WordPress plugins bring websites to life with extra features and functionalities. From email subscriptions and pop-ups to order management and product listings, there’s a plugin out there for pretty much everything. But with thousands available, how do you know which are the best for your website?
We’ve compiled a list of the top 15 WordPress plugins to make choosing the right one a little easier. And if you’re a Fasthosts WordPress Hosting customer, you can use our instant setup wizard to get some of our favourite themes and plugins pre-installed for extra functionality.
What is website functionality?
Website functionality refers to the array of features on your website and the website’s ability to allow users to complete certain tasks, such as purchasing products, using an email sign-up form, adding comments, searching the site, or using interactive design features. Therefore, fully functional websites must be quick to load, reliable, secure, and easy to use and navigate.
As long as your website is able to load well and users can do what they need to do, it can be described as functional. However, if you want to maximise functionality and make your website as engaging, varied, reliable and fast as possible, you’ll need to do more than the bare minimum.
This is where WordPress plugins come in. As described above, plugins add extra features and functionalities to your WordPress website, including pop-ups, ecommerce features, email subscriptions and dynamic design elements. So, if you want your website to offer more to your audience, downloading the right selection of plugins can help you set up the features your users want to see.
Whilst the ideal plugins for you will depend on your website type and target audience, here’s a general list of the top 15 WordPress plugins that will offer heaps of functionality.
Top 15 WordPress plugins for functionality
1. Elementor: A website builder plugin
- Free version
- Elementor Pro: Essential: $4.92/month. Advanced: $8.25/month. Expert: $16.58/month. Agency: $33.25/month – all billed annually
Elementor’s Page Builder Plugin makes professional WordPress site building simple. The web creation platform currently powers over 10 million websites globally, and when you take a closer look at the features, it’s clear why. The drag-and-drop editor comes equipped with over 40 free widgets and features, like animations and effects, to bring your website to life. You don’t even need coding skills to get started!
For even more page building features, you can choose one of the Elementor Pro plans. Your Pro plan will give you access to ecommerce features, dynamic content, a pop-up builder, even more pro widgets, 24/7 premium support, and much more to create exactly the kind of website you want. Elementor users can now also benefit from AI features, such as AI-assisted copy, designs, code, images and more – building a website from scratch has never been easier!
2. WooCommerce: An ecommerce plugin
- Free (optional paid add-ons)
- Transaction Fee: 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction using a UK credit or debit card
WooCommerce is one of the best plugins for ecommerce websites. The fully customisable, open-source platform is built on WordPress and complete with a whole host of free and paid functionalities and extensions – like WooCommerce Shipping, WooCommerce Tax, and PayPal Payments. It also accepts major credit cards, bank transfers, checks, and cash. The best part? It’s incredibly easy to set up and use!
To make your ecommerce website even faster and easier to set up, why not choose a WooCommerce Hosting plan to host your site? WooCommerce Hosting is optimised specially for websites using the WooCommerce plugin, which means you’ll benefit from faster page loading speeds, top-notch security, and WooCommerce pre-installed for you. Plus, with Fasthosts WooCommerce Hosting, you’ll also get a free domain name and SSL certificate!
3. Mailchimp for WordPress: An email subscription plugin
- Free up to 500 email subscribers
Mailchimp for WordPress (MC4WP) is the go-to plugin for managing and growing your email subscriptions. It connects your WordPress website with your Mailchimp account and allows you to easily create user-friendly, mobile-optimised sign-up forms – customised to your liking. It also integrates seamlessly with existing plugins and forms, such as WooCommerce and Gravity Forms.
4. Icegram: A pop-up plugin
- Starter: $0 forever
- Pro: $129/year
- Max: $229/year
Icegram Engage is a powerful plugin that allows you to add non-intrusive pop-ups and banners to your WordPress website to increase conversions. The built-in WordPress editor means you can create personalised campaign messages to display at a time (and on a page) that suits you. You can even run split tests to experiment with different messaging types and analyse the impressions and conversions of each campaign.
The basic version of this plugin is totally free, but if you’re willing to pay for the premium packages, you’ll also get loads of additional features like premium themes, overlays, user behaviour targeting, badges, ribbons, geographical targeting, show/hide animation effects, and much more. This enables you to create a dynamic, engaging, professional-looking site with ease.
5. All in One SEO: An SEO plugin
- Basic: $124/year
- Plus: $249/year
- Pro: $499/year
- Elite: $749/year
All in One SEO (or AIOSEO) is a must-have plugin for anyone looking to optimise their webpages and analyse the effectiveness of their SEO content – without hiring a specialist. It provides an actionable SEO checklist to increase ranking and traffic. The plugin even integrates with popular social platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn to get your content seen by the right people.
Plus, with more advanced AIOSEO plans, you get access to incredible features like unlimited SEO revisions, content decay tracking, advanced 404 management, author SEO blocks, automatic redirects, top domain reports, and many more analytics and content optimisation tools. And with the most advanced plan, you’ll get to use these features on up to 100 sites, making AIOSEO the perfect SEO plugin for large enterprises.
6. Yoast: An SEO plugin
- Free version
- Premium version for £99/year (ex VAT)
Another leading WordPress SEO plugin is Yoast SEO, so if AIOSEO isn’t working well for you, this is another fantastic option for optimising your web pages to rank highly in relevant search results. And if you’re a total SEO beginner, Yoast makes it super easy to optimise your content by providing templates for meta titles and meta descriptions, and it also offers helpful tips for improving your content once you add a keyword you want to target.
Not only will Yoast analyse your content and provide feedback based on your chosen keyword, but it’ll also provide a readability score to help you craft content that’s engaging and easily digestible for your audience. On the premium package, you’ll also get suggestions for your internal linking and full access to the Yoast SEO Academy – a great place to learn all there is to know about SEO.
7. Jetpack Security: A security plugin
- £15.95/month, billed annually
Keeping your website secure is essential for protecting your data and users’ data, so if you want to be regarded as reliable and trustworthy, you need robust security measures in place. While WordPress itself is already a secure platform, it’s always a good idea to install security plugins on top to ensure that your site is as secure as possible.
For this, we would always recommend Jetpack Security – part of the popular and comprehensive Jetpack plugin. Jetpack Security introduces helpful security features such as two-factor authentication, brute force protection, anti-spam protection, automatic plugin updates and automatic malware scanning. Plus, Jetpack Security also protects your data with Jetpack Backup – an automatic data backup add-on – so no matter what happens to your site, you know that you can recover your data and get things up and running again in no time.
8. Akismet: An anti-spam plugin
- Personal: Variable
- Pro: £8.95/month, billed annually
- Business: £41.95/month, billed annually
- Enterprise: Variable
If you’re struggling with comment bots and spam attacks, you need an anti-spam plugin like Akismet. This plugin uses advanced AI and machine learning to analyse all user submissions in real time, allowing it to detect and block spam with 99.99% accuracy. This means you can block spam whilst still allowing legitimate submissions, and you won’t have to spend any time on manually reviewing submissions yourself.
Any website can be vulnerable to spam bots, which is why an anti-spam plugin like Akismet is absolutely essential. Millions of websites use Akismet, and as a result, this plugin blocks over 3 million pieces of spam every single hour.
9. WPForms: a contact form builder plugin
- Basic: $99/year
- Plus: $199/year
- Pro: $399/year
- Elite: $599/year
Adding contact forms is an essential part of ensuring users have an easy way to contact you, but WordPress doesn’t have built-in contact form functionality. So, installing a contact form builder plugin like WPForms is a great idea for any website.
WPForms uses an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to allow you to add contact forms to your site, and it comes with CAPTCHA support to defend against spam form submissions. With the free version of the plugin, you’ll be notified by email whenever a user submits a form, allowing you to easily keep on top of all correspondence. And with the premium version, you’ll also get access to more powerful features like survey support and multi-page forms.
10. Jetpack Boost: A website performance plugin
- £15.95/month, billed annually
There’s nothing worse than a slow website. If your web pages are taking ages to load, then users are much more likely to give up on you and look for a competitor instead. So, to keep people on your site, you need a WordPress speed plugin like Jetpack Boost.
Jetpack Boost measures your website’s speed and gives you an overall website performance score, allowing you to clearly see what needs to be done to get your site up to scratch. To help you with this, Jetpack Boost also gives you three tools to boost site speed and performance, including a Lazy Image Loading tool, Optimise CSS tool and Defer Non-Essential Javascript tool.
11. Smush: An image optimisation plugin
- Free version
- Smush Pro: Basic: $3/month or $15/year; Standard: $5/month or $25/year; Freelancer: $10/month or $50/year; Agency: $20/month or $100/year
One of the main reasons for poor website performance is your images. If you have too many images or a few very large image files on a web page, this can drastically reduce page loading speeds and potentially drive visitors away.
The solution to this problem is an image optimisation plugin like Smush, which enables you to optimise and compress image files without losing quality. With smaller image files, your web pages will be able to load much faster.
Plus, Smush comes with built-in lazy loading to optimise page speeds even further. And with Smush Pro, you can convert images to the next-gen WebP format for the fastest speeds possible, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
12. Weglot: A translation plugin
- Free version
- Starter: €15/month
- Business: €29/month
- Pro: €79/month
- Advanced: €299/month
- Extended: €699/month
Hoping to reach an international audience with your website? You need Weglot – a WordPress translation plugin that can help you translate your content for global audiences.
Weglot is the easiest way to create a multilingual website, as you won’t need a developer, professional translator or coding skills. Instead, Weglot will translate all of your content for you (including plugins, metadata, URL slugs and dynamic content), and you’ll still have full control over the finished product thanks to its post-editing features.
13. OptinMonster: A lead generation plugin
- Basic: $18/month, billed annually
- Plus: $48/month, billed annually
- Pro: $73/month, billed annually
- Growth: $123/month, billed annually
It’s all well and good getting lots of traffic to your website, but if you’re running an ecommerce business, you need a way of turning these website visitors into customers and email subscribers. To secure these conversions, you need a lead generation plugin like OptinMonster to create as many ways as possible for people to convert on your site.
To achieve this, OptinMonster gives you access to professional-looking features like coupon wheels, pop-up forms, countdown timers, slide-in notifications and lightboxes to give users easy ways to convert on any web page. Plus, you’ll have full control over the style of these features with OptinMonster’s handy drag-and-drop editor and customisation options, allowing you to set triggers for exactly when and how you want your pop-ups to appear.
14. SeedProd: A page builder plugin
- Basic: $79/year
- Plus: $199/year
- Pro: $399/year
- Elite: $599/year
SeedProd is another page builder plugin like Elementor, but it’s specifically designed to create professional-looking and high-converting landing pages. Therefore, SeedProd is a fantastic choice for ecommerce websites, especially if you don’t have a lot of prior experience with building online stores.
SeedProd offers an intuitive drag-and-drop page builder, so you can put landing pages together easily without any coding knowledge. Plus, this plugin offers a huge range of pre-built themes, landing page templates, and content blocks for displaying static and dynamic content, so you get a huge amount of customisation without having to hire a developer or learn how to code.
SeedProd also offers templates for other pages you’ll need for your ecommerce website, including thank you pages, 404 pages, product sale pages and webinars, giving you everything you need to build an online store from scratch.
15. Redirection: A redirects plugin
- Free
Redirection is a free WordPress plugin that helps you manage redirects for your website, including 404 errors, 301 redirects and any other errors and loose ends. This is an essential plugin for a fully functional WordPress site because it ensures you catch all traffic that ends up at the wrong URL by redirecting this traffic back to your main domain.
For example, if you’re migrating your website to a new web host, domain or updated site, installing Redirection will help you manage redirects from inactive URLs to active ones, making sure that everyone can reach your site easily. This plugin will also immediately alert you to 404 errors, so you can get these fixed ASAP to keep your website up and running.
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Our WordPress Hosting platform has everything you need to create a fully-functional website – without the technical knowledge. All you have to do is pick a use case (like a blog or an online store), and we’ll pre-install recommended themes and plugins. Once your website is up and running, you can choose additional plugins (there are over 5,600 to choose from!).
Get in touch with us on 0800 0612 153 or drop us a message to get started.
