35 Most Recommended FREE WordPress Plugins for Businesses in 2020

WordPress is the leading content management system (CMS) for online business owners. It’s free to use, which anyone can appreciate. Plus, you can customize it using WordPress plugins for businesses to streamline your business and generate more revenue.

The right WordPress plugins can help online business owners secure their sites, prevent spam, optimize content for SEO and higher search rankings, create contact forms, boost email marketing efforts, and even simplify the act of processing payments in an online shop.

The problem is, it can be overwhelming to decide which WordPress plugins are the best for your online business. With over 55K WordPress plugins to choose from in the official WordPress Repository, it would seem that picking just the right one is impossible. That’s why today we’ve rounded up the best WordPress plugins for businesses to help you out.

Here’s a quick table of contents if you need a certain type of business plugin:

• Blogging plugins
• Email marketing plugins
• eCommerce plugins
• Analytics plugins
• Security plugins

Best WordPress Blogging Plugins

Of the 500 million blogs on the internet today, 60 million of them are WordPress blogs. Bloggers love using the WordPress CMS because of its affordability and ability to be customized as unique. After all, people want to visit websites that are fresh and new. You don’t want to be pushed aside as just another blog on the web.

Not only that, WordPress bloggers use plugins to help with things like site security, backups, and SEO optimization for ranking higher in search results. And since people demand high-quality, valuable blog content, site owners can use plugins to help with editorial calendars, web forms, social media connections, and much more.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is hands down one of the best plugins for SEO in the market. It’s a must have for every online business owner out there, particularly for bloggers. This plugin helps you rank higher in Google search results. For example. the you can input your main keyword and let Yoast analyze its presence in your post to ensure it ranks well.

Other features include:

• Title and meta description section
• Instant XML sitemap creation
• Full control over breadcrumbs
• Ability to set canonical URLs to prevent duplicate content
• Readability analysis using an easy to understand color system (red, yellow, green)

2. W3 Total Cache

When it comes to running an online business, site speed and performance can make or break your success. W3 Total Cache reduces the load on your server and allows your website to run faster. This results in higher Google search rankings, an increase in site traffic, and ultimately more conversions.

Other features include:

• Browser caching
• Compatibility with all web hosting types
• AMP support
• Caching of pages based on referrer
• Secure Socket Layer (SSL) support

3. Optin Forms

Optin Forms allows you to create beautiful and highly-converting optin forms for your WordPress blog or website without needing any technical knowledge. You can add forms to any post or page, or even take advantage of the shortcode generators to add it in a particular part of your website.

Other features include:

• Compatibility with top email service providers (e.g., Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and AWeber)
• 5 pre-designed form designs for faster form creation
• Endless color combinations thanks to the color picker
• Customization of font style, size, and color

4. Compress JPEG & PNG Images

You may be familiar with the free online image compression tool TinyPNG. Well, if you like that tool as much as we do for optimizing your blog’s images, you can relish in the fact that the tool can be added straight to your WordPress site. Let Compress JPEG & PNG Images automatically optimize new images once they load on your website so your site visitors have the best viewing experience possible.

Other features include:

• Preserve copyright metadata, creation date, and GPS location if you choose
• WordPress Multisite support
• Easy bulk optimization of existing Media Library images
• Dashboard widget displays total savings
• No file size limits

5. Disqus Comment System

Disqus is a popular commenting system trusted by millions of bloggers. In fact, Disqus is one of the best commenting systems to replace the default WordPress comment system. This plugin includes one-click installation, real-time comments, and the inclusion of recommend buttons to boost content engagement. Not to mention, once you upload it on your site, the plugin automatically imports existing comments.

Other features include:

• Enable email notifications for those leaving comments on your site
• Mobile-responsive design for a visually appealing comment section
• 3-level nested comment threads
• Flexible login options – Facebook, Twitter, and even Google
• Automatic anti-spam filter powered by Akismet

6. jQuery Pin It Button For Images

jQuery Pin It Button for Images is one of the greatest WordPress plugins for businesses that helps bloggers utilizing the social network Pinterest to drive traffic to their sites. This plugin makes it easy for people to pin images found in your blog posts or pages. In addition, it highlights images and adds a “Pin it” button when someone hovers over the image. When the “Pin It” button is clicked, a pop-up is shown with the image and description, allowing for an easy pin to Pinterest.

Other features include:

• Choose where the pin description will be taken
• Select the images to show the “Pin it” button
• Custom design Pinterest button
• Define whether to add a “Pin it” button on a homepage, single posts, single pages, or category pages
• Plug and play setup

7. Pretty Link Lite

Pretty Link Lite enables you to shorten links using your own domain name, as opposed to using tools such as tinyurl.com or bit.ly. It’s perfect for bloggers who want to clean up their affiliate links and have their social media links come from their own domain. Pretty Link Lite also tracks each hit on your URL and provides analytics for each click.

Other features include:

• Track clicks from emails, forums, and even comments to find where the most engagement is happening
• Customize your URL slugs
• Redirect temporarily or permanently
• Create nofollow/noindex links
• Exclude IP addresses from stats and maintain GDPR compliance

8. Editorial Calendar

If you’re a blogger, you may have noticed WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. Luckily, the WordPress Editorial Calendar business plugin fixes that problem. With this plugin, you can see an overview of your blog as well as when each post is scheduled to be published.

Other features include:

• Manage post drafts in the new drafts drawer
• Drag and drop posts to rearrange your schedule
• Quickly see the status of all blog posts
• Instantly publish post from the plugin’s interface
• Manage posts from multiple authors in one place

9. Content Views

Content Views helps you create beautiful grids and lists of blog posts to improve your website’s overall design and flow. It will boost site visitor engagement with your content, give your site an organized feel, and render seamlessly on all device types no matter how small.

Other features include:

• Display recent posts, specific categories, tags, or authors
• Show posts in a scrollable or collapsible list
• Limit the number of posts displayed in a grid
• Pagination support
• Show visitors post titles, excerpts, thumbnails, published dates, and authors

10. WordPress Share Buttons Plugin – AddThis

WordPress Share Buttons Plugin – AddThis is mostly known as a share and follow plugin, but it also works for integrating your most relevant related posts as well. It features related posts in an attractive and engaging way that stands out for readers. You can choose various styles that fit your personal preference.

Other features include:

• Connect with over 200 social sharing channels
• Create floating, expanding, inline, or image sharing buttons
• Customizable for desktop, tablet, and mobile sites
• Receive analytics about how your content is performing
• View social counts as people share your best content with others

11. Advanced Excerpts

WordPress doesn’t have the best default way of creating blog post excerpts for site visitors to see. That’s why using a WordPress plugin like Advanced Excerpts is so beneficial to bloggers. With it, you can keep the HTML markup in an excerpt and even choose which tags to include. Plus, you can customize the excerpt length and the ellipsis characters that are used.

Other features include:

• Add a “read more” link
• Trim excerpts using character count or word count
• Avoid weird cuts (completes the last word or sentence)
• Ignore custom excerpts and use the generated one instead
• Advanced customization for those with coding or development experience

Best WordPress Email Marketing Plugins

One of the most important parts of running a successful online business is establishing your online presence. Building and maintaining an email list makes all the difference in finding and keeping customers or subscribers. Luckily, promoting your business with monthly newsletters, special offers, or even just updated blog content has never been easier thanks to the available WordPress plugins.

There are many email marketing plugins available for building a bigger email list and boosting conversions. Some are general list building plugins and others cater to a specific email service provider. The one you choose to use will depend on your individual business needs.

12. Mailchimp for WordPress

Mailchimp for WordPress allows you to grow your email lists and write better newsletters for your email marketing campaigns. After all, the more engaging your newsletters, the more traffic that will come back to your website. And building long-lasting relationships with people long after they leave your site is important to running a successful online business.

Other features include:

• Create optin forms or integrate an optin option on any existing form
• Automatically send contact information to your Mailchimp account
• Compatibility with popular WordPress plugins like MemberPress, BuddyPress, and WooCommerce
• Maintain complete control over form fields and customize as you see fit
• Access other free Mailchimp addon plugins to enhance your marketing efforts

13. Popup Maker

If you want to create popups on your website that convert, you should consider using the WordPress business plugin Popup Maker. Not only is it free to use, you can create email optins, contact form popups, announcements, EU cookies notices, and slide-ins. You can even integrate it with popular email marketing services like GetResponse, Constant Contact, and AWeber, for easier management of your subscribers and email campaigns.

Other features include:

• Retargeting popups to display the right message to the right people at the right time
• Enable click triggers in menu items, sidebars, buttons, images, and more to display popups
• Set a time delay and automatically open a popup on your website
• Change colors, shadows, paddings, fonts, and more to match your brand
• Enjoy WooCommerce specific conditions that will work for you, not against you

14. WPForms

WPForms is one of the easiest, most beginner-friendly contact form plugins for WordPress around. It comes with a convenient drag and drop form builder, plenty of pre-made templates, and integrates with all the major email service providers in the market. It’s mobile friendly so people will be able to view and submit forms on your site no matter what device they’re using. And since all the form fields are customizable, you’ll be able to create unique contact forms and collect only the information you need every single time.

Other features include:

• GDPR friendly for staying compliant
• Built-in spam protection in the form of smart CAPTCHA and the Honeypot method
• Ability to collect payments, files uploads, and signatures
• Smart conditional logic based on user behavior
• Instant form notification to site visitors and owners

15. Newsletter

Newsletter is the perfect newsletter building solution for your WordPress blog. The mobile responsive newsletters are easily created using the intuitive drag and drop composer. You can create an unlimited number of newsletters with this amazing WordPress business plugin, as well as collect an unlimited number of contacts.

Other features include:

• Track newsletter activity to see which ones are performing the best
• Translation ready using WPML, Polylang, or TranslatePress
• Advanced targeting for sending the right newsletters to the right subscribers
• Single and double opt-in options
• Privacy checkbox available for maintaining GDPR compliance

16. Sumo – Boost Conversions and Sales

Sumo is a powerful WordPress plugin designed to help you build your email list and boost conversions. All you have to do is create timed popups that will display across your website, schedule email marketing campaigns (one-off or drip campaigns), and watch your traffic and sales numbers skyrocket.

Other features include:

• Abandoned shopping cart recovery email campaigns
• Add social share buttons to website and let people share their favorite content
• SEO optimized and GDPR compliant
• Intuitive and easy to use Sumo dashboard for managing subscribers and campaigns
• Free customer support for those times you need a little help

17. Email Subscribers & Newsletters

Email Subscribers & Newsletters boasts being a comprehensive newsletter plugin for WordPress that lets you send campaigns about new blog posts, create and send broadcasts, and manage all of this from one convenient location. To use it, just create a beautiful subscribe box anywhere on your site and start collecting leads.

Other features include:

• Send newsletters automatically or manually
• Automatic welcome email sends to all new subscribers
• Import and export existing email addresses
• Add subscribe boxes via shortcode or widget for all site visitors to see
• Customize newsletters by adding infographics, images, links, and exclusive content using the HTML editor

18. MailPoet

MailPoet is a newsletter plugin that lets you collect lead information without ever having to leave the backend of your website. This plugin integrates seamlessly with WordPress and comes with the ability to create emails by scratch or using the pre-designed templates. You can schedule your newsletters to release or send them right away. And you can even enable the plugin to alert subscribers any time new content is published on your website.

Other features include:

• Send automated welcome emails to all new subscribers
• Works out of the box and is simple to use
• Collecting WooCommerce leads is a cinch thanks to the compatibility
• Fully GDPR compliant
• Manage subscribers and lists in WordPress

Best WordPress eCommerce Plugins

Turning your WordPress website into a profitable online storefront might be a dream of yours. After all, eCommerce stores have given business owners the power to scale their profits by selling products and offering services online.

Whether you’re selling an eBook or physical merchandise, WordPress eCommerce plugins will have your business generating revenue quickly, running smoothly, and processing customer service inquiries with a simple click of your mouse. Below are some of the highest rated eCommerce plugins for successful online shops.

19. WooCommerce

Powering more than 26% of all online stores worldwide, WooCommerce is a must have WordPress plugin for businesses looking to succeed. WooCommerce makes it easy to sell digital products and physical products online. There are tons of built in themes for shop pages and checkout screens. Plus, WooCommerce is compatible with hundreds of other free WordPress business extensions, helping you keep business flowing as smoothly as possible.

Other features include:

• Create product, cart, and checkout pages
• Configure payment options such as flat rates, free shipping, and more
• Integrate with Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and even Facebook
• Design your online shop to match your brand and vision
• Central dashboard for easy management of inventory, payments, and key metrics

20. Tidio Live Chat

Tidio Live Chat is a live chat service that lets you communicate with site visitors with ease. And to help you out, Tidio Live Chat also comes with chatbots that help direct site visitors to the places they need to be to get the best help possible. You can easily contact anyone that’s interacting with your chatbots, adjust the color scheme of your live chat box to match your brand, and even integrate with popular third-party services like Salesforce and Zendesk.

Other features include:

• Support for 183 languages
• Use chat, email, and Messenger in one single panel
• Provide an offline form for site visitors that will notify you about new messages
• Build a bigger email list by asking for customer emails in the chat box
• Use a dedicated app for both mobile and desktop devices

21. Download Monitor

The Download Monitor plugin is a great tool for tracking the number of downloads that occur on your website. This is perfect for those that offer subscribers lead magnets or content upgrades in exchange for an email address. In addition, this versatile plugin will help you sell your downloads within your WordPress website, offering business owners another way to monetize their sites.

Other features include:

• 100% Gutenberg compatible (Download Monitor Download Block included)
• Change the way download links display
• Require users to log in to download files
• Track download counts and log user download attempts
• Add, edit, and remove downloads just like you would add, edit, or remove a blog post

22. Embed Code

Sometimes you need to add code to your site’s header or footer section to make the most of your online business. However, rather than mess with your theme’s files and risk the WordPress white screen of death, you can use a plugin like Embed Code instead. Just add the code to the plugin and let it insert it into your site where it should go.

Other features include:

• Quick and easy setup
• Compatible with any WordPress theme
• Insert code into header or footer section, or both
• Embed code directly on a webpage and even custom post types
• Add Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel code, or custom CSS to your site
• Use to integrate a live chat option on your website

23. Ad Inserter

Management of ads on your WordPress business website is not always easy. Luckily, with a plugin like Ad Inserter, things just got a lot less chaotic and a whole lot more organized. To start, it supports all kinds of ads, including Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Native Shopping Ads, and even rotating banners. Plus, you can insert optin forms, header scripts, CSS, tracking code, and more into it to drive sales and make better data driven decisions.

Other features include:

• Insert ads anywhere on your site
• Use the syntax highlighting tool and preview code using the CSS editor
• Disable ads on certain blog posts
• AdSense code generator
• Define times to rotate ads in a single ad block

24. TablePress

When it comes to running an online business, you need to be able to share a lot of information about pricing in a clear and organized fashion. With TablePress, doing that is easy because you can create and manage beautiful tables right in WordPress. Embed tables into posts, pages, or text widgets using a simple shortcode. And the best part is, you can edit your tables in a spreadsheet-like interface, meaning you never have to code anything.

Other features include:

• Import/export tables to and from Excel, CSV, HTML, and JSON files
• Insert any type of data you want into your tables
• Add formulas to your tables and let TablePress evaluate them before display
• Include features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more
• Include images, numbers, text, links, and more without any technical knowledge

25. Social Sharing Plugin

As one of the easiest to use social media share plugins for WordPress users, Social Share Plugin has it all. For example, you can integrate with social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flint, and Pinterest. In addition, you can change the style of your social share buttons, choose from four different skins, and display the number of social counts next to each icon.

Other features include:

• Enable/disable the floating bar
• Include Google Analytics tracking to get more data
• Display icons before/after content, or both
• Add social identities
• Individually turn on/off social channels

26. Really Simple SSL

Having an SSL certificate for your WordPress online business is a must these days. It encrypts data, instills trust in your brand, and helps your search rankings. The thing is, not all web hosts offer SSL certificates. If you find yourself needing to get an SSL certificate independently of your web host, and aren’t sure how to install it on your site, Really Simple SSL is the plugin for you.

Other features include:

• Activate the plugin and enable your SSL with one click
• Direct all incoming requests to secure HTTPS connections
• Change the site and home URL to HTPPS
• Fix all mixed or insecure content by replacing HTTP URLs
• Rest assured no database changes are made thanks to its dynamic nature

Best WordPress Analytics Plugins

Knowing how many people are visiting your site, where they are coming from, and how long they stay on your website are vital factors in ensuring your business’ success. And the great thing is, Google Analytics will track all of these things for you, and a whole lot more. Though you’ll automatically have access to some website analytics for free when you use WordPress, it helps to add an analytics plugin to your site to boost your data tracking efforts.

27. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

If you know you want to use Google Analytics to make better data driven decisions, but don’t want to deal with the overwhelming and oftentimes clunky Google Analytics interface, check out this neat plugin. As one of the best WordPress plugins for businesses, Google Analytics Dashboard for WP comes with all the features you need, including real-time stats of site visitors, acquisition channels, and traffic sources.

Other features include:

• Easily install Google Analytics tracking code on your site
• Get real-time reports in the WordPress dashboard
• Learn about devices, operating systems, mobile brands, and more
• eCommerce support
• User tracking opt-out option support

28. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is another one of those WordPress plugins for business websites that let you track customer acquisition details and whole lot more. For instance, check out the number of downloads your site receives, your highest performing content, and demographic information of all site visitors, all from the inside of your website.

Other features include:

• Easy to connect Google Analytics to your website
• Access Google Search Console and see how well your site is ranking
• Receive eCommerce stats like revenue generated, highest performing products, and more
• Discover keywords, external links, and referrer sites that send traffic your way
• Maintain complete GDPR compliance as your track user behavior

29. JetPack by WordPress.com

Jetpack is one of the most versatile and popular WordPress plugins for businesses around.  It comes with built-in modules for securing your site, speeding up your load times, helping you manage your site, and even boosting conversions. But when it comes to data tracking, Jetpack really helps business owners get ahead of the competition. For instance, you can see a basic report of activity on your site right in the dashboard of your site. Plus, you can click on each metric to get more details if you want.

Other features include:

• No setup required, just install and activate the plugin
• Real-time stats available without overwhelming you with data
• Track successful blog posts
• View timeline’s of your users’ visits
• Optional website monitoring and mobile optimization services

Best WordPress Security Plugins

With WordPress being the most popular blogging platform in the world, millions of websites are exposed to the possibility of online threats. Unfortunately, hacking happens. Luckily, for WordPress users, there are several free and affordable plugins to help keep your site safe and your content backed up.

30. WP Security Audit Log

WordPress plugins for business websites are not just for generating money and boosting conversions. In fact, it’s almost more important to manage what’s happening behind the scenes so you can continue to grow your company and make more money. That’s where a plugin like WP Security Audit Log comes in handy. Built for single and multisite installs, this plugin logs everything that happens on your website so you never miss a thing, especially a security issue.

Other features include:

• Ensure user productivity on your website
• Log page, post, and custom post type changes
• Monitor database changes, core settings changes, and profile changes
• View the date, time, user role, and source IP when anything changes
• Identify not only that a change was made, but what the exact change was

31. Wordfence

Wordfence is one of the top WordPress security plugins and is highly recommended by some of the top WordPress business owners in the industry. It comes with a firewall and a malware scanner to keep an eye on suspicious activity and alert you as soon as an issue pops up. Plus, any definite malicious traffic is automatically blocked so you don’t have to deal with the aftermath.

Other features include:

• Does not break encryption and cannot be bypassed
• Check WordPress core files, themes, and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, and more
• Repair files that have been damaged with original versions
• Enable two-factor authentication and login page CAPTCHA
• Receive alerts via email, SMS, or Slack

32. BackWPuP

In addition to monitoring your site for malicious activity, it’s important you invest in one of the best WordPress plugins for businesses that automatically backs up your site’s content to an external service like Dropbox, S3, or FTP. When you need to restore your site, just access the zip file and upload it right back into your site and start fresh.

Other features include:

• Check and repair the database
• Multisite support
• Generate a file with all installed plugins
• WordPress XML export option
• Database, core, theme, and plugin backups available

33. UpdraftPlus

Another highly reliable WordPress backup plugin is UpdraftPlus. Not only does it help you backup your site’s database and files to an external storage like Dropbox, it comes with a simple one-click site restore option. This makes it one of the easiest to use backup solutions for WordPress in the market to date.

Other features include:

• Set up automatic backups or manually create them
• Uses fewer resources than many backup solutions
• Comes with more cloud options than most backup plugins
• View backup activity in the backend of your site
• Automatic resume and retry when the upload fails

34. Sucuri

If you’re looking for a reliable way to harden your WordPress site’s security, consider using the free Sucuri security plugin. It comes with a variety of security features to help you protect your site’s data and customer information. And whenever it identifies an issue on your site, this plugin will immediately notify you so you can take the required actions to stop and fix anything with limited downtime on your site (if any at all).

Other features include:

• Audit activity happening on your website and ensure none of it is suspicious
• Monitor your existence on Google’s blacklist
• Enjoy remote malware scanning
• Receive post-hack security actions to help clean up and fix security breaches
• Stop DDoS, XXS, and brute force attacks in their tracks

35. Akismet

For those online businesses that have thriving comment sections and contact form submissions, a plugin like Aksimet is a great tool to have on hand. It will check your comments and form submissions for spam and malicious content. And if you want, you can review comment spam to make sure there are no accidental blocks of good comments.

Other features include:

• Automatically check all comments and filter out spammy looking ones
• Moderate the number of approved comments for each user
• Save disk space and preserve site speed by outright blocking the worst spam
• View comment status history
• Display URLs in the comment body to reveal hidden or misleading links

Wrapping Up

And there you have it! The top 35 most recommended WordPress plugins for businesses. It is overwhelming to think about all the plugins you might be able to use on your WordPress website. More than that, it’s easy to get caught up in using too many and slowing the speed and performance of your site down. That’s why understanding your end goals is so important. The better you know your business, the easier it will be to choose which WordPress plugins for businesses you need on your site.

Not sure that WordPress can power the type of business you want to run? Be sure to check out this neat roundup of big brands using WordPress to power their sites. You’re sure to be surprised at some of the well-established companies found on this list.

Have we left on an essential WordPress plugin for business websites that you’d like to recommend? If so, we’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!