30 Best Free WordPress Plugins for Every Website

Looking for the best free WordPress plugins?

WordPress is one of the popular website builders, and it comes with thousands of free and premium plugins.

Because there are so many, it might be difficult for a beginner to decide which one to use!

Although free WordPress plugins might not have all of the features of premium plugins, they are great for beginners to get started. Many free plugins offer a premium version with greater functionality, so you can always upgrade later if your business expands.

By using the free version, you will also be able to try out the plugin features and options. This allows you to decide whether to continue using the plugin or look for alternatives.

In this article, we’ll explore some best free WordPress plugins that you can use for your site.

30 Best Free WordPress Plugins

Here are our top picks:

1. WPForms Lite

Every website needs a contact page, and WPForms is one of the best free solutions for contact forms. This is most likely why it’s active on over 5 million websites.

It comes with a form builder with drag-and-drop functionality for easy customization. You can use the builder to add and change form fields without touching any code.

Furthermore, it offers 584 form templates (including 28 free) to create any type of form. These include a simple contact form, newsletter form, opt-in form, order form, agreement form, etc.

You can also use Constant Contact with WPForms Lite to grow your newsletter and email list.

Other features you’ll enjoy with WPForms Lite that you won’t find in many form builders include:

• Form revisions
• Spam prevention
• Unlimited number of forms

While the free version comes with a limited feature set, we recommend you upgrade to the paid version for more features. These include more form fields and templates, payment integration, email marketing services, etc.

Overall, if you are looking for a free contact form plugin for your site, there’s no better place to start than with WPForms.

2. All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin. It is a complete SEO toolkit that is used by over 3 million websites. Many smart marketers trust AIOSEO to improve their search visibility and attract traffic to their websites.

With the free version, you may configure your SEO settings and optimize your site for higher rankings. And don’t worry; AIOSEO comes with an easy setup wizard that will lead you through all the processes.

Once configured, you’ll have access to many powerful features, such as:

• On-page optimization
• XML sitemaps
• Schema markup
• Image SEO
• Robots.txt editor
• SEO audit checklist
• Integration with webmaster tools
• And so on.

However, the free version comes with a limited feature set. We recommend you upgrade to the paid version for more features. These include wooCommerce SEO, video SEO, link assistant, multiple keyphrases, etc.

3. MonsterInsights Lite

MonsterInsights Lite lets you easily link your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account. It lets you see how visitors find your website and what they do there.

With this data, you can capitalize on what site users enjoy to keep them returning for more.

4. W3 Total Cache

Another excellent free WordPress plugin is W3 Total Cache, a caching plugin. It helps you in increasing the speed of your WordPress site. As a result, it improves the experience of your visitors with faster page loading.

W3 Total Cache improves server speed and reduces page load and download times. It significantly improves your search engine ranking.

5. Sucuri

When it comes to a website, one of the most crucial factors to consider is security. As a result, reducing online risks and keeping your website secure are essential. Sucuri is a great solution that acts as a firewall for your website and effectively protects it from external threats.

You can eliminate DDoS, XSS attacks, malware threats, brute force, and other risks. If you feel you don’t need a firewall plugin for your website, think again!

Want to learn more about security? Check out our detailed guide on how to secure a WordPress site.

6. UpdraftPlus

Backup is a great solution when something unusual happens to your website. UpdraftPlus is an excellent WordPress backup plugin with many useful features. You may backup your complete site to the cloud using Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP, and email. You may also restore it with a single click.

However, if you want additional features and options, you may upgrade to the premium version. These includes:

• Incremental backups.
• More storage destinations (e.g., OneDrive, BackBlaze, Azure, SFTP).
• Database encryption.
• Advanced reporting.
• Support for WP-CLI.

7. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is, without a doubt, the best free eCommerce WordPress plugin available. It allows you to convert your WordPress-powered website into an online store where you can sell anything.

The plugin is designed to function smoothly with WordPress and does not require any coding or technical knowledge. You have total control over your online store using WooCommerce.

Check out our guide on how to start an online store with WooCommerce.

8. Elementor

Elementor is another one on our list of free WordPress plugins. It is a drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress. It allows you to customize your WordPress blog posts, pages, and overall web design without writing code.

The free version has all the features you need to create a strong user experience on your site, including a drag-and-drop editor, 40+ basic widgets, and 30+ templates.

However, you can upgrade to the pro version for more advanced functionality, such as Theme Builder, Popup Builder, WooCommerce Builder, etc.

Want to learn more about Elementor? Check out our complete Elementor review.

9. WP Mail SMTP

Having issues with your WordPress site not sending emails? You are not alone. Over 3 million websites use WP Mail SMTP to send emails reliably.

This free plugin helps in setting the wp_mail() PHP function to use the correct SMTP provider. In other words, it ensures that any WordPress emails sent from your site are sent to the correct recipient’s mailbox.

Check out some other best WordPress SMTP Plugins for your site.

10. TablePress

TablePress is the most popular and highly rated WordPress table plugin. It allows you to easily create and manage stunning tables on your website. Furthermore, using a block in the block editor, you may embed the tables into posts, pages, or other site areas.

It provides a simple, Excel-like interface directly in your WordPress dashboard. You may import data from Excel or Google Sheets, insert any type of media, and customize your table with many free add-ons.

11. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a free plugin that is both user-friendly and powerful. It is the best WordPress gallery plugin.

If you have a lot of images on your website, you should get this plugin. You may improve site navigation and user experience by adding metadata, deeplinks, and pagination to your galleries.

12. Smart Slider 3

Slider plugins, like galleries, offer another useful way to show media content on your site. And Smart Slider 3 is one of the best options you’ll have when it comes to free slider plugins.

Smart Slider 3 has a beginner-friendly live slide editor and some nice templates to get you started. Even with the free version, you’ll feel like you’re using a premium plugin.

13. Redirection

Do you want to redirect some URLs on your website? Redirection, the best WordPress redirection plugin, is an excellent pick, with over 2 million active installs.

It allows you to handle 301 redirections, track 404 errors, and generally tie up any loose ends on your site. This can help to reduce errors and improve your website’s ranking.

In addition to simple URL matching, conditional redirecting may be used to redirect. These include user login status, browser, IP address, etc.

14. Pretty Links

If you do affiliate marketing on your WordPress site, you know how ugly affiliate links can be.

Pretty Links is the best affiliate marketing plugin for WordPress. It allows you to shorten URLs using your own domain name.

Furthermore, Pretty Links records each click on your URL and delivers a detailed report on where the hit came from, the browser, operating system, and host.

15. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker continually monitors your website for broken links and alerts you immediately if it detects any so you can fix them.

Internal and external links break from time to time. Broken links on your website are not only bad for SEO but also awful for user experience.

It is also one of the best WordPress plugins for blogs because you are undoubtedly creating a lot of content on your site that will eventually have broken links.

16. Shared Counts

Another one on the list of best free WordPress plugins is Shared Counts. It is a social media plugin that allows your users to easily share your blog articles on their social media platforms.

You may add buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Email, LinkedIn, and other popular social networks on your website. Plus, it also gives you the option to put buttons before and after your article.

The plugin also displays the total number of shares and has various style options to match your website theme.

17. Really Simple SSL

Moving your WordPress site to HTTPS/SSL is a terrific method to make it more secure for both you and your visitors. Additionally, it will help you avoid the annoying “not secure” warnings Google is putting on Chrome for all non-HTTPS sites.

With the availability of free SSL certificates, it won’t even cost you a dollar – you simply need a way to properly convert your WordPress site to HTTPS.

That is what Really Simple SSL does. It’s simply a one-click solution for setting up redirects, updating old URLs, and handling anything else you need to do to properly migrate your site to HTTPS.

18. Autoptimize

Autoptimize is a WordPress plugin that helps you to speed up your WordPress site by optimizing your site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. It does this via:

• Minification – it removes unnecessary characters from your website code (such as white space).
• Concatenation – it merges multiple files into one.

It also offers some other optimizations, such as the ability to defer JavaScript and optimize Google Fonts.

19. Smush

Smush is another free WordPress plugin that can improve your site’s performance. It does these by automatically compressing and resizing the images you upload to your WordPress site.

Smush uses lossless compression, which means your images won’t lose any quality. They’ll just have a smaller file size!

Further, it lets you optimize unlimited images for free (with a 5 MB file size max per image) and is super easy to use. That’s why it has more than 1 million active installs on WordPress.org.

Here are some other best image optimization WordPress plugins that you can check out.

20. Insert Headers and Footers

Insert Headers and Footers is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to insert any code or script into your website. It’s a handy plugin that allows you to add Google Analytics, custom CSS, Facebook Pixel, or any other code directly from your WordPress admin.

The best part about this plugin is that you don’t have to edit any theme files. You can add the code in your header and footer from the plugin’s Settings page.

21. Better Click To Tweet

Better Click to Tweet allows you to generate tweetable content for your site users to tweet.

Using a simple shortcode, just add your text to the display code. Then, on the frontend of your website, users will see your quote and will be able to click on it to tweet it to all of their Twitter followers.

22. Lazy Load by WP Rocket

LazyLoad is the lazy load plugin for WordPress for lazy load images, videos, and iframes. In short, LazyLoad shows images, videos, and iframes on a website only when they are visible to the user.

This is also an effective way to speed up your WordPress site.

23. Login LockDown

You should be aware that having a strong username and password combination is critical for the security of your WordPress site. However, there are other steps you can take to help secure the data on your site.

Try Login Lockdown, the best WordPress login plugin that restricts the number of logins attempts a user may make when attempting to log into your site.

24. Advanced Custom Fields

After using WordPress for a while, you may see that it lacks the built-in flexibility you need to build specific functions. Fortunately, you can do just that with a free WordPress plugin like Advanced Custom Fields.

25. Enable Media Replace

Another one on the list of the best free WordPress plugins is Enable Media Replace. It allows you to replace an image in your Media Library by uploading a new one in its place. There will be no more deleting, renaming, or re-uploading files!

Similar to replacing media, you can also remove the background of the images from the Media Library!

26. WP Call Button

WP Call Button is one of the top free WordPress plugins for adding a Click to Call button to your WordPress site. It’s an effective strategy to get more leads and close deals fast.

Some people still prefer to speak with someone over the phone, so it’s excellent to provide them with that option.

27. Google XML Sitemaps

Another free plugin that might help in SEO is Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will generate a unique XML sitemap that can be submitted to search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo to help crawlers better index your WordPress site. The plugin will contain all your WordPress site pages and custom URLs.

Another essential feature is that it automatically notifies search engines whenever you create a new post, ensuring that your site’s new content is indexed quickly.

28. Duplicator

There are different reasons why you may need to migrate your WordPress site at some point. Whatever your reason, you may use the WordPress plugin Duplicator.

This plugin can effortlessly handle standard WordPress migration and backups. It exports your complete WordPress site as two easy files. To move your website, just transfer the files to the new location, run the automatic installation, and call it a day.

29. Disable Comments

Some website owners do not want a comment area allowed on their websites since it might be annoying. Although WordPress allows you to hide specific comments on specific pages of your website, the Disable Comments plugin allows you to remove all comments from your website.

It also allows you to remove any comment-related fields from edit and quick-edit screens.

If you don’t want to use a plugin to disable comments, then check out our guide on how to disable comments in WordPress.

30. Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA

Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA helps in a different kind of “security” – the “security” of complying with important laws and regulations. Specifically privacy regulations such as Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA.

This free plugin allows you to add a cookie consent notice and features to limit cookie usage on your site based on user preferences.

Here are some other cookie consent WordPress plugins that you can check out.

That’s all! You now know the best free WordPress plugins for your website. We hope this list helps you enhance your site and reach your business goals.

Here are some other WordPress plugins related articles you must check out:

• Best Membership Plugins for WordPress
• WordPress Translation Plugins for Multilingual Websites
• Best WooCommerce Plugins for Online Stores
• WordPress Lead Generation Plugins to Grow Your Email List

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