Last updated - November 10, 2023
Users of WordPress have access to tens of thousands of plugins. There are actually so many that it might be challenging to distinguish between those that are effective and those that are overrated. While many provide helpful niche solutions, there aren’t many WordPress plugins that are truly essential for all websites.
There are several plugins that you should install regardless of the type of site you run or the industry it falls within. And those are the instruments we’ll talk about today. You’ll learn about five essential WordPress plugins in this article along with an explanation of what makes each one unique. And to prove our point that each plugin is crucial, we’ll also offer actual statistics.
UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
Every day, an estimated 13,000 websites are compromised. It’s understandable why WordPress is frequently targeted given that it powers 43% of websites on the internet. Furthermore, minor mistakes can occasionally cause certain components of your WordPress website to stop working.
Herein lies the value of an essential WordPress plugin. Although there are many WordPress backup plugins available online, UpdraftPlus stands out for its strength and usability. To protect your backups, it interfaces with a variety of cloud storage services. And you may use a periodic schedule to automate your backups.
Backing up and recovering data is made simple by UpdraftPlus. With over three million active installs, it has the highest ranking and is the most widely used scheduled backup plugin. Back up your database and files to the cloud, then quickly restore them!
Rating: ⭐ 5
Pricing Plans
- Personal – $70/annum
- Business – $95/annum
- Agency – $145/annum
- Enterprise – $195/annum
- Gold – $399/annum
Redirection
We can’t reasonably overlook Redirection since we’re talking about essential WordPress plugins. For WordPress, it serves as a redirect manager. You may create unique 301 redirects on your website with the help of Redirection, which also preserves a complete click log. Even broken URLs on your website can be tracked using it.
We are all aware of Google’s (as well as other search engines) abhorrence for poor user experiences. It also helps if a page is broken or returns a 404. However, you cannot manually review each and every post or page on your website, especially if there are hundreds of posts. All you need to do to direct a visitor to another website after installing the Redirection plugin is enter the URL for the destination page from a list of pages that are 404s.
Rating: ⭐ 4.4
Pricing Plans
- A free-to-use plugin
OneSignal – Web Push Notifications
It’s simple to boost user engagement using OneSignal. To encourage visitors to return, use OneSignal to give them personalized push notifications. The installation process only takes a few minutes.
OneSignal has undergone extensive testing as a WordPress VIP Gold Partner and has proven to be reliable and simple to use in even the highest volume use cases. Once configured, your users choose to receive push notifications whenever you publish a new post. Even after leaving your website, visitors still receive these messages, which encourages re-engagement.
As well as setting up user segmentation and modifying the visitor opt-in process, you can set up notification distribution at predetermined intervals. With the free plan of OneSignal, you can send push alerts to up to 10,000 users.
Rating: ⭐ 4.5
Pricing Plans
- Free – Free to use
- Growth – $9/month
- Professional – $99/month
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
External Links Plugin
Control every external and internal link on your website. Control icons, nofollow, noopener, sponsored links, user-generated content, and whether they open in a new window or tab are all available. With many new features, including noopener, ugc, and sponsored values for rel; font icons, internal link settings, and full WPMU support, the WP Links plugin was entirely rewritten in version 2.
In-the-moment connection modifications and output filtering are both features of the plugin. No changes will be made to the database’s actual contents (posts, pages, widgets, etc.).
Rating: ⭐ 4.5
Pricing Plans
- A free-to-use plugin
EWWW Image Optimizer
Are large visuals making you cringe? Let EWWW Image Optimizer assist you in increasing site speed, decreasing bounce rates, and improving SEO. Make your guests happy above all else to encourage repeat business. You can use EWWW IO to optimize all of your current photos from any plugin before letting it handle new image uploads on its own.
Only EWWW IO is capable of image optimization utilizing third-party server-based tools (jpegtran, optipng, pngout, pngquant, gifsicle, cwebp). Increase your compression and offload the CPU-intensive optimization procedure to our specialized servers if you feel the need for greater speed.
Rating: ⭐ 4.4
Pricing Plans
- Standard – $7/month
- Growth – $15/month
- Infinite – $25/month
Conclusion
When creating a WordPress website, there are a ton of options, and plugins are frequently the best method to attain this flexibility in design and development. However, the five fundamental plugins listed above are the ones you should start with when it comes to the core plugin functionality that every website requires.
