Best WordPress Plugins – 15 Tools to Boost Your Productivity

As a WordPress site owner, your goal is to work efficiently so you can focus on creating great content and growing your business. But with so many aspects to manage—security, SEO, marketing, design, and more—it‘s easy to get bogged down in busywork.

That‘s where WordPress plugins come in. These powerful tools can streamline your workflow, automate tedious tasks, and add new features to your site with just a few clicks. The right combo of plugins will help you get more done in less time.

But with over 59,000 free plugins in the WordPress directory alone, how do you know which ones are worth installing? To help you decide, we‘ve rounded up 15 of the best WordPress plugins to boost your productivity in 2023.

1. Akismet Spam Protection

Manually moderating comments and form submissions to weed out spam can suck up hours of your week—hours that are better spent on more important tasks. Akismet solves this problem by automatically filtering out spam from your site.

Here‘s how it works: Akismet checks every comment and form submission against a global database of known spam. If there‘s a match, the submission gets marked as spam and is either deleted or held for your review, depending on your preference. This prevents malicious content from ever being published on your site.

With over 5 million active installations, Akismet is one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. It has a 4.7 out of 5 star rating from over 3,500 reviews. Best of all, it‘s completely free for personal blogs and starts at just $5/month for commercial sites.

2. Wordfence Security

With the number of cyberattacks on the rise, securing your WordPress site should be a top priority. Wordfence is a comprehensive security plugin that protects your site with a suite of powerful tools, including:

• Malware scanning: Wordfence monitors your site for signs of malware and alerts you if anything suspicious is found. It also offers one-click removal of malicious code.
• Firewall protection: The built-in Web Application Firewall (WAF) blocks common attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
• Login security: Two-factor authentication and login page CAPTCHA help prevent unauthorized access to your site.
• Traffic monitoring: See who‘s accessing your site and from where, and easily block suspicious IPs with a single click.

Over 4 million WordPress sites trust Wordfence to keep them safe. The plugin has a 4.8-star rating on over 5,400 reviews. The free version includes all the essential security features, while premium plans start at $99/year for additional capabilities like real-time threat defense feed and country blocking.

3. Yoast SEO

Optimizing your content for search engines is key to driving organic traffic and growing your audience. But keeping up with the latest SEO best practices can feel like a full-time job. Yoast SEO simplifies the process by giving you everything you need to optimize your site in one convenient package.

Some of Yoast‘s standout features include:

• Content analysis: Yoast analyzes your posts and pages for readability and SEO, offering suggestions on how to improve.
• Title and meta optimization: Easily edit your titles, meta descriptions, and keywords for each page to help search engines understand your content.
• XML sitemaps: Automatically generate a sitemap to help search engines crawl and index your site.
• Breadcrumbs navigation: Add breadcrumbs to help users and search engines navigate your site‘s hierarchy.

Yoast is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress, with over 5 million active installations and a 4.9-star rating from over 28,000 reviews. The free version covers all the SEO basics, while Yoast SEO Premium adds more advanced features like automated internal linking suggestions and orphaned content checks.

4. WP Rocket

Page speed is a key ranking factor for SEO and also has a big impact on user experience. If your site takes too long to load, visitors are likely to bounce before seeing your content. WP Rocket is a caching and performance optimization plugin that can significantly speed up your WordPress site.

Here are some of the ways WP Rocket boosts performance:

• Page caching: WP Rocket generates static HTML files of your pages and posts, which load much faster than dynamic content.
• Code minification: The plugin automatically minifies your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to reduce their size and improve load times.
• Lazy loading: Instead of loading all images on a page at once, WP Rocket waits until a visitor scrolls down to that part of the page to load them. This speeds up initial page load.
• Database optimization: WP Rocket cleans up your database by removing spam comments, orphaned metadata, and expired transients.

WP Rocket is a premium plugin, with prices starting at $49/year for use on a single site. But considering the impact site speed can have on your traffic and search rankings, it‘s well worth the investment. The plugin has a 4.9-star rating from over 5,100 reviewers.

5. WPForms

Adding forms to your WordPress site allows you to collect valuable information from your visitors, like email addresses, feedback, and orders. WPForms is a drag-and-drop form builder that makes it easy to create custom forms without any coding.

Some key features of WPForms include:

• Pre-built templates: Choose from over 100 pre-made form templates for contact forms, surveys, registration forms, and more.
• Responsive design: WPForms automatically adjusts form layout for different screen sizes, so your forms look great on any device.
• Entry management: View, edit, and export form submissions from your WordPress dashboard.
• Integrations: Connect your forms to popular email marketing services, CRMs, and payment processors.

WPForms has a 4.9-star rating and over 5 million active installations. The free version allows you to create basic contact forms, while the paid plans (starting at $49/year) unlock more advanced features like conversational forms, user registration, and post submissions.

6. MemberPress

If you want to monetize your WordPress site with recurring subscriptions, digital downloads, or courses, you need a membership plugin. MemberPress lets you easily create members-only content and accept payments directly on your site.

Here‘s what you can do with MemberPress:

• Restrict content: Choose which posts, pages, files, categories, tags, and custom post types to make available only to members.
• Sell courses: Create online courses with multiple lessons, quizzes, and downloadable materials.
• Accept payments: Integrate with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net to collect one-time and recurring payments.
• Manage memberships: Set up multiple membership levels, control access, and view reports on sales and member activity.

Over 30,000 membership sites use MemberPress to generate revenue. The plugin has a 4.6-star rating and offers paid plans starting at $179/year for use on up to 2 sites.

7. UpdraftPlus

Losing your WordPress site to a hacker, server crash, or bad update can be catastrophic—unless you have a recent backup. UpdraftPlus simplifies the process of backing up and restoring your WordPress files and database.

Some of UpdraftPlus‘ key features include:

• Automatic backups: Schedule backups to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
• Backup to cloud storage: Send your backups to remote storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon S3 for added protection.
• One-click restore: Quickly restore your site from a backup with a single click.
• Backup encryption: Add an extra layer of security by encrypting your backups with a password.

UpdraftPlus is the highest-rated backup plugin on WordPress.org, with a 4.8-star rating from over 3,900 reviews. The free version supports manual and scheduled backups, while the premium version (starting at $70/year) adds incremental backups, database encryption, and more storage options.

8. Elementor Pro

Having a well-designed website is crucial for engaging visitors and communicating your brand. But hiring a developer to build a custom WordPress theme from scratch can be expensive. Elementor Pro is a visual page builder that lets you design beautiful, responsive pages without writing any code.

Here are some of the things you can create with Elementor:

• Landing pages: Build high-converting landing pages for your products, services, or lead magnets.
• Sales pages: Design persuasive sales pages with countdown timers, testimonials, and buy buttons.
• Opt-in forms: Create pop-ups and inline forms to grow your email list.
• Navigation menus: Customize your site‘s header and footer with drag-and-drop menu builders.

Over 5 million websites use Elementor to build professional-looking designs. The Pro version starts at $49/year for use on a single site and includes over 100 widgets, 300+ page templates, and 60+ website kits.

Other Top Plugins to Boost Productivity

While we don‘t have space to cover them in-depth, here are a few more plugins worth checking out:

• WooCommerce: The most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, with features for product management, order processing, shipping, and more.

• Newsletter Glue: Create and send newsletters directly from your WordPress site, with automation options and list management tools.

• BuddyPress: Add community features to your WordPress site, like user profiles, activity feeds, and private messaging.

• ManageWP: Manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard, with features for updates, backups, security, and performance.

• All-in-One WP Migration: Easily migrate your WordPress site to a new host or domain, or create a copy for staging or development.

Boost Your WordPress Productivity with Plugins

WordPress plugins are a powerful way to add new features and functionality to your site without needing to be a developer. By using the right combination of plugins, you can automate tedious tasks, improve your site‘s performance and security, and unlock new opportunities for growth.

The 15 plugins featured in this post are some of the best tools for boosting your WordPress productivity. Whether you need to filter spam comments, optimize your content for search engines, or build a membership site, there‘s a plugin that can help.

Of course, it‘s important not to go overboard with plugins, as they can slow down your site if you install too many. Focus on finding the right tools for your specific needs, and always make sure to keep your plugins updated to ensure optimal performance and security.

By streamlining your workflow with these essential WordPress plugins, you‘ll free up more time and energy to focus on what matters most—creating great content and growing your business.