20 Best WordPress Plugins to Supercharge Your Site in 2022

After finding a website host and choosing a theme, the next question is: Where do I find WordPress plugins to make my site better?

We believe that finding the best WordPress plugins shouldn’t be a major project.

So to help you out, we’ve put together a list of super-practical WP plugins for 2022.

Below, you’ll discover some of the most popular WordPress plugins that bloggers and businesses use to connect with their audience, sell products, boost sales, protect their websites, and more.

The majority of these plugins have free versions, so you don’t need to worry about breaking the bank. However, spending a little money can gain you advanced features that unlock your WordPress website for exponential growth.

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1. PushEngage

PushEngage is the best WordPress plugin for push notifications. You can send custom push notifications to users without them needing to be on your website.

Bloggers can notify their subscribers of new posts. For eCommerce websites, you can let customers know when there is a price change, a new product available, or something is back in stock. PushEngage will even trigger a notification on cart abandonment.

If you have less than 500 subscribers, the PushEngage free version is pretty robust. Also, they won’t sell your data like other free options do.

For those with a bigger list of subscribers, or if you’re just looking for more features, PushEngage offers three paid plans:

• Business: $14 per month
• Premium: $45 per month
• Enterprise: Contact PushEngage for a quote

2. WooCommerce

Used by more than 5 million websites, WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce WordPress plugin. It’s also the best and most comprehensive package of tools you’ll find to sell your digital and/or physical products.

Their powerful core package of tools, and integration with over 100 payment gateways, is free to get your online store started.

If you’re looking to extend the ability of your store, add-on features can be purchased at various price points and are billed annually.

These extensions include things like shipment tracking, marketing automations, the ability to offer a subscription product, and more.

WooCommerce has their own versions of these add-ons, but you also have the flexibility to use just about any company you want. With nearly a third of online stores using WooCommerce, integrations with other products are easy to find and set up.

3. WP Rocket

Want your WordPress site to go faster and run smoother? WP Rocket helps you gain speed and improve your website’s performance without any technical skills.

For $49 per year, for one website, you simply install and activate. WP Rocket does the rest by crawling your site to automatically cache pages, optimize your online store, turn on gzip compression, and more.

WP Rocket gives you ultra-fast load times, reduced latency, and a lower bounce rate. Your WordPress site will be on its way to better SEO, more visitors, and more conversions. All you have to do is turn it on.

4. Yoast SEO

As search engine optimization (SEO) plugins go, Yoast SEO sits at the top of the list. Decide on a keyword or keyphrase you want a blog post or site page to rank for in a search engine. Enter it into Yoast SEO. It lets you know if you used it enough and if your placement is optimal.

The free version is incredibly powerful. But if you’re serious about SEO, you may want to pay the $89 per year for the Yoast SEO Premium plugin.

Premium will remove ads, offer suggestions for internal links to other pages on your site, redirect old URLs to new ones, and more. You also get access to their 24/7 support for any problems you may run into.

Yoast SEO is one of the must-have plugins for WordPress to help you optimize your site’s content.

5. W3 Total Cache

Another popular caching plugin for WordPress is W3 Total Cache. When fully configured, they claim a minimum of 10x overall improvement on your WP site.

W3 Total Cache will reduce page load times, improve SEO ranking, and boost web server performance. You can also save up to 80% in bandwidth when you use minification, which reduces the size of your JavaScript files, HTML, and CSS.

With the majority of the world using the internet on their phones, they have specific support for mobile caching and accelerated mobile pages (AMP).

All this and more is offered in this free WordPress plugin. But if you want to go even deeper, W3 Total Cache offers a Pro version for $99 per year.

6. Rank Math

Compared to its predecessors, Rank Math is a newer SEO plugin. But it is just as powerful, if not more, as its competitors.

An easy-to-use setup wizard does all the heavy lifting for you. With “easy” and “advanced” modes, you don’t have to worry about being intimidated by jumping into SEO if you’re new to it.

Optimizing keywords is unlimited, even in the free version. Rank Math is also integrated with Google Search Console and Google Analytics. This lets you see all your most important information inside the WordPress dashboard.

This free WordPress plugin gives you a massive set of SEO tools.

If you want to opt for the Pro version at $59 per year, you’ll add a powerful schema generator that lets you track 500 words. You’ll also be able to install it on as many sites as you want.

7. Shared Counts

Shared Counts lets you easily add social media sharing buttons to your WordPress site. It also shows share counts helping you build social proof for any visitors that may not know you yet.

Sharing buttons included are Facebook, Pinterest, Yummly, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Email sharing with reCAPTCHA support to prevent abuse. There’s also a button to display the total share count.

A lot of social media plugins can slow your WP site down as they are retrieving information. But the developers at Shared Counts have built a high-performing plugin that quickly grabs what it needs, caches, and displays your share counts.

You probably won’t find a paid solution better than this free plugin.

8. UpdraftPlus

Every website needs backups just in case something happens. UpdraftPlus is the most popular WordPress plugin for backing up your site.

UpdraftPlus users can run full backups manually on a set schedule. This free WP plugin backs up your entire website top to bottom. This covers themes, plugins, databases, and all other site files.

You can choose to store your backups in Rackspace, Amazon S3, GoogleDrive, DropBox, and more. Restoring is easy and can be done with minimal technical knowledge.

If you want to subscribe to UpdraftPlus Premium, starting at $42 per year, you get free storage of your backups, upgraded support, and all the UpdraftPlus add-ons available.

9. MonsterInsights Lite

Want to know how people are finding your website? Use MonsterInsights to connect to Google Analytics and see the most important stats quickly and without hassle.

Setting up Google Analytics used to be complicated, and could sometimes require a developer or learning on your own to add code to different areas of your WordPress theme. MonsterInsights makes it easy with just a few clicks. No coding required.

Universal tracking ensures your stats aren’t misrepresented if visitors switch from their phone to a desktop. And their easily read reports show you real-time tracking stats inside your WordPress dashboard.

If you need deeper eCommerce statistics you can upgrade to the MonsterInsights Pro version for $199 per year, which is their 50% off the introductory price. This gives you advanced integrations with WooComerce, WPForms, and many others to help you track and respond to your customer’s needs.

10. SeedProd

SeedProd gives you amazing landing pages using a simple drag and drop builder.

With hundreds of professionally designed templates, you won’t need to start from scratch. Just insert or remove blocks and add your content.

Use SeedProd to create a custom “Coming Soon” page while you’re working on your WP site without having to learn any coding. Or build a page for when you’re in maintenance mode. Add a 404 page that directs lost users where you want and convert them into paying customers.

SeedProd offers introductory prices at 50% off. The basic plan starts at $39.50 per year, with Plus and Pro being just under $100 and $200 respectively. You can even bundle SeedProd and RafflePress (featured below) for less than $240.

11. RafflePress

RafflePress is a WordPress plugin designed to grow traffic, gain email subscribers, and build your social media following using giveaways and contests. With their proven giveaway templates, you can easily build incentives to grow website traffic, boost social media followers, and gain email subscribers.

With a built-in social sharing option, you can make your giveaway or contest go viral by rewarding users with bonus entries. All they need to do is refer a friend or share it in their social media channels.

RafflePress makes designing and setting up your contest easy with their drag and drop platform.

The Lite version will get you going for free. Add more features with the Plus plan starting at $39.20 per year, which is their introductory pricing of 20% off. Or bundle it with SeedProd for $239.60 to combine your giveaways with your landing pages.

12. OptinMonster

Add pop-ups with purpose to your WP site with OptinMonster. Their drag and drop builder will allow you to grab the attention of visitors leaving your website, and convert them into email subscribers and customers.

Using their Exit-Intent® technology, OptinMonster tracks the movements of visitors on your site. If they’re about to leave without making a purchase or giving you their information, you can show them a pop-up with targeted messaging. This helps you gain email subscribers and reduce cart abandonment.

Using a psychology principle that says when someone starts something, they’re more likely to finish it, OptinMonster has MonsterLinks. This turns any image or link into a 2-step opt-in campaign. When a visitor clicks the image or link they get your pop-up asking them to subscribe or buy.

Plans start at $9 per month, billed annually. Features are added incrementally with Plus, Pro, and Growth plans. If you want to try it without any risk, OptinMonster offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

13. WPForms

The most user-friendly contact form plugin is WPForms. Even the newest WordPress users can take advantage of the drag and drop features to build email subscription forms, surveys, order forms, polls, and any other kind of form you can dream up.

WPForms comes with 100+ pre-built templates to save you tons of time. Their mobile-responsive forms make sure any visitor on any device won’t have problems.

It also integrates with popular payment and marketing platforms to make sure you can use your forms anywhere on your WordPress website.

They give half off for first-time customers at $39.50 per year. This gives you unlimited forms, conditional logic, custom captchas, and other powerful features. Or check it out for free with the Lite version.

14. LiveChat

Use LiveChat to boost sales and enhance your customer service. Visitors sometimes want to interact with a human even though they’re on a website. Business owners can make it easy with this WP plugin.

LiveChat works with your existing support software, CRM, marketing, and other tools. Integrate it with Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

A wide range of customization tools allows you to make LiveChat look, feel, and sound like your business. With their mobile app, you and your customer service agents can respond from anywhere at any time.

You can test drive the LiveChat service for free for 14 days, no credit card required. Setup takes five minutes. If you love it, plans start at $19 per month per user.

15. Sucuri

Sucuri is one of the best WordPress plugins you can have. It protects your website from malware threats and other attacks that could damage your site and take your business or blog offline.

After activating Sucuri your website traffic passes through their servers filtering out XSS attacks, DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, malware threats, and more. This security plugin also does it without bogging down your site speed.

The free version is second to none, but consider the Basic plan for $200 per year or the Pro plan for $300. The upgrades will allow you to enable the website firewall option and more frequent scanning.

16. Insert Headers and Footers

Insert Headers and Footers is a fantastic utility plugin. Sometimes WordPress users need to insert code snippets into their headers and/or footers to gain functionality. This may be for Google Analytics, inserting a Facebook pixel, using HTML, or adding custom CSS across your themes.

Insert Headers and Footers allows you to do this quickly and easily in your WordPress dashboard without having to touch the theme files.

With more than a million active installations, this popular free WordPress plugin streamlines anytime you have to insert scripts.

17. LearnDash

Course builders will love everything LearnDash has to offer. Create courses, build quizzes, drip-feed your lessons, automate notifications, and more with the best learning management system (LMS) available for WordPress.

LearnDash gives your users a powerful learning experience right on your WordPress site so you don’t need to send them to a third party. Their drag and drop course building platform lets you custom create dynamic online courses.

When it comes to selling your program you can offer it as a one-time purchase, a subscription, or give access via membership. You can also sell course licenses for businesses to buy in bulk and give them to staff.

The Basic package starts at $199 annually, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. But they regularly offer discounts for first-time customers.

18. Pretty Links

If you do any affiliate marketing, Pretty Links is a must-have plugin for WordPress. It gives you a fantastic alternative to TinyURL, bit.ly, or any other link shortener, but then allows you to track and manage the shared links.

Pretty Links gives you a detailed report of where a click came from, what browser they used, their operating system, and host.

Replacing affiliate links is a breeze. Just change it in the Pretty Links panel and all published URLs are automatically updated.

All this comes as a free WordPress plugin.

Pretty Links Pro adds dozens more tools and redirection types that allow you to create pretty links automatically, cloak links, replace keywords on your WordPress blog with pretty links, and more.

For $79 a year you can install on one WordPress site, with a 14-day, no questions asked, money-back guarantee.

19. WP Mail SMTP

If you use your site to send emails, WP Mail SMTP is a must-have plugin for WordPress. This WP plugin comes from the same people that built WPForms, and helps you reliably get emails to inboxes. Not spam folders.

The Gmails, Yahoos, and Outlooks of the world are always improving their spam filters. One thing those filters look for is if the email came from where it says it does. When they don’t see the authentication they want, your email is dumped in the spam folder or not delivered at all.

WP Mail SMTP routes your email through a proper SMTP protocol. This gives you greater deliverability than using the default hosting server.

Your email problems will all be fixed with the free version. But $149 gets you the Elite version, which includes “White Glove Setup.” That means their staff will do all the work of setting it up and connecting it to your SMTP service provider. If you don’t want to pay full price, make sure to wait for one of their regular discounts.

20. TrustPulse

TrustPulse uses social proof notifications to increase trust with your customers, drive conversions, and boost sales.

What’s a social proof notification?

It’s when you’re on a website and get a pop-up that says something like, “Bonnie in Omaha purchased the Life Academy Course 3 minutes ago.”

Social proof lets potential customers know that others, in the same decision-making situation, trusted your website and bought something to make their life better. It triggers FOMO (fear of missing out) and soothes the fears of being duped.

TrustPulse easily tracks events in real-time on your website, then shows what happened to other visitors. Events include purchases, downloads, email signups, demo registrations, and more.

Their smart targeting makes sure the social proof is shown to the right people at the right time. And with a user-friendly visual builder, you can create your custom notifications without any coding knowledge.

The Basic plan is $5 per month and allows 2,500 unique visitors. They also offer three more plans, each with added features and more unique visitors allowed.

It’s Time to Install the Best WordPress Plugins

This WordPress plugins list showed you the best, most popular, and must-have plugins for taking your site to the next level. But reading a plugins list isn’t going to get you anywhere.

It’s time to install these WordPress plugins.

Go optimize, backup, and protect your website.

Connect with your audience, boost your traffic, and sell more products.

You most likely don’t need all of these plugins, but you could certainly use several of them. With the free versions on this WordPress plugins list, there’s no reason to wait.

The post 20 Best WordPress Plugins to Supercharge Your Site in 2022 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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