10+ MUST HAVE WordPress Plugins to Use in 2021

Growing a WordPress website can be costly. If you want to grow your blog or website by spending the least amount of money, keep reading as I will share with you the best WordPress plugins to enhance your website.

There is a plugin for every task on WordPress, and you don’t need to be a coder or programmer to bring your blog to the next level.

Also, I have included resources like themes, web hosting, and services to give you the best outcome for your WordPress website, so without wasting time, let’s get started.

My Top WordPress Plugins and Softwares That Will Bring Your Blog To The Next Level

Most of the plugins we use are free. However, with some limitations, if you are getting started, they will be more than enough. Later, when you’re going to make money, you can upgrade to their premium plan.

Wordfence- Security Plugin For WordPress Websites

I believe there is no house without foundations. This concept is applied to websites too. Before building a website is a good practice to install some security plugins, wordfence is the most known security plugin in the WordPress community. It is an incredible plugin that allows you to scan your website for malware injections. The plugin includes these features:

• Security auditing
• One-click GEO blocking
• One-click 2FA, password protection
• Security Notifications
• Brute Force Protection
• Post Hacking Cleaning (Paid Feature)
• WAF Firewall And Malware Scan

The free version of WordFenceoffers scans and malware removal for your website, plus blocking IP notifications, as well as WAF that allows you to identify and block malicious traffic. I believe this is an excellent plugin if you want to secure your website.

Akismet- WordPress Plugin Protection Against Spammers

Do you want to reduce spamming comments on your WordPress website?

Akismet is the most popular WordPress anti-spam plugin, used by more than five million people! These numbers tell a lot.

Why Is It Important To Install This Plugin?

Spam comments on WordPress websites are a massive problem that we face all the time. These spam comments are generated automatically by bots. If you are a well-established website owner, you know or will soon notice the increase in spam comments. Unfortunately, this is happening all over the internet as well as on youtube.

One way to fight this event is to enable comment moderation in your WordPress website. However, this feature alone will not be enough, and you will need sooner or later to implement additional security.

Akismet does just this. It catches spam comments and stops them on your website.

RankMath — SEO Plugin For WordPress To Rank On Search Engines

The two most popular WordPress SEO plugins are Yoast SEO and RankMath. We believe RankMath offers better features to help optimize your site rank on search engines due to its boosted standard functionality.

• Easy To Setup Wizard
• Beginner Friendly Interface
• Google Search Console Easy Integration
• XML Sitemap
• SEO Analysis
• 404 Monitor
• Rank Tracking
• Schema Generator
• Rank Position History

It lets you understand how to improve your website SEO quickly by suggesting tips to implement changes to help your site indexed by search engines. This plugin allows your website to perform these tasks:

This plugin offers many free features to help your site rank on Google and get free organic traffic.

MonsterInsights- Analytics Tool

The best tool on the internet to collect marketing data is Google Analytics. Still, the problem is that sometimes it may be difficult for beginners to install and track data and find the reports you’re looking for in Google analytics.

This is where MonsterInsights comes in. It has all-in-one tracking analytics features you’ll ever need in a plugin.

• Universal Tracking.
• Google Analytics Dashboard.
• Real-time Statistics
• Ecommerce Tracking
• Affiliate Links Tracking
• EU Compliance
• SEO real-time reports
• Improved Google Analytics Reports

We have listed some of the tops features MonsterInsights offers:

MonsterInsights is the best tool that helps you understand your website site performance, with well over three million active installations that make it an established WordPress plugin.

WP Table Builder — WordPress Table Builder

This plugin allows you to create unique tables for your WordPress website. Why would you need such a plugin? Well, you can build affiliate marketing tables just like w-easilean and promote your products or services.

The easy integration makes it straightforward to use. The free plan will give you just what you need to build a fantastic table, and if you need to get more out of this tool, you can upgrade to their premium plan.

Pretty Links- Track Your Affiliate Links

If you are a marketer, then this is a MUST HAVE plugin. This plugin allows you to build authority on your affiliate marketing niche, but how?

Usually, affiliate links are long and messy URLs, so to make them clean and SEO friendly, you will need this tool or use a link shortener service that allows you to do just that.

Take the example below, why you should use a short URL plugin

I think it is evident. Everyone loves short and clean URLs because they easily recognize what the link is about, and additionally, it builds trust.

• Link cloaking
• Link redirection
• Link management and automation

Pretty links have many features such as :

Laser Track Your Affiliate Links

Tracking your affiliate links becomes an essential task. You will simplify the whole process by cloaking them to know what links are getting the most traffic to create more relevant content. I believe Pretty Links is a useful plugin if you are a marketer.

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Recently Google has announced that websites speed is a ranking factor. Your website speed will make or break your business, so how can we solve this? Here is where the w3 total cache comes in.

W3 total cache allows your website to serve the same content by caching it if the user has accessed your website multiple times. This way, you’ll save bandwidth and money.

• Image Optimization
• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Automatically generate Critical CSS
• Lazyload images/iframes
• Responsive Image Placeholders

Here are some of the top aspects of the W3 total cache:

Additionally, this plugin will speed up your WordPress website by decreasing the total page size and the number of HTTP requests, leading to an enhanced page speed score. That is why I highly recommend this plugin.

Do you want to build your email list? If yes, then master popups is one of the best email captures on the internet. According to activecampaign email marketing ROI (return on investment) earns you $42 for every $1 spent, making email marketing a very lucrative business, with the least money spent.

An email capture plugin will benefit your business because an email newsletter can reach a higher audience than a Facebook post or any other social media platform simply because any algorithm controls it.

If you have an eCommerce store or simply want to offer live chat support to your website visitors, this plugin does just that. Tidio is the most popular live chat support plugin, and it has a beautiful UI that makes it effortless to set up and integrate with WordPress.

Also, you can track your website visitor’s journey throughout the website, checking the amount of time spent on a particular page. This way, you’ll be able to optimize your website accordingly. I did say that is the best live chat plugin, right? It doesn’t matter where you or your website visitors live. You can chat with them via phone, computer, tablet.

You can start using Tidio’s for free, and if you need more features, you can upgrade to their premium plan.

• Free to start
• Easy step by step WordPress Integration
• Convert your website visitors into buyers
• Live Tracking viewed pages
• Send up to 500 emails monthly
• Advanced chatbot workflows

Tidio’s central core of features are:

I believe support is more important than the product itself. Would you want to wait for 2/3 business days to get a response? (sometimes even longer), especially if I buy a product. If you’re going to offer quick support to your website visitors, go for the live chat support plugin.

Hosting Providers and Services

Whenever you build a WordPress website, everyone on the internet needs these tools to create better sites.

NameCheap — WordPress Domain Provider

If you need an affordable domain provider, then NameCheap is what the name says. It is one of the cheapest websites domain providers. You can buy a domain for a cheap as $0.99 for the first year.

• Full DNS access
• Free domain privacy (this is a paid feature with other providers)
• Easy registration
• Free migration if you want to host your website
• 24/7 support

Whenever you buy a domain name from NameCheap, the provider includes the following:

Nowadays, even domain providers offer hosting solutions, and NameCheap provides some attractive hosting plans, which are:

• Control panel
• Free SSL
• Database support
• Web framework support
• Bandwidth allowance
• E-commerce integration

Also, all their hosting plans come with:

NameCheap is far one of the most established companies on the internet. These numbers show just that.

Bluehost — WordPress Suggested Hosting Service

Bluehost is a hosting company suggested by WordPress. They offer many hosting services for your WordPress website, from shared to VPS and cloud. I recommend Bluehost because you can start as low as $4.28/m for a 3-year plan if you are on a budget.

• Easy WordPress setup
• Free SSL certificate
• Live chat support
• Free domain (for one year)
• Free CDN
• Free site builder
• Fast page load time (Average 0.654s)

Some of their core features are:

Their pricing plan is affordable compared to what they offer if you want to get a high-performance VPS server, the plan start from $17.27/m.

Bluehost is definitely a budget-friendly hosting company. That is why I always suggest it.

Contabo — Top VPS Service Solution

When I started using Contabo, a few things amazed me, their pricing plan and the dashboard’s user interface.

It is the best and cheap VPS hosting company on the internet. I say the best because usually, with unmanaged VPS servers, you’ll need to run an SHH client to install a web hosting manager, such as Webmin. They offer one-click Webmin installation, making the process smooth and straightforward.

Pors and cons of Contabo:

• Powerful and affordable VPS servers
• NVMe storage
• Robust server and datacenter security
• Servers across three continents

Pros:

Cons:

Contabo is the way to go if you have a website that needs flexibility because it allows maximum flexibility in your plan. If you own an eCommerce store with many website visits during the Christmas period, you may want to upgrade to the next plan to allow your server to sustain the sudden rise of visits.

Some Extra WordPress Tools To Enhance Your Website

If you are wondering where I bought my theme and other tools, well, codecanyon is a fantastic marketplace where you can purchase unique themes, plugins, and entire websites.

Small tip:

Before purchasing anything on codecanyon, read the reviews, check if the developers respond to the reviews. Following this small tip, you’ll see that codecanyon is the winter wonderland for webmasters

To sum up

Plugins make webmasters’ life easier, as you don’t need any coding experience to implement some changes to your website. Still, I strongly recommend using only the necessary plugins as the more plugins you use, the slower your website.

Originally published at https://w-easilearn.com on October 30, 2021.