WordPress is one of the most widely used platforms for creating websites, due to its flexibility, ease of use, and the large number of customization options it offers. And one of its most notable features is its extensive library of plugins, tools that allow you to add additional features without the need for programming. With more than 58,000 plugins available in its official repository, you can transform your site into whatever you imagine.
However, selecting the right ones is not such a simple task. Installing too many plugins or choosing the wrong options can negatively affect the speed, security, and overall performance of your site. Whereas, choosing the right plugins can drastically improve performance, optimize SEO, increase security, manage traffic, and more. In this article, we selected 12 of our favorites. Read on to find out which ones they are
Yoast SEO
Guy: SEO
Price: Freemium (free version, premium from $99/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Complete SEO optimization tools for every page and post. ● Real-time improvement suggestions for keywords, meta descriptions and internal links. ● Automatically generates sitemaps, making it easier for search engines to crawl. | Most of the advanced features are only available in the premium version. |
WPForms
Guy: Contact forms
Price: Freemium (free version, premium from $31/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Drag and drop form builder, easy to use for beginners. ● Includes spam protection (reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha). ● Compatible with most themes and page builder. | Advanced features such as conditional logic or creating multipage forms require the premium version. |
Akismet
Guy: Security/Antispam
Price: Freemium (free for personal sites, premium for businesses)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ●Automatically filters spam comments and forms using artificial intelligence. ● Very efficient in keeping your site free of unwanted content. | The free version is limited for commercial sites, and the best features are in the paid plan. |
Wordfence Security
Guy: Security
Price: Freemium (premium from $99/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ●Provides comprehensive protection with a firewall and malware scanner. ● Advanced IP blocking features and protection against brute force attacks. | Some advanced features like realtime protection are restricted to the latest version. premium. |
LiteSpeed Cache
Guy: Performance optimization
Price: Free
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ●Powerful caching that significantly improves loading times. ● Supports optimization of images and resources such as CSS and JavaScript. | Some users may find the initial setup complicated if they are not familiar with caching. |
MonsterInsights
Guy: Traffic analysis
Price: Freemium (premium from $99.50/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Connect Google Analytics to your WordPress site, providing traffic and performance reports directly in the dashboard. ● Provides detailed data on user behavior and the performance of the most visited pages. | More advanced features, such as eCommerce tracking, are only available in the paid version. |
Smush
Guy: Image optimization
Price: Free (premium from $6.58/month)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ●Compress and optimize images without loss of quality, improving loading speed. ● Includes lazy loading option for images. | ● Some advanced bulk optimization features and CDN only are available in the premium version. |
Broken Link Checker
Guy: Link management
Price: Free
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Monitor and detect broken links on your site, helping to improve user experience and SEO. ● Allows you to fix broken links directly from the admin panel. | It can consume a lot of server resources on large sites, slowing down performance. |
UpdraftPlus
Guy: Backups
Price: Freemium (premium from $42/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Performs scheduled automatic backups of your entire site. ● Allows you to easily restore backups with a single click, compatible with various cloud services such as Google Drive and Dropbox. | Incremental backups and some advanced features are only available in the premium version. |
Elementor
Guy: Page Builder
Price: Freemium (premium from $49/year)
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Drag and drop visual page builder, ideal for non-technical users. ● It offers a large number of predesigned templates that make it easy to design modern websites | Some templates and advanced features are locked in the free version. |
Redirection
Guy: Managing redirects
Price: Free
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| ● Facilitates the creation and management of 301 redirects to avoid 404 errors and improve SEO. ● Monitors URL changes and helps keep content well linked. | It may require some initial setup if you have a lot of URLs to manage. |
WP Super Cache
Guy: Performance optimization
Price: Free
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| Genera archivos HTML estáticos que mejoran considerablemente la velocidad de carga del sitio. Fácil de configurar y compatible con la mayoría de los entornos de hosting. | It does not include some advanced features like image optimization, which other caching plugins can offer |
The plugins mentioned in this article cover the most important needs of any WordPress site, from security to performance optimization and SEO. Depending on your type of business, you will most likely have, in addition to the essentials, that you install more specific plugins, as long as you don't abuse them because they can significantly slow down your website
Note: Make sure to regularly check for updates to each plugin to ensure the compatibility and security of your WordPress site.✅
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