Looking to add the right WordPress plugins to your toolkit? It takes a lot of time and effort to come up with a list of must-have WordPress plugins for your business website.
Many business owners turn to solutions that are available in their hosting account, like JetPack, but this isn’t necessarily the best approach. There are plenty of free plugins that you can use that are just as good, if not better.
We tried and tested the most popular and must-have WordPress plugins for websites in any niche.
In this guide, we’ll show you the must-have WordPress plugins for business websites, specifically. We’re covering both free and premium plugins so that you can get the best of both worlds.
1. WPForms
WPForms is popularly known as a contact form plugin, but did you know it can also help you set up an online store?
WPForms features a powerful drag and drop form builder that enables you to easily create WordPress forms on your website.
This includes contact forms, survey forms, donation forms, email subscription forms, request quote forms, order forms, etc.
There’s a bundle of 1,200+ pre-designed form templates to let you quickly build professional forms. This builder is so powerful it lets you create restaurant menus, product catalogs, and donation forms.
Plus, WPForms has a ton of features to take your business forms to the next level including:
- Form Abandonment – Capture partial form entries to unlock more leads.
- Signature Addon – Allow users to sign your online forms.
- Form Pages – Create “distraction-free” form landing pages to boost conversions.
- User Journey – See the pages and posts a user has visited before submitting your form.
- Payment Integrations: Accept online payments with PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and Square payments.
- Email Marketing: Sync your forms to your favorite email marketing provider.
Read the complete WPForms review.
2. MonsterInsights
It is important to know how people find and use your business website in order to meet your business goals. Google Analytics is unquestionably the best and most reliable service to gather data about your audience and your overall website performance.
With MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin, you can easily connect your business site with Google Analytics.
The MonsterInsights plugin allows you to connect your website with Google Analytics easily in just a few minutes. It lets you see useful information about your users in a whole new way. It provides you with comprehensive reports of user interactions, including eCommerce transactions, form submissions, etc.
You can track everything, including what people are clicking on, which products they are buying, and who is driving the most sales, and thus you can create informed strategies and grow your business faster.
Read the complete MonsterInsights review.
3. OptinMonster
Building an email list is essential for growing a successful online business.
OptinMonster is hands down the #1 lead generation tool to grab user attention and get them to take action on your site.
You can transform your business website into a lead-generating machine and skyrocket your conversion rates. It helps you create and display beautiful optin forms on your WordPress website and add more subscribers to your list.
OptinMonster comes with a wide array of stunning pre-built templates to start creating optin forms in no time. It features advanced page-level targeting, custom display rules, A/B testing, and more to create effective optins. With its revolutionary exit-intent technology, you can even turn your abandoning visitors into customers.
You never have to worry about compatibility issues. OptinMonster is developed with best practices to ensure it works well with all popular themes and plugins.
Read the complete OptinMonster review.
4. Thrive Suite
Thrive Themes is one of the most popular WordPress themes that comes with a theme builder. You get 4 beautiful WordPress themes: Kwik, Shapeshift, Ommi, and Bookwise. Plus, it’s got an impressive suite of conversion optimization tools.
First, there’s Thrive Architect to build stunning pages for your site (similar to Elementor or Beaver Builder). Then, you can also grow your email subscriber list with Thrive Leads. Added to this, there are tools to create interactive quizzes, sell courses, and collect testimonials online.
It’s got everything you need for your business to be an online success. You’ll even get Thrive Automator to set up automated workflows and slash admin time.
When you sign up, Thrive Suite gives you access to Thrive University, where you can learn how to optimize your site for conversions.
5. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best drag and drop website and landing page builder for WordPress that comes with easy coming-soon page and maintenance mode functionality. You can use this plugin to inform people that your website is soon going to be live.
The plugin features several elements for the coming soon page template, including a countdown timer, social sharing, referral tracking, and more. It’s a fully responsive and beginner-friendly plugin.
It comes with customizable templates to create any type of landing page, including sales pages, webinar pages, custom login pages, 404 error pages, and much more. You can even create product pages and customize the WooCommerce checkout page with SeedProd’s custom WooCommerce blocks.
Just the free version of this plugin is so powerful to set up and grow your website.
Read the complete SeedProd review here.
6. All in One SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving targeted traffic from search engines. All in One SEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin in existence.
With All in One SEO, you can optimize your site in minutes and continue to manage your SEO easily. There is no coding knowledge required and no SEO expertise required.
You can optimize every page and post with meta descriptions, titles, schema, focus keywords, and more when you’re publishing content. This ensures you focus on the right keywords that drive visitors who are more likely to convert into leads.
It also comes with an SEO snippet to optimize your pages and settings to make your entire site SEO-friendly. Moreover, it features XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, robots control, redirects, automatic internal linking, and more.
Read the complete All in One SEO review. As an alternative, you can read our Yoast SEO Review.
7. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the best email marketing services available today. It helps you create and send highly effective emails to your subscribers and generate more conversions. It works well with the lead generation plugins like OptinMonster and WPForms.
Constant Contact offers a bundle of beautifully designed email templates to start your email marketing campaign. You can further customize the templates and create even more beautiful emails.
The support offered by the Constant Contact team is impressive. You can get 24/7 support via live chat, email, and forums. Also, check out these Constant Contact alternatives like AWeber and Mailchimp for more small business options.
8. Duplicator
It’s critical for you to back up your WordPress files and databases regularly. The best option to do this is using Duplicator. A backup saves you from losing your entire website database and files due to hardware failure, DDoS attacks, data theft, etc.
Duplicator is the best backup plugin for WordPress because it lets you easily set up complete backups, schedule automatic backups, store your backups on the Cloud, restore, and migrate websites.
Read the complete Duplicator review. An alternative would be UpdraftPlus.
9. WP Rocket
Speed is another essential aspect that needs your attention. Nearly half of your website visitors expect your site to load in 2 seconds or less. Even worse, most will abandon your site if it fails to load within 3 seconds.
WP Rocket is the #1 WordPress caching plugin. It boosts page load times, improves your PageSpeed performance score, and optimizes your Core Web Vitals.
When you activate this plugin, 80% of web performance best practices are applied right away.
WP Rocket also offers a set of advanced options to boost your performance even more. This includes delay JavaScript execution, remove unused CSS, minification, image optimization, and lazy loading. There’s a free version, although the premium version is best if you’re serious about speeding up your site.
If you want a free plugin, we recommend W3 Total Cache.
10. Sucuri
Sucuri Inc is a reputable, globally-recognized company that offers website security software and services to businesses of all sizes around the world.
Sucuri protects you from website hacks and DDoS attacks with its robust security measures. It monitors your website for security threats all the time, notifies you with security alerts, and removes website malware.
Sucuri’s Website Firewall is a reverse proxy that filters all your traffic through one of the various Points of Presence (POPs) around the world. It also has a CDN (content delivery network) to speed up your site and improve user experience.
Read the complete Sucuri review and see our list of Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared.
11. MemberPress
MemberPress is a complete WordPress membership plugin that bundles with all the features you need to create a powerful membership site. With MemberPress, you can restrict access to specific WordPress pages, posts, custom post types, or any existing files from your regular visitors.
The MemberPress plugin allows you to create multiple levels of memberships in just a few seconds. It has advanced content lock options so that you can easily lock the content anywhere. It also integrates with payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and more.
Plus, with the built-in MemberPress Courses add-on, you can easily create, manage, and sell online courses.
You may also want to check out MemberMouse and WishList.
12. Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a lightweight and simple solution to sell digital products on your site.
It’s easy for anyone to set up and start selling digital files online, not just for business owners. You can sell music, photos, plugins and themes, and more. You get advanced features to set tax rates, set up discount codes, generate earnings reports, and more.
There are also plenty of addons to increase functionality, like integrations with email, payment processors, and marketing tools.
There’s a free and paid version of EDD. You may want to see our full Easy Digital Downloads review for more details.
13. WP Simple Pay
WP Simple Pay is a powerful payment plugin that lets you accept one-time and recurring Stripe payments on your WordPress site. It comes with a user-friendly interface so anyone can start selling products straight from their website.
You also get tons of customization and payment settings that make selling products a breeze.
You can seamlessly integrate your site with Stripe payment service without hiring a developer. You can accept payments via Google Pay, Apple Pay, and other non-card payment services as well.
There’s no need to touch a single line of code and no need to set up an eCommerce store and a shopping cart.
You get a drag-and-drop payment form builder to create payment forms. You’ll find many form fields like text, radio buttons, and coupon codes.
This means you don’t need the help of a form builder plugin to create custom payment forms for your WordPress site.
See our complete WP Simple Pay Review.
14. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon has become the #1 social feeds plugin for WordPress users. Its powerful features and beginner-friendly interface make it the perfect solution for site owners, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and more.
Before, you’d have to manually publish new social content to your website every time you create a new post. But with Smash Balloon, social feeds upload straight to your site as you post them, so you don’t have to worry about giving your audience the latest.
There are four plugins to set up automated feeds on your site:
Each plugin works seamlessly with any WordPress theme and any device, so your content looks great no matter what. It adopts your website’s style by default, so your branding and look aren’t affected. It also comes with tons of customization options, so your feeds look exactly how you want them.
It takes less than 5 minutes to set up and install Smash Balloon on your site.
Get started here and Set Up Smash Balloon.
15. CSS Hero
Your website’s design is one of the important things you need to take into consideration when you build an online presence for your business. If you’re not an expert designer, then customizing your WordPress theme on your own will be next to impossible. That’s where CSS Hero comes in.
CSS Hero is a premium WordPress plugin that enables you to tweak the CSS of any WordPress theme directly from the front end using a live preview.
It allows you to easily go back to any changes you made and undo them. You can also browse different states to see which one you like better and then activate it. It provides full control over website typography, color management, and more.
Read the complete CSS Hero review.
16. LiveChat
LiveChat Inc is the best live chat tool that lets you easily add a chat box to your business site. By adding a live chat box, you can get in touch with your website visitors in real-time.
It helps you provide instant answers to your visitors’ pertinent questions that keep them from taking the desired actions, like buying your products. It also provides comprehensive reports about how engaging your chat box is on your site so that you can find optimal placement for your chat box.
Check out the complete LiveChat review here.
17. TrustPulse
TrustPulse is a FOMO and social notification software that helps you leverage the power of social proof to build trust and boost your conversions and sales.
It can track all the live actions taking place on your site. Then, you can use it to display these actions as notifications to your visitors. This includes purchases, demo registrations, form submissions, newsletter signups, etc.
TrustPulse comes with beautiful, pre-built, ready-to-use designs that are visually stunning.
With the smart targeting feature, you can easily display these notifications and social proof to visitors just at the moment they need to see them.
Besides, this software is easy to use and 100% effective in driving users into customers. So you can see instant results right after you start using it on your site. See our full TrustPulse Review.
18. Envira Gallery
A responsive image gallery may be another feature you may want on your business website, as it helps you showcase your online portfolio beautifully.
To add and display an image gallery on your WordPress site, you can use the Envira Gallery plugin. It’s the best WordPress gallery plugin available.
The Envira Gallery plugin features a simple and intuitive drag and drop builder for creating image galleries. Furthermore, you can make albums, open images in lightbox popups, and display them anywhere on your site.
Read the complete Envira Gallery review.
19. AffiliateWP
AffiliateWP is the #1 affiliate management plugin for WordPress sites to help your online business grow and make more money.
You can create a full-fledged affiliate marketing campaign for your business. It lets you easily manage all your affiliates and referrals right inside your WordPress admin panel.
AffiliateWP is designed to look and feel just like your WordPress dashboard. So, there’s no learning curve to this plugin. If you know WordPress, you’ll know how to navigate the AffiliateWP dashboard.
You can track your affiliates to see how much revenue they’re bringing in. And the best part is the built-in payment management system to easily make payments to your affiliates.
The platform also integrates with major WordPress plugins like Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, and more.
20. LearnDash
If you want to build a website that lets you sell online courses to earn money, then you might want to take a look at some of the best LMS plugins.
With a WordPress LMS plugin, you can create an immersive learning experience for your students through various gamification methods rather than just persuading them to take up a membership and start learning.
While there are several LMS plugins for WordPress available, we recommend LearnDash to sell online courses. LearnDash lets you create and sell memberships, course subscriptions, course licenses, etc.
It’s a beginner-friendly plugin that enables you to set up an online learning website without any coding skills.
21. Shared Counts
Social media integration is an essential feature for a business website. Social media has a huge number of internet users, and there’s been constant growth in the number of users.
To reach that wide social media audience, you must have social media integration on your website.
Shared Counts is one of the best plugins that helps you integrate social media platforms onto your WordPress website. This free WordPress plugin enables you to add social sharing and display share counts on your WordPress blog posts and pages. It uses SharedCount.com API to display the share counts.
The plugin supports all the major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, and more.
22. Soliloquy
Sliders are commonly used on most business websites to showcase important images and messages. If they weren’t effective at making an impression, webmasters wouldn’t be using them so often.
If you want to create responsive sliders on your business website, Soliloquy is the right tool for you. It lets you create stunning sliders for your business website easily and quickly.
Unlike other slider plugins on the market, the Soliloquy plugin is free from bloated features and complex options. It has easy-to-use drag and drop builders for creating sliders. In addition, it has a bundle of pre-built templates to customize your WordPress sliders.
Read the complete Soliloquy review.
23. AdSanity
Advertising is one of the best ways to make money with your business website. To monetize your site with ads, you can either use a third-party network like Google AdSense or sell direct ads.
No matter what ads you’re using to monetize your site, you’ll need an ad management plugin like AdSanity.
AdSanity is a complete ad management plugin for WordPress that allows you to place your ads and manage them easily on your business website. It lets you see statistics of views and click-throughs of your ads. The plugin has multiple widgets to make your ad management easier.
Read the complete AdSanity review.
24. ThirstyAffiliates
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. With affiliate marketing, you choose products you like, promote them online, and earn commissions when someone purchases the products through your referral links.
ThirstyAffiliates is a must-have WordPress plugin if you’re promoting affiliate products on your site.
ThirstyAffiliates provides a simple and beginner-friendly interface to add affiliate links to your WordPress dashboard. The plugin allows you to cloak the long and complex-looking affiliate links into short, pretty URLs.
Read the complete ThirstyAffiliates review.
25. WooCommerce
Do you want to integrate an eCommerce storefront into your business website? Whether you want to sell digital or physical goods on your site, we recommend you use WooCommerce. It’s the official eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
WooCommerce is a free plugin. However, you can find tons of premium extensions for adding enhanced customization and functionalities to your site.
Read the complete WooCommerce review.
26. WP Mail SMTP
If you are having deliverability issues with your WordPress website, then this is the tool for you. WP Mail SMTP is a widely-used WordPress plugin that fixes your email deliverability issues by configuring the wp_mail() PHP function to use a proper SMTP provider.
WP Mail SMTP is run by the same folks behind the most beginner-friendly contact forms plugin, WPForms. With WP Mail SMTP, you can easily fix deliverability issues and start sending emails via your Gmail account.
Read the complete WP Mail SMTP review.
27. Uncanny Automator
With Uncanny Automator, you can put your entire WordPress website on autopilot.
You can connect existing plugins together, select one or more triggers, and then perform actions automatically between plugins. For example, when a user fills out a form, Uncanny Automator can register them for a Zoom meeting.
This allows you to automate routine tasks and slash admin time.
Uncanny Automator integrates with 50+ popular WordPress plugins. And with Zapier support, you can connect to 6,000+ apps.
Bonus Business WordPress Plugins
Sugar Calendar
Sugar Calendar is the best event calendar plugin for WordPress sites. It lets you display offline and online events like webinars and conferences happening every week, month, or for the whole year.
You can inform visitors about current and upcoming events and give them easy access to book a seat.
You can even integrate third-party services such as Google Calendar, iCal, and more to sync your events and create a calendar feed.
Once you set up the plugin on your WordPress site, you’ll get access to an easy-to-navigate events management dashboard where you can create, edit, and manage multiple calendars without any hassle.
WPCode
Looking for a simple plugin that helps you insert code custom code snippets and shortcodes? With the WPCode plugin, you can easily insert code such as Google Analytics tracking, meta verification, custom CSS, etc., to the header or footer of your site.
There’s a whole snippet library full of readymade code snippets you can use.
Without the plugin, you would have to manually edit your header.php and footer.php theme files and other core WordPress files. By using the plugin, you can preserve your tracking code even after you switch your WordPress theme.
Read the complete WPCode review.
RafflePress
Running an online contest is a great way to get more traffic to your website. We recommend RafflePress as the best WordPress giveaway plugin on the market that makes it easy to run a successful online contest.
It comes with automated features and offers built-in viral sharing that rewards users with bonus entries if they refer-a-friend or share your giveaway on social media. You can even make sure every contest you launch is GDPR compliant.
Easy Affiliate
If you want to start your own affiliate program and grow your eCommerce sales with the power of referral marketing, then you need Easy Affiliate. Easy Affiliate is the best all-in-one affiliate program plugin for WordPress.
It’s super simple to set up. Once the plugin is installed, you’ll have a completely self-hosted affiliate program on your WordPress site. Your affiliates can log in to the affiliate dashboard to download links and banners, monitor their clicks and commissions, and more.
And paying affiliates is convenient thanks to the PayPal 1-click payouts.
The best part? Easy Affiliate removes the middleman, so you never have to pay transaction fees.
TablePress
Tables are used for different purposes on business websites. You can display product comparisons, plans and pricing, product features, and more on tables. You can present complex, huge amounts of information comprehensively using tables.
So, how do you create tables? Well, using codes for creating tables can be tedious, especially if you’re not a coder. Instead, you can use a plugin like TablePress.
TablePress allows you to create beautiful tables easily without writing any code. Above all, it saves you time as it provides a simple platform for building tables.
BirchPress
If you have a service-related business, you may require an online booking feature on your website. With an online booking form, you can allow your website users to book appointments for your services online. This feature makes your business more user-friendly.
We recommend the BirchPress plugin for adding appointment forms to your WordPress site.
BirchPress is the best WordPress booking plugin on the market. It enables you to create booking forms, schedule bookings, and accept payments online. It has a simple form-building interface so that anyone can use this plugin with ease.
We hope this article helped you find some of the best WordPress plugins for your business website. Before you leave, here are some commonly asked questions you can also look at.
FAQs: Must Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites
Does OptinMonster support A/B testing for optin forms?
Yes, OptinMonster supports A/B testing for optin forms. You can test two versions of your campaign by changing titles, text, images, colors, and more. This lets you see which version works better for your site.
How can I integrate WPForms with email marketing providers?
WPForms lets you integrate with email marketing providers with just a few clicks, no coding needed. You simply need to visit the Marketing tab in the form builder and follow the onscreen instructions to connect to your email account. Depending on your provider, you may need to add the API key that’s found inside your email account.
Can I customize payment forms with WP Simple Pay?
Yes, you can. WP Simple Pay enables you to customize payment forms to fit your specific needs. With its user-friendly interface, you can easily design and configure payment forms to match your branding and preferences. You can also add various form fields and options to create a tailored payment experience for your customers.
How to manage affiliate links with ThirstyAffiliates?
ThirstyAffiliates simplifies the management of affiliate links. It allows you to hide long and complex affiliate links into shorter, more user-friendly URLs. Simplifying links makes them look less spammy and increases the appeal of your content. This also makes it more likely that your audience will click on them. You can also categorize and organize your links for better control. To add to this, ThirstyAffiliates tracks and manages affiliate performance, making it easier to monitor the success of your affiliate marketing efforts.
That’s our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites. You may also want to check out the 10 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses Compared to help you manage customers and clients better.
To add to that, here are additional articles you can look at.
- Best Free Websites and Resources to Learn WordPress (Beginners & Developers)
- How to Make a Website From Scratch (In 5 Easy Steps)
- How to Install a WordPress Plugin – 4 Methods (Step by Step)
The first two articles will help you understand WordPress and how to build your first site with it. The last article will teach you how to install and use WordPress plugins.
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