The 8 best WordPress plugins of 2024: Supercharge your website

WordPress is one of the most popular website management platforms. In fact, 835 million of the 1.98 billion total websites on the web in 2024 are powered by it.

A lot of WordPress’s popularity can be traced back to the flexibility it offers through the huge range of plugins it supports. With almost 60,000 free plugins to use, the possibilities are almost endless.

Of course, with so many choices, it can be difficult to know what your website needs. That’s where we come in. On this page, we’ve broken down our top 10 favourite plugins to help you get started.

Yoast SEO: Helping you rank

When it comes to SEO, Yoast stands out as one of the most comprehensive tools on offer.

Yoast offers a range of tools designed to help you optimise your website, from specific page recommendations to URL structure and categorisation.

In the list below, we’ve explored some of Yoast SEO’s top offerings:

On-page SEO optimisation: Yoast helps website owners and managers optimise individual pages and posts. Once you provide a target keyword per page – you can target multiple keywords – Yoast will provide real-time recommendations to help improve your rank-ability.
Readability analysis: Yoast also assesses the ‘readability’ of your content. Essentially letting you know how accessible your page is. Based on the level of ‘readability’, Yoast can provide suggestions to improve sentence structure, paragraph length and other things.
Snippet preview: Yoast SEO can show you how your page will appear in search results, without you needing to publish the page or check the results manually. The plugin also provides guidance on how long your meta titles and descriptions should be to best match Google guidelines.
Content analysis: Yoast will evaluate your content, checking its quality and relevance so that it can provide feedback on areas that need improvement, where you’ve used too many keywords or too few internal links, for example.
Canonical URL management: Yoast will help you avoid creating duplicate pages by managing canonical URLs and recommending preferred versions of pages.
Schema: Yoast includes built-in Schema.org markup support, meaning that you can enhance your content to help it rank better in search results.

In short, Yoast SEO is the perfect plugin for any website owner looking for help ranking on Google and other engines. Used and loved by beginners and experts alike, Yoast is a must-have.

WooCommerce: For selling online

If you’re looking to set up an online store, WooCommerce is one of the most important plugins you’ll want to add to your site.

WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress to provide the tools you need to create and manage an ecommerce store.

Find out more about some of the top features below:

Product management: WooCommerce allows you to add, edit and manage products on your website. As part of this management, you’re able to manage images, descriptions, prices, variations and stock levels.
Payment options: WooCommerce supports a range of payment gateways, providing your customers with flexible options for completing transactions. By using WooCommerce, you can easily access these options without having to sign up for individual contracts with separate providers.
Shipping management: With the WooCommerce plugin, you can set up shipping zones, rates and methods to provide accurate prices for shipping, including shipping to different areas and for difficult packages,
Order management: You can track orders, manage invoices and handle customer communications through the fulfilment tool.
Inventory management: WooCommerce offers built-in inventory management and tracking features, helping you to monitor stock levels, receive low-stock notifications and update product availability on your site.

These are just a few of the features that make WooCommerce a go-to for online store owners. And all of this can be available from within your WordPress management platform.

If WooCommerce or WordPress doesn’t seem right to you, you may be interested in finding out more about alternatives – our best ecommerce website builders page may be the next step.

JetPack: Security and performance tools

Jetpack offers a range of features to support website security, performance and functionality. From helping to create backups to image optimisation.

Available for free, and with paid plans, Jetpack is widely used by many WordPress website owners to help them manage a smooth and safe site.

Take a look at some of the top features below:

Website security: Jetpack provides essential security features including brute force attack protection, downtime monitoring and malware scanning.
Traffic growth and engagement: Jetpack offers several features to help you attract more visitors to your site, and to help you keep them engaged. This includes social media integration, related post options and automatic social sharing tools.
Performance optimisation: the plugin also includes tools for website optimisation, including lazy loading of images, content delivery network (CDN) integration and site speed monitoring.
Analytics: Jetpack includes a built-in website analytics system powered by WordPress.com. You can use it to understand how your site is performing, which pages are most popular and what sort of audience you are attracting. While Jetpack does not offer the level of detail provided by tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics, it is an excellent starting point for website data analysis.
Backups and restoration: the Jetpack plugins also include automated backups of your website’s content. This provides the tools you need to easily restore your site in the event of a data breach or loss.

As a beginner security tool, Jetpack offers an enormous amount of value for users. While many more experienced users might opt for third-party tools to cover the features mentioned above, Jetpack is an excellent starting point.

WPForms: Manage forms quickly and easily

WPForms allows you to create and manage forms on your WordPress website. Whether you need a simple contact form to collect email addresses, for example, or to create a more complex survey, WPForms is an excellent tool.

WPForms operates on a drag-and-drop system, meaning you can build quickly and easily without having a great deal of experience.

Find out more about WPForms’ top features below:

Drag-and-drop form editor: similar to most of the best website builders, WPForms operates on a drag-and-drop editing system. This means that you can quickly throw together a form, without having to worry about complex coding.
Pre-built templates: as well as allowing for customisation once you have a form on-site, WPForms also offers a range of pre-built templates to choose from. These include common types, such as contact forms, payment forms and survey forms, along with some less common options.
Responsive and mobile-friendly: WPForms ensures that all of the forms you create for your website are responsive and mobile-friendly. While you’re more likely to create and manage your site from a desktop PC or laptop, your users are very likely to visit it from their phone. Making sure all of the forms work well with smart devices is a must if you want to see success.
Smart conditional logic: WPForms includes advance conditional logic in its forms, which allows you to show or hide form fields – specific questions, for example – based on questions that a user has already answered. This can make the experience of using forms on your site much easier, and more engaging.
Spam protection: WPForms includes built-in spam protection to block malicious intent. This protection includes things like CAPTCHA forms.
Emai notifications: WPForms will allow you to set up custom email alerts to inform you when a form has been completed. It also allows you to send customisable messages to users after they have submitted information.

WPForms is a versatile tool that can be massively valuable for anyone that needs to gather information from their users, whether in the form of contact details or survey answers.

Akismet Anti-Spam: Stop the spam

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin that automatically filters spam comments our of your site. This helps to keep your site clean and clutter-free.

Using advanced detection techniques, Akismet blocks malicious content from appearing on your website without your approval.

Akismet also provides a location in the back-end of your website to approve or disapprove comments manually.

MonsterInsights: Bringing Google to your website

Understanding website performance is vital at any stage in your online journey. MonsterInsights is a plugin that brings Google Analytics integration directly to your WordPress dashboard.

Using this data, you can gather valuable insight on your website’s traffic, on user behaviour, and much more.

MonsterInsights provides user-friendly reporting dashboards and real-time statistics so that you can stay on top of on-site performance.

WP Rocket: Speed up your site

Website speed is a critical factor in how a user experiences your website, as well as in how your content can rank in search engines.

WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin that optimises your website for speed. It includes features such as page caching, file minification and image lazy loading.

Using WP Rocket, you can significantly improve website times, without needing to understand the complex technicalities that go into it.

Elementor: Edit your site with ease

For those people looking for a website builder experience with WordPress, Elementor is an excellent plugin to install.

Elementor is a powerful page builder plugin that allows users to create advanced custom layouts and page designs without experience or expertise in website code. Elementor uses a drag-and-drop editing tool that makes customisation simple.

In addition to the advanced customisation options, Elementor also provides a range of pre-designed templates and in-site tools to help maximise what your users can experience when they land on one of your pages.

Best WordPress plugins: Final thoughts

For beginners and experts alike, the WordPress plugin ecosystem offers an enormous range of versatility and customisation.

Whatever sort of website you run, and whatever sort of page you are building, you are sure to find hundreds – if not thousands – of plugins that can support you in reaching your goals.

Of course, which tools you need will depend on what you’re looking to achieve. Experiment with different options and make sure to bear in mind that not all plugins are created equal!

Bryn Glover

Bryn is the founder and editor of WebsiteJumpStart. He has worked in the digital field for over a decade and was editor for Startups.co.uk - the UK's leading small business website - and for NerdWallet UK before launching WebsiteJumpStart to help people and businesses get online with ease.

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