With the millions of websites powered by WordPress, this free and open-source content management system is one of the most widely used platforms today. With that, it comes as no shock that you can use WordPress to cover almost any website use case from blogs to portfolios to eCommerce stores and more.
The above is possible thanks to the thousands of developers and designers contributing to the WordPress ecosystem daily. This post will show you 5 of the most recommended plugins for 2021 to make your website a success.
What is a WordPress plugin?
A WordPress plugin is an extension to the core WordPress platform, enabling you to increase your website’s functionality. You can find plugins covering almost every possible aspect of your website, from speed, security, contact forms, multilingual tools, and much more.
For example, if you run an eCommerce store and wanted to give your potential customers a way to contact you quickly and easily, you can add a live chat plugin that will help you do just that.
How to choose the best plugin for your WordPress website?
With over 15,000 free WordPress plugins in the official repository and thousands more on third-party websites, it comes as no surprise if you find yourself asking: How can I choose the right plugin for my website?
The first step is to understand the type of website you are looking to make. Is it a regular blog? An eCommerce platform? A portfolio? The kind of website you plan to run will play a vital role in the essential plugins you might need.
For example, if you are looking to launch an eCommerce store, then a plugin to add such functionalities will be required (for which we recommend WooCommerce).
Are you looking to expand your eCommerce store internationally? Then perhaps a multilingual translation plugin will be required. Searching for ‘translation’ on the WordPress official plugin directory provides plenty of options that you can choose from.
When choosing a plugin for any use case or feature, we highly recommend checking the compatible WordPress versions to ensure they have been updated and tested on the WordPress version you’re running.
The top 12 WordPress plugins for 2021
Below you can find some of the most used and useful plugins for 2021 from the research we’ve done.
1. MonsterInsights
As one of the most popular WordPress visitor statistics plugins, MonsterInsights serves as a great way to connect your WordPress website to your Google Analytics account. Through this integration, you can understand your audience better and how they interact with your website.
MonsterInsights provides a robust feature set from tracking links to detailed statistics for each post and page, enabling you to see which of your posts and pages are the most popular with ease, right within your WordPress dashboard.
When writing this post, you can get MonsterInsights for 50% off – Starting at $99.50 with plans scaling up to $399.50.
2. WPForms Lite
WPForms Lite is a very user-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress because it makes it easy for your visitors to get in touch with you.
This drag & drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, payment forms, surveys, polls, and all other types of online forms with just a few clicks.
WPForms integrates with all the most popular marketing and payment platforms so that you can build powerful forms in less than 5 minutes. It even comes with options to help you create a custom WordPress user registration form and login page. On top of that, it is entirely free to use!
3. Yoast SEO
Most sites want to be found, and growth is a good thing. One fundamental way to drive traffic is through SEO (search engine optimization), in other words, being picked up by search engines.
While it might seem like a steep hill to climb, starting your SEO efforts sooner rather than later can pay huge dividends in the long run, and this is where Yoast shines.
With millions of worldwide users, Yoast SEO will help you get more visitors by guiding you on optimizing your meta tags, generating sitemaps, auditing your website content, and more.
Through Yoast, you can easily set up their powerful redirect feature enabling you to create 301/302 redirects, which can be a huge time saver! It can even take care of this automatically by detecting URL changes ensuring you don’t have any broken links on your website.
The best part? The core features of Yoast are entirely free though they do offer a richer feature set with their premium plans.
4. SeedPod
SeedPod, shipping with over 100 beautifully designed templates, makes it easy to customize your website’s look and feel. Using their drag and drop builder, you can create a completely custom layout within minutes with no coding knowledge required.
With SeedPod, you can access pre-made templates for landing pages, sales pages, thank you pages, webinar registration pages, coming soon pages, maintenance mode pages, 404 pages, and more.
It also comes with a smart design system, so you can save time by re-using elements instead of doing repetitive work. You can save font combinations, define color schemes, custom blocks, page templates, sections, and more.
It has all the blocks and features that you would expect from a powerful page builder, such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers, contact forms, buttons, various content blocks, and more. It also comes with built-in subscriber management and seamless integration with third-party email marketing services and CRM software.
5. Weglot
Weglot is a multilingual WordPress plugin and an app that allows you to easily translate your website to over 100 languages at the click of a few buttons. This plugin is easy to install and is compatible with virtually all website and CMS technologies. With Weglot, you can have a translated website up and running within 5 minutes.
The all-in-one Weglot platform makes it easy for you to manage all of your translation options in one place, meaning you won’t have to jump between multiple tools.
Once it’s activated, you can instantly translate your site by specifying which languages you want your content in, and Weglot takes it from there.
Weglot comes with all the features you’ll ever need from a WordPress translation plugin, such as automatic translation, professional manual translation, multilingual SEO optimization, and more.
A solution like Weglot allows you to have both manual and automatic translations without requiring any technical knowledge. Meaning, you can expand your business internationally and expand the number of sales and visitors overnight.
You can also review and edit all translated content before it goes live on your WordPress website. This great tool allows you to customize every part of the customer journey for your audience. This includes translating email confirmations, landing pages, and more.
