9 February 2023
Ultimate List Of The 30+ Best Free WordPress Plugins
If you are looking for the best free WordPress plugins, you come to the right post.
WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management System (CMS) which is used by over 43.6% of all websites.
As one of the popular site builders, it offers over 59,000 free plugins with its official plugin repository.
Since there are so many plugins, it might be easy to get overwhelmed and get lost in a sea of “meh”.
But don’t worry, we’re here to help you!
We have spent hours sifting through the WordPress plugins out there, and we’ve compiled a list of 30+ absolute gems that are 100% free.
These plugins offer incredible value and can seriously level up your WordPress website. Additionally, most of these free plugins also offer a premium version with greater functionality. As a result, you can upgrade it later if your business needs it.
Whether you want to increase conversions, enhance WordPress SEO, improve your website design, or just streamline your workflow, this list has a free WordPress plugin for you.
Let’s dive in!
30+ Best Free WordPress Plugins
You don’t have to break the bank to create a great website with a lot of functionality. Here are 30+ free plugins for WordPress that you might find useful.
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 6 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 2000+ 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.
Furthermore, WPForms Lite connects with Stripe, allowing you to accept online payments using your forms. This integration allows you to collect one-time payments as well as recurring subscriptions.
Payment forms are normally a premium feature in most other form builders. However, WPForms Lite includes them in the free version, letting you sell things or collect payments for online contributions.
Note that an extra 3% processing fee is added to Stripe’s regular fees per transaction. You may, however, remove the 3% transaction fee by subscribing to WPForms Pro.
Overall, WPForms Lite is one of the most useful and value-driven WordPress plugins available for free.
2. Rank Math
If you want your WordPress site to rank higher on search engines, you need an SEO plugin.
While Yoast SEO or AIOSEO are still the most popular WordPress SEO plugins (and a great free option to consider), we think that the Rank Math SEO plugin has now surpassed both plugins as the top free option.
Our reason here is primarily that Rank Math offers more free features than AIOSEO or Yoast SEO. So, if you want the most SEO tools without paying any money, Rank Math is your best bet.
For example, the free version of Rank Math supports optimizing for multiple focus keywords and offers internal link suggestions, which are both features that the other plugins charge for.
Learn more in our complete Rank Math review.
3. MonsterInsights Lite
MonsterInsights Lite makes it easy to connect your WordPress site to your Google Analytics account. It’s great for beginners who do not want to set up Google Analytics manually.
But that is not all. MonsterInsights shows your analytics data on your WordPress site. This means you can view basic visitor data and statistics from your WordPress backend without having to navigate to Google Analytics.
MonsterInsights’ free version allows you to see visitor demographics to better understand your audience, as well as track outbound links and downloads on your website.
Site Notes is another free version feature that grabbed our attention. This feature lets you add annotations to monitor changes in your site metrics after making changes to any part of your site. It’s really useful to figure out the impact of changes on traffic.
However, if you want to take your website statistics to the next level, you can buy the MonsterInsights Pro version. The Pro version provides even more useful information, such as events tracking, ecommerce tracking, affiliate link tracking, and more.
4. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache, a caching plugin, is another excellent free WordPress plugin.
It increases the speed and performance of your WordPress site, and it also offers several settings to fine-tune the performance.
The plugin’s default settings are enough for a beginner, but there are some additional settings available as you learn more about the plugin.
It covers all of the features needed to correctly configure WordPress cache, such as page cache, object cache, limited minification support, gzip compression, CDN support, and so on.
Overall, it’s a useful plugin, as site speed is one of the most important SEO ranking factors.
5. Sucuri
Sucuri is a comprehensive website security solution that protects your site from malware, brute force assaults, and other potential vulnerabilities.
With its powerful and useful features, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress security plugin on the market.
It scans your WordPress installation to see if any core files were modified as a result of a possible hacking attempt. Then, you can restore or delete files found in the scan results.
Sucuri also allows you to add a firewall to your WordPress site to protect it from hackers and malware infections.
6. UpdraftPlus
Backing up your WordPress site is a non-negotiable step in protecting your work. If something goes wrong, having a solid backup can help you avoid losing important data and hours of work.
While premium options like Jetpack Backup offer excellent services, UpdraftPlus stands out as the best free backup plugin. It provides an easy way to manually or automatically back up your site with just one click. For added security, you can even store backups on popular cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3.
Restoring your site is just as simple with UpdraftPlus, making it an essential tool for WordPress users.
Unless you’re using a managed WordPress hosting service that already includes daily off-site backups, we strongly advise you to use UpdraftPlus to back up your site to an off-site storage provider (such as Google Drive).
7. WooCommerce
If you want to build an eCommerce store using WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to go.
According to BuiltWith, this free plugin powers over 14% of all eCommerce businesses and is second only to Shopify.
With WooCommerce, you can sell almost anything. It allows you to add your product with several product variations, making it easier for customers to find exactly what they need in your store.
The plugin also lets you choose shipping methods. You can choose from several shipping options, including free shipping, flat-rate shipping, and local pickup, which is enough for small businesses.
WooCommerce also works with several popular payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, and Stripe. You are only charged a per-transaction fee set by your payment provider.
In summary, WooCommere provides you with everything you need to start and maintain an online store for free. The best thing is that you can even acquire certain extensions for free.
Here are some other eCommerce WordPress plugins if you want to check them out.
8. Elementor
Next on our list of the best free WordPress plugins is Elementor. Elementor’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to design and customize pages without needing any coding knowledge.
Elementor comes in both free and pro versions. The free version has all the features you need to create a basic website, including a drag-and-drop editor, 40+ basic widgets, website templates, and more.
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 seamlessly integrates with your caching solution to enhance your website’s performance. It streamlines your site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, ensuring faster load times.
This plugin also simplifies your code by minifying it—removing unnecessary characters—and combining multiple files into a single, optimized package through concatenation.
By using Autoptimize, you can significantly boost your site’s speed, improve SEO rankings, drive more traffic, and ultimately increase conversions and sales.
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
Sometimes, adding code to your website’s header and footer is essential for features like Google Analytics tracking or custom CSS. That’s where the Insert Headers and Footers plugin comes in.
This user-friendly tool makes it easy to insert code snippets, such as Facebook Pixel, custom CSS, meta verification tags, and more, directly into your site’s header or footer.
The best part? You won’t need to work with your theme files. Instead, all changes can be managed through a straightforward interface in your WordPress dashboard, keeping everything simple and user-friendly.
Get Insert Headers and Footers
21. Better Click To Tweet
Better Click to Tweet makes it easy for your site visitors to share your content on Twitter with just a click.
This plugin provides a simple WordPress block that lets you insert tweetable quote boxes directly into your posts. When visitors view your content, they can easily click the quote to tweet it to their followers.
It’s a smart way to expand your reach, find new audiences, and let your visitors promote your content organically on social media.
22. Lazy Load by WP Rocket
The speed of your website plays a vital role in both the user experience and your Google search rankings. This is where a LazyLoad plugin becomes a game-changer.
LazyLoad is one of the best free plugins for WordPress, designed to optimize your site’s performance by lazy-loading images, videos, and iframes. Essentially, it ensures that these elements are loaded only when they come into view, significantly speeding up your site while improving Google PageSpeed performance.
This free WP plugin works seamlessly with thumbnails, post content, avatars, and iframe images. By using LazyLoad, you can create a faster, more efficient website that delivers a smoother experience for your visitors.
23. Login LockDown
Login Lockdown is a top WordPress plugin for enhancing site security. It limits the number of login attempts a user can make.
The plugin tracks failed login attempts with the IP address and timestamp. After repeated failed attempts, it locks the user out for a set duration.
What makes this plugin even more effective is its flexibility. You can customize the settings to define how many login attempts are permitted, the time frame for those attempts, and how long the lockout will last.
This level of control makes it an essential tool for safeguarding your WordPress site.
24. Advanced Custom Fields
Advanced Custom Fields adds unmatched flexibility to your WordPress website. True to its name, this plugin allows you to easily add custom fields, giving you total flexibility over how your content is organized.
These custom fields can be used for almost anything, making it a go-to tool for developers and non-developers. If you’ve ever felt restricted by the standard WordPress Editor, Advanced Custom Fields is your solution. It allows you to create a customized editing experience with fields that boost your efficiency and make managing content a breeze.
The plugin also supports custom post types and taxonomies, opening up endless possibilities for handling unique content needs. While having some technical know-how can be helpful, you don’t need to be a developer to unlock its potential.
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.
Get Cookie Notice & Compliance for GDPR / CCPA
31. MailPoet
Building an email list for your website is like creating a lasting connection with your audience—a reliable way to stay in touch and grow your community over time.
While many excellent third-party free email marketing tools are available, MailPoet stands out as a free plugin designed specifically for WordPress. With MailPoet, you can manage your email marketing efforts directly from your WordPress dashboard, simplifying the entire process.
You can create custom opt-in forms and popups to grow your list and use MailPoet’s intuitive drag-and-drop email editor to craft professional-looking emails with ease.
On the free plan, MailPoet allows you to send up to 1,500 emails per month to 500 subscribers. As your audience grows, affordable paid plans are available starting at just $11/month (when billed annually).
32. TranslatePress
If you want to make your website content accessible in multiple languages, TranslatePress offers a simple and efficient solution. Going multilingual can greatly increase your website traffic and conversion rates.
With TranslatePress’s intuitive visual translation interface, you can translate every element on your page directly from the front end. For faster results, you can use the built-in automatic translation option, which is powered by Google Translate or DeepL.
Thanks to its versatile translation approach, TranslatePress seamlessly integrates with any theme or plugin, including popular tools like Elementor and WooCommerce, making it a great free plugin for any website.
Wrapping Up
Here you have it! 30+ incredible free WordPress plugins that can seriously level up your WordPress website.
Remember, these are just a few of the many great free plugins available. So, take some time to explore the WordPress plugin directory and find the ones that are right for you.
For more, check out these other best WordPress plugins resources:
- 7 Best Lead Generation Plugins for WordPress (Free & Paid)
- 13 Best WordPress Popup Plugins [Free & Paid]
- 12 Best WordPress Payment Plugins For Easy Online Transactions
- 10 Best WordPress Paywall Plugins for Content Monetization
- 10 Best Membership Plugins for WordPress [Free & Paid]
Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.
