Have you ever wondered about the top selected plugins for the official WordPress plugin repository? Let’s go through them! There are more than 55,000+ plugins. Based on data from WordPress.org, the most popular plugins can be interesting to consider when looking at the impressive numbers of downloads. Not all of them may be getting regular updates and use, but there are benefits to knowing the top 10 most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Getting the most out of your website is nicer as you understand the features plugins have to offer.
1. Yoast SEO
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Yoast Team | 9.7 | 154,856,740 | WP 4.9+ | download » |
One of the plugins used by (almost) everyone who has a blog site on WordPress is called Yoast SEO. This plugin helps you improve the overall SEO score for pages, articles, and blogs. If you have ever thought about the improvements you want for search engine optimization, this WordPress SEO plugin could be just the answer you are looking for. Using the plugin, you can set your main keyword, the meta description, slug, SEO title, the alt attributes of your images, and also utilize best practices for good readability. The plugin also offers stats and actionable advice on how to improve the work. Yoast SEO is a top plugin for anyone who wants to rank better in search engines. The title and meta description templating is a smart way for improved branding and consistent snippets for search results. As a nicer premium feature, you can also get 1 year free access to their support team as a Yoast SEO premium user.
2. Akismet
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Automattic | 4.1.1 | 131,571,277 | WP 4.0+ | download » |
Way up there close to the very top with downloads is the plugin Akismet Anti-Spam. The plugin is helpful for automation and security purposes by disallowing malicious or problematic content being published by your site. Not having spam is a priority and much nicer for anyone spending time on their website content. Developed by Automattic, the plugin tool blocks spam comments. Akismet is chosen by many businesses and the plugin is mandatory for owners who receive ten comments or more daily. To help with content management, the tool will also check your contact form submissions against their global database of spam. You can see the approved comments for each user, which is nice for knowing the effectiveness of your content. Also, a discard feature that blocks spam can save you disk space and speed up your site. Efficiency and enjoyment can be appreciated with this WordPress tool that helps make sure only relevant information gets to you.
3. Jetpack
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Automattic | 7.0.1 | 111,806,178 | WP 4.8+ | download » |
For those wanting some help with marketing, design, and security, this tool built by Automattic has proven to be one of the top most popular plugins. The multipurpose tool has features for finding site analytics, automated social media posting, many WordPress themes, spam filtering, login security, lazy image loading, and more. This plugin is way at the top of being most popular with ways of posting social media and real-time exchanges for marketing available to anyone. Jetpack has one free and three paid plans for choices. Jetpack is suitable for personal blogs, and for both startups and corporate businesses. The fit works nicely for needs and budgets. Social media posting as an automated process is helpful for those using WordPress for promotions and marketing.
4. Wordfence Security
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Wordfence | 7.2.2 | 107,989,469 | WP 3.9+ | download » |
Another popular WordPress plugin for security is Wordfence that is used to keep your site safe. This plugin puts a firewall on your site to keep away malicious traffic. It blocks suspect external attempts with a malware scanner and provides features for a secure login system. Wordfence has a way of showing the user when something happens in terms of security. Having this installed on your site is mandatory if you want to avoid unneeded problems and disallow any potential security issues. Preventive measures are provided with some of the most popular WordPress plugins. With the diverse and wide range of features, the plugins are understandable as popular ways to improve your website. Keeping the site safe is a good reason to know more about the plugins offering security features. The malware scanner blocks requests that have malicious code or content. Wordfence Central is a nice way to manage multiple sites in one place. Configuring is also simpler with powerful templates.
5. Contact Form 7
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Takayuki Miyoshi | 5.1.1 | 105,553,506 | WP 4.9+ | download » |
High on the list is the popular Contact Form 7 for creating effective forms for your blog. The simpler way of creating contact forms can handle multiple forms on the same site. Developed by Takayuki Miyoshi, the plugin also integrates Akismet spam filtering and allows the user to customize the styling that is used in the form. Customization also includes the fields that are used with the contact forms. Providing CAPTCHA and Ajax submitting is part of the plugin. Everyone can use this plugin since it is free, easy to configure, helpful for building contact lists, and efficient for any personal blog or business. The custom styles and fields are nicer for marketing, branding, and ways to promote your company.
6. WooCommerce
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Automattic | 3.5.5 | 61,685,201 | WP 4.7+ | download » |
A free eCommerce plugin that seamlessly integrates with WordPress is WooCommerce. The solution gives owners of stores and developers complete control with flexibility and hundreds of free and premium WordPress extensions. You can sell anything in a nicer way and the numbers are showing WooCommerce as one of the top most popular for WordPress plugins. You can sell physical and digital goods while offering product variations and instant downloads to shoppers. You can even sell affiliate goods from online marketplaces making this nice for business owners with flexibility to offer discounts on digital downloads. Shipping is configurable and the plugin even supports drop shipping. The plugin has the ability to accept major credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, and cash on delivery. Other region-specific integration is available with popular choices such as Stripe, Authorize.Net, and Amazon payments. Running a store and managing designs, stock levels, settings, and customer accounts is nicer with the robust WooCommerce plugin. With strong support, the plugin is nice also for beginners and those first launching their websites.
7. All in One SEO Pack
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Michael Torbert | 2.12 | 54,410,595 | WP 4.6+ | download » |
If you want an alternative to Yoast or you just want to work with more plugins, you can try the All in One SEO Pack. The interest is understood with SEO being such a popular topic. The All in One SEO Pack was created to help beginners and advanced users such as developers. The content offers basic SEO instructions and also XML sitemap. Content management with optimization is impressive with the SEO Pack that also offers Google Analytics, and Google AMP support. One of the coolest features of the plugin is that it offers SEO integration for eCommerce sites. Anyone can use the plugin to grow a personal blog, build a business, or work as a professional blogger. Optimizing your WordPress site for SEO is easier now with beginner and advanced features. The plugin can also automatically notify search engines like Google and Bing about changes and additions to your website. For the users that are familiar with website marketing topics, it is amazing to know that plugins can help set META descriptions and META keywords you want with fine-tuning to optimize your SEO.
8. Google Analytics for WordPress
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
MonsterInsights | 7.4.2 | 42,762,185 | WP 3.8+ | download » |
Growing a personal blog into something that brings in revenue would find Google Analytics necessary. MonsterInsights is the author of Google Analytics and has made this plugin to show you the stats that matter as you know exactly how people find and use your website. It can be much easier to double your sales with this plugin. Google Analytics makes it easier between your WordPress site and the analytics tools with a proper connection. The plugin works by pasting the tracking code to your WordPress site with a powerful and quick integration. You can check the stats with your dashboard and WordPress admin area, which makes this a nice feature for managing content. You can also enable advanced tracking features with a simple few clicks making this plugin both easy and powerful for millions of small businesses and top companies.
9. WP Super Cache
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
Automattic | 1.6.4 | 26,130,590 | WP 3.1+ | download » |
Speeding up the website with improved performance is nicer and one of the top 10 plugins offers features for caching. It generates static HTML files to save time with your blog and the types of caching include expert, simple, and WP-Cache catching. After the html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of the heavier WordPress PHP scripts. One cached file can be served thousands of times, while other visitors can get the custom cached files for their visit. An example is when a visitor leaves comments and those details are displayed for them. If you have a large amount of content, this plugin features a nicer way to work with media files such as photos, videos, and animations. The plugin WP Super Cache can make it lighter with the media files and large amounts of content. Understanding these benefits and performance is what has helped get this plugin way at the top of the list for most popular WordPress plugins. The easier setup with the plugin is nice and the benefits are noticed when making a site much faster and user friendly.
10. WordPress Importer
Author | Version | Rating | Downloads | Requires | Link |
WordPress.org | 0.6.4 | 25,829,699 | WP 3.6+ | download » |
Importing files to your site is something many people would want to do in a few clicks. WordPress Importer is one of the most popular plugins that were ever created. A simple way of migrating data is nicer for beginners and developers. Those with multiple websites have found this plugin helpful for sharing information. Making this another way of managing content, you can use the plugin WordPress Importer to import between different websites and to organize your website improvements to include new content easily. The Importer can import content from export files, such as posts, pages, comments, custom fields, tags, authors, and categories.
WordPress is appreciated as a free and open-source content management system with features including the plug-in architecture. The template system is most associated with blogging but supports other types of web content including mailing lists, media galleries, online stores, and forums. Customization is nice and people have proven with the incredible numbers of downloads that they like adding features with the plugins.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclaimer for more info.