With such a plethora of WordPress plugins available today, choosing the best plugin can be somewhat of a daunting task at times. What is essential for one site, does not apply to all. Due to the versatility of the WordPress platform, and so many directions to go in, we all have different plugin requirements.

Whether you have a niche e-commerce shop, a high-traffic blog or a static landing page, there are certain plugins you’ll want to have installed.

Below, you will find a list of the most universally recommended WordPress plugins that every website should consider:

Wordfence offers a very comprehensive security solution for your WordPress site. Packing a range of features that includes an endpoint firewall, malware scanner, live traffic view, brute force attack blocker as well as a real-time IP blacklist tool. Wordfence makes use of a Threat Defense Feed that constantly updates Wordfence with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures and malicious IP addresses it uses to keep your website safe.

Wordfence Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Yoast SEO has been around since 2008 and is one of the most well-known SEO plugins for WordPress. Yoast is a great choice for personal blogs as well as professional websites and offers you a powerful toolset to help you make your website as search-engine-friendly as possible. We at Mshini are extremely pleased to be on the list of web hosts that have received the Yoast stamp of approval.

Yoast Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

WooCommerce

Woocommerce was created by the same group of people who created WooThemes back in 2008. What started with a small group of WordPress enthusiasts selling commercial themes and plugins eventually grew to Woocommerce currently powering over 42% of all online stores.

Woocommerce Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Google XML Sitemap

With a sitemap, it is easier for robot crawlers to see your complete site structure and also retrieve it more efficiently. You can use this plugin to improve your SEO by creating an XML sitemap, which will help search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to index your site. It will also notify major search engines when you create a post.

Google XML Sitemap Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Contact Form 7 manages multiple contact forms. It also allows you to customize your contact form and the mail contents and supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering.

Contact Form 7 Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Google Authenticator is an authentication app for mobile devices that generates time-based codes used during the Two-Step Verification process. Using a 2-Step Verification process provides you with stronger security for your Google Account.

Added to your password, you will also need a code generated by the Google Authenticator app on your phone to log in successfully. This is what is referred to as two-factor authentication (2FA) or 2-Step Verification.

Google Authenticator Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Jetpack, is a combination of various features, rolled into one very useful WordPress plugin. Created by Automattic, this all-in-one plugin is packed with features ranging from site performance enhancements, downtime/uptime monitoring, security protocols, brute force protection and theme customization just to mention a few.

Many of these features are offered for free. You can easily manage the features you need and disable the ones you don’t. Jetpack is made by WordPress professionals to help you make your site fast, safe and very secure.

Jetpack Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support

Google Analytics provides you with a very intuitive look at how users interact on your website. This easy to to use tool helps website owners measure traffic trends, website performance as well as user behaviours. It’s a great way to track and analyse visitors to your website. With Google Analytics you are given access to massive amounts of data on how visitors find your site, and what they do on it.

You can check how many people visit certain pages, visitor demographics, how long they stay on a page and conversion paths. All this data can then be used to effectively determine what SEO strategies are working and which ones are not.

Google Analytics Plugin Directory Link
Official Homepage
Support