t install a separate analytics solution.

Another option, is to buy specific components of Jetpack as separate plugins. This is a lightweight alternative to the full Jetpack plugin, which makes it a good option if you only need specific features.

There are 7 stand-alone plugins to choose from:

• Jetpack Backup. This plugin allows you to backup all your files and database to a global server infrastructure. It offers one‑click restores, real-time cloud backups, and more.
• Jetpack Protect. Scan for malware and vulnerabilities in your WordPress themes, plugins, and even WordPress core. This ‘set and forget’ plugin can save you a ton of time and effort, so you can concentrate on growing your online business.
• Jetpack Boost. This plugin has essential tools that promise to improve your site speed and SEO. It also comes with an Image CDN that will serve your site’s graphics from a global network of servers.
• Jetpack Social. Automatically share new posts, products, and updates across your social media channels.
• Jetpack Search. This plugin can help visitors find what they’re looking for, with instant search results and powerful filtering. In this way, you can improve the default WordPress search, reduce your bounce rate, and get more sales and conversions.
• Jetpack CRM. This modular suite of tools aims to help grow your business and manage your customer relationships more effectively. Since it’s modular, you can customize Jetpack CRM to meet your exact needs.
• Jetpack VideoPress. VideoPress offers fully‑hosted videos and a CDN, so you can add large, high-resolution videos to your site without impacting its performance. After adding videos to your site, you can manage them with ease in the VideoPress Dashboard, and improve the user experience with subtitles, captions, chapters, and more.

Conclusion: Is Jetpack The Right WordPress Plugin Suite for You?

After looking at the features, support options, and pricing, we’re confident that Jetpack is a great plugin suite that adds a ton of useful features to WordPress.

Unlike other plugins that focus on one area, Jetpack promises to improve all areas of your website, including security and performance.

If you’re looking for a free business tool, then the lite version of Jetpack is a great place to start. However, if you want to create automated backups and scan your site for security threats, then you’ll need to upgrade to the premium plugin.

The Security plan adds automated backups, security scans, and a helpful activity log, so you can spot suspicious activity.

However, this activity log is limited to 30 days, and you only get 10GB of storage. If you want to raise these limits, then you can upgrade to JetPack Complete and get a yearly activity log, plus 1TB of storage.

We hope this Jetpack review helped you decide whether it’s the right WordPress plugin suite for you. You can also check out our guide on how to create an email newsletter, or see our expert pick of the best drag and drop WordPress page builders.

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