Top 25 Best Free WordPress Plugins for Every Website. You’ve probably heard the old adage ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch‘. But, as much as I love Heinlein, in the world of WordPress, there actually is!
Without looking too hard, you can find heaps of amazing free WordPress plugins that add all sorts of helpful functionality to your WordPress site. Such plugins can help you to create better content, market your site more effectively, and keep it loading quickly and humming along smoothly… All without you needing to spend a dime.
As an ode to the generous developers behind these plugins — and to help you to find some great free WordPress plugins for your site — we’ve collected what we consider to be the best free WordPress plugins of all time, based on both personal experience and the user reviews/their popularity at WordPress.org.
We’ll divide these plugins into four broad categories. Plugins that are good for:
- creating content of all types (everything from a basic form to eCommerce functionality)
- marketing and SEO
- performance, security, and maintenance
- advanced users who like tinkering.
Whether you’re a casual user or someone who likes playing around with custom fields and post types, you should find some great free options on this list.
Let’s get started…
Best Free WordPress Plugins for Creating Content of All Types
Whether you want to create a contact form, build more beautiful pages, or add eCommerce functionality to your WordPress site, these plugins can help.
1. NINJA FORMS
Every website needs a contact page, and, when it comes to contact forms (or other types of forms), Ninja Forms is one of the best free options you’ll find. This is probably why it’s active on more than a million websites.
It features a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and AJAX form submission so people can submit a form without a page reload.
And, if you ever feel limited by the (generous) free core version, you can always get extra functionality with Ninja Forms’ huge library of premium extensions.
WPForms is also another great free option for forms — it really just depends on which interface you prefer. I like Ninja Forms’ interface a little bit more, which is why I chose to feature it.
2. ELEMENTOR
Elementor is a front-end drag-and-drop page builder. This means it lets you design complicated-looking pages without needing to know a single line of code.
Essentially, it makes web design accessible to anyone.
Even though Elementor only launched in 2016, it’s already grown to the point where it’s active on more than five million websites, and it’s also maintained a 4.8-star rating on more than 5,780 reviews.
Read our Elementor review for more information.
3. WOOCOMMERCE
If you want to create an eCommerce store with WordPress, WooCommerce is the way to do it. Heck, if you want to create an eCommerce store period, WooCommerce is the way to do it. According to BuiltWith, this free plugin powers more than 28% of all eCommerce stores, and is even more popular than Shopify.
It’s active on more than five million sites, has a 4.5-star rating on more than 3,700 reviews, and, most importantly, it just plain works.
Check out some examples of WooCommerce stores.
4. TABLEPRESS
TablePress has one of the most impressive ratings I’ve ever seen for a WordPress plugin:
It has a perfect 5-star rating on more than 4,114 votes at WordPress.org.
And, as someone who has used this plugin quite a bit, I can say it deserves every one of those 5-star reviews.
If you need to display any type of table on your WordPress site, TablePress can handle it.
It gives you a simple, Excel-like interface right in your WordPress dashboard. You can import data from Excel or Google Sheets, use any type of media in your table, and extend it with a huge variety of free add-ons.
5. ENVIRA GALLERY
If you have a ton of images that you want to display at once, you need a gallery. WordPress includes basic gallery functionality built into the core, but it’s not very flexible and the end-product looks pretty basic.
Envira Gallery changes that by giving you a user-friendly interface to create great-looking galleries. That’s why it has a 4-8-star rating on more than 1,380 reviews.
You can learn more about it in our Envira Gallery review or Envira Gallery vs Modula comparison.
6. SMART SLIDER 3
Like galleries, slider plugins provide you with another helpful way to display media content on your site. And when it comes to free slider plugins, Smart Slider 3 is one of the best you’ll find — which is why it has a 4.9-star rating on more than 930 reviews at WordPress.org.
Smart Slider 3 gives you a beginner-friendly live slide editor, as well as some beautiful templates to get you started. Even in the free version, you’ll feel like you’re using a premium plugin.
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