8 Must Have WordPress Plugins & Tools That’ll Grow Your Website (2020)

In this tutorial, I will recommend to you my favorite Must Have WordPress plugins and tools that are needed for any websites.

So if you want to make your website

• Customizable
• Fast
• Rank higher in SEO
• Secured

You probably need to read my list of Must-Have WordPress plugins to make your website outperform.

If you do not have a website yet, you can start from here.

I only recommend the plugins that I personally have a good experience. I had tried so many plugins before and end up with this list of recommended plugins.

Let’s dive right into the list of plugins.

1. What is a Plugin, and Why Do They Matter?

A plugin is a small piece of software that contains a group of functionalities that can be seamlessly added to your WordPress-powered website. They can do everything from extending existing functionalities to add entirely new features to your web page or blog.

It is a very important tool other than a theme that helps the process of website building. Unlike theme, you can have multiple plugins depends on your website’s need.

Typically, WordPress plugins are written in a programming language called PHP, which was custom-tailored for the needs of the modern website. This means that they integrate seamlessly with WordPress while helping to take even the simplest of websites to the next level.

Overall, plugins make it easy for users to add valuable features to their websites without having to know how to write code. With literally thousands of plugins available for free download at the official WordPress Plugin Directory, there is no limit to where you can take your website in terms of functionality.

2. Steps to Install A Plugin

Plugin -> Add New -> Search plugin -> Install Now -> Activate

3. Must Have WordPress Plugins – 100% Useful for Your Website

I have listed down some of my favourite and recommended best WordPress plugins, such as page builder plugin, SEO plugin, speed optimization plugin, analytic plugin, security plugin, backup plugin as well as marketing plugin. These plugins will help you to build your website easily, robust, secure, SEO friendly and complete with all the functions required in a modern website.

Let’s explore them:

3.1. Elementor – The Best Drag And Drop Page Builder (2019 Builder Trend)

Elementor is the best drag and drop page builder for WordPress. It is the favorite tool by many people (trend of 2019) when comes to build a website. It allows you to easily build your website design and make custom page layouts without writing any code.

Most bloggers/business owners like to use it for their website because it can build up most of the designs within a short time. The learning curve of using Elementor is easy and many people including non-techie can master it very quickly.

Some people complain that the page builder plugin will slow down website loading time, yes it is true for most of the page builder plugins but definitely not Elementor. My website still performs fast at 387ms page loading time. Check out how do I achieve that from my complete website speed optimization guide.

3.2. Swift Performance – The Best All In One Speed Optimization Plugin

One of the key factors that can affect the website loading time is the cache plugin. Swift performance is a new cache plugin which contains all speed optimization features in just a single plugin. Some of the core features provided are page cache, CSS/Scripts optimization, gzip-compression, image optimization, and other great features.

It comes with both Lite (free) and Pro (paid) versions. Both Lite and Pro versions were voted as one of the top choices among all the free and paid cache plugins. The Pro version comes with unlimited image optimization, compute engine, server push, and others.

I’m using the Swift Performance (Paid) to help my website achieving fast loading time. I have also written an article on how to configure Swift Performance to work best with Elementor.

3.3. Rank Math – The Best SEO Plugin Which Can Rank Your Website Higher

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” which will drive more visitors from search engines (eg. google) to your website. If your SEO is great, your website will be ranked at the top position when certain keywords are being searched. One advantage of using WordPress is SEO friendly, there are many things you can configure to improve the website SEO. The SEO plugin is introduced to help the whole optimization process.

Before the year 2018, when comes to SEO plugin, most people probably will think of using Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack. However, the preference of users has been slowly changed since mid of 2018. The most favorite SEO plugin is Rank Math in 2019, it is a new and completely free plugin which contains all the features that those other plugins have, and also provides additional unique features.

3.4. Analytify – The Best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress

Google analytics is a software which can track your website performance such as visitor traffics. Analytify is the best google analytic plugin which is created to link the Google Analytics software to your website, so you can see the data from the WordPress dashboard.

I have used both Analytify and MonsterInsight (another famous plugin), I really like Analytify a lot compared to MonsterInsight. Analytify is so good that it shows out a lot of statistics about the website, while MonsterInsight only shows a few.

Analytify also comes with free and paid version. I personally only use free version because the statistics provided are enough for me. If you are a big business, looking to have more complete monitoring, you might consider its paid version.

3.5. All In One WP Security & Firewall – The Best Free Security & Firewall plugin

Security is the top priority concern for any websites. All In One WP Security & Firewall is a completely FREE WordPress security and firewall plugin that protects your website from attack. You are getting all the essential security features including a full-fledged firewall, spam check, brute force protection, file protection, etc. for free.

It has more than 800,000 downloads from wordpress.org and is the only free security plugin which can beat others paid security plugins like Wordfence and Sucuri. If you still don’t have any security plugin on your website today, you should install one now.

3.6. Antispam Bee – The Best Free Antispam Plugin

Antispam Bee is a totally free anti-spam plugin which checks all comments and filters out the spammy comments. Spammy comments are very annoying and can become a big issue when your website is growing. They will occupy unnecessary space in your WordPress hosting database. So ensure to install an anti-spam plugin (eg. Antispam Bee) to block the spammy comments.

3.7. Updraftplus – The Best WordPress Backup Plugin

UpdraftPlus is the most famous WordPress backup plugin available on the market. It can do automatic backups and store them safely on a remote location, for instance, Google Drive, Dropbox and more. Regularly doing WordPress backups is a good habit to ensure your website security. The restoration process from the backup is also very easy.

UpdraftPlus has free and paid versions. The paid version provides extra features and priority support. For me, I’m using the free version, and I’m satisfied with the performance.

3.8. Grammarly – The Best Online Writing Assistance

If you have blogs on your website, you probably need this tool. Grammarly is the best online writing assistance which will check spelling, grammar and contextual error in real time. It is not a WordPress plugin but is a browser extension from Google Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers. I found that it is very helpful to me when I’m writing, and that’s why I have to introduce it.

It has both free and paid versions. In fact, the features available from the free version is sufficient for most people (I’m using the free version as well). However, you can always upgrade to the paid version to unlock the premium features like vocabulary enhancement suggestions, writing style checks, and plagiarism detectors.

Wrapping Up

These are the list of my Must Have WordPress Plugins which work great for most of my websites.

If you find my review is trustable, it’s your time now to install and try the plugins.

Feel free to comment below if you have a better plugin alternative that you would like to share.