Daily Facts - Day #32: The 10 most popular WordPress plugins of all time
As far as I know, there are almost 60,000 available plugins in the Wordpress plugin repository.
Yes of course, some of them are quite old or even outdated, but that's just a small fraction ...
Which made me wonder ... Which plugins get used the most?
Well, here are the most poular ones based on actual download and install numbers:
1. YOAST SEO
Active installations: 5+ MILLION
Last updated: 16 hours ago
Will help you to improve the overall SEO score of your articles and pages.
You can set your main keyword, the meta description, the slug, the SEO title, the alt attributes of your images, and it also recommends the best practices for good readability.
Also, offers stats and actionable advice on how to improve your work.
2. Akismet
Active installations: 5+ MILLION
Last updated: 1 week ago
Akismet is made to automatically block spam comments.
Every day, we are spammed by promotional links, irrelevant stories, malicious content, etc.
The plugin is good not only for automation but also for security purposes since it won’t allow malicious or problematic content to be published on your site.
Also checks all your contact form submissions against their global database of spam, so you’ll be sure only the good and relevant information gets to you.
I'd say that that is a mandatory plugin for blog and business owners.
3. Jetpack
Active installations: 5+ MILLION
Last updated: 2 weeks ago
OK, I know, Jetpack is banned here at WA. And I'm pretty sure, that Kyle & Carson had their reasons ...
Still, this is not an opinion list, but a data-backed list, and the numbers speak for themselves ...
It's a multipurpose tool that’s good at almost everything (marketing, design, security, etc).
Among its various features, you can find site analytics, automated social media posting, multiple WordPress themes, spam filtering, downtime monitoring, malware scanning, login security, lazy image loading, CDN, and more.
4. Contact Form 7
Active installations: 5+ MILLION
Last updated: 3 weeks ago
Contact Form 7 creates simple and effective contact forms for your website.
We all need an easy way to connect with people, so it’s not a surprise to see this plugin so high on the list.
It can handle multiple contact forms on the same site and integrates Akismet spam filtering.
Also, will allow you to customize the styling and fields that you want to use in the form.
Finally, provides CAPTCHA and Ajax submitting too.
Is a plugin that can be used by absolutely everyone, no matter if you’re running a personal blog or you’re having a business that you monetize.
It’s free, easy to configure, and efficient.
5. WooCommerce
Active installations: 4+ MILLION
Last updated: 3 weeks ago
WooCommerce is the plugin that lets you turn your WordPress site into an online shop, so you can sell your products to your clients on the web.
What’s nice about WooCommerce is that it’s very flexible in terms of customization options.
Apart from the built-in settings, lots of developers built a community around it and created extensions, so that selling online can be as smooth as possible. With WooCommerce you can sell both physical and digital goods, add product variations, use affiliate links, and extensive payment methods.
6. WordPress Importer
Active installations: 4+ MILLION
Last updated: 9 months ago
If you want to import files from a WordPress site, this plugin lets you do it in a few clicks.
In fact, will allow you to import pretty much anything into your site.
This plugin was built for two categories of people: those who own more than one website and import/export content often and those who occasionally want to migrate the content from the current site to a new one.
7. Wordfence
Active installations: 2+ MILLION
Last updated: 2 weeks ago
Wordfence is a security plugin that puts a firewall on your site to keep it away from malicious traffic.
Apart from that, it offers a malware scanner which blocks suspect external attempts and provides a secure login system.
Also, provides alerts every time something weird or suspicious happens on your site.
I'd say that having Wondfence installed on your WordPress site is mandatory if you don’t want to face unneeded problems.
8. AIO SEO Pack
Active installations: 2+ MILLION
Last updated: 4 weeks ago
If you want to experiment more or need an alternative to Yoast, All in One SEO Pack could be a good choice.
Apart from the basic SEO instructions for content optimization, the plugin also offers XML sitemap, Google Analytics, and Google AMP support.
Also, provides SEO integration for e-commerce sites.
9. Monsterinsights
Active installations: 2+ MILLION
Last updated: 12 hours ago
It's a well-known fact, if you want to grow your personal, hobby blog into something that you can monetize, you can’t do it without Google Analytics.
And the MonsterInsights plugin makes the connection between your WordPress website and Google Analytics a LOT easier.
Offers a quick and powerful integration, all you need to do is to copy/paste the tracking code to your site.
A cool feature is that you can monitor the stats without leaving your dashboard, because it imports the numbers from Analytics to your WordPress admin area.
10. WP Super Cache
Active installations: 2+ MILLION
Last updated: 3 months ago
A plugin that’s in charge of speeding up your website.
How does it work exactly? By generating static HTML files from your WordPress blog to save time.
Comes with 3 types of caching: expert, simple and WP-Cache catching.
Another must-have, because it helps you big time, especially if you host a large amount of content (photos, videos, animations etc).
So these are the superstars ...
And I'm using 5 of them: WP Super Cache, Monsterinsights, Akismet, Wordfence and YOAST.
How about you?
Recent Comments
60
Super blog post, Zed, and helpful to know as well ... ⭐️
... the WA Platform is pretty advanced with lots of functionalities built-in -- we'd need to know which plug-ins would be compatible or complementary to what is already available here ... and of course, it's also theme-dependent, isn't it? ...
.. plus, is Jetpack banned -- didn't know about that -- someone had a question about it some time ago ... is there a list of what's allowed or maybe a list of what's not allowed might be easier to compile? ... :(
anyway, lots more to learn -- (sigh!) ... 😊
On WA I am only using AIO SEO plugin. I do have external sites where I run Jetpack, Contact form 7 and AIO SEO.
Derek
Well this was eye opening!
First, I was not aware that Jetpack was not allowed on the WA platform - I've never installed it but came close a couple of times during a couple of theme changes - whew!
Second, your list of plug-ins prompted me to take a look at what plug-ins I have installed. Doing this, I noticed the TinyMCE plug in I installed a while ago.
Now that I'm using Gutenberg as my editor I'm thinking I no longer need the Tiny MCE plug-in and should de-activate this, right?
Once this is eliminated I will have only 5 plug-ins which should be enough for this particular site and theme however, I'm wondering if I should also install Akismet.
Something to think about...
Yes, you can deactivate/delete Tiny if you are happy with Gutenberg, but maybe isn't a bad idea to keep it for a while ...
Regarding Akismet, please see the comments below.
Thank you for your response and direction to the comments below!
I'm still using a free theme and have very little traffic so I'll keep things as they are, "Ain't no need goin' around fixin' things that ain't broke".
:-)
Why not? If you don't have other image optimization in place and your site performance can/could be improved via image optimization, you'll need a solution. And EWWW is one of the most popular ones
I haven't ...
Is a top 10 list and these are the first ten positions ... As I said, this is not an opinion list, but a list based on existing installation numbers ...
Regarding your question .... In my OPINION Shareaholic is one of the bests ... But depends on your goals too ...
With WA's super servers do we need Akismet and the Super Chache?
What do you use for a Contact Form?
Ian
You don’t need Akismet with the WA hosting. I don’t use a contact form yet so I can’t really comment on that one.
To answer you first question, NO, you do not need either of those. In fact Carson has requested that you deactivate those plugins because their functionalities are handled by WA hosting.
With WA’s SPAM filter and caching, I don’t see a need for additional plugins that just duplicate the effort. I was actually told, back in the day, that they were no longer needed. As I already run 7 other plugins, I decided to kill them off.
Most likely I'm wrong, and Rob & Scott are right Ian.
Fact is I'm using them on external non-WA sites
And I didn't know about Carson's request. So I'd say that is up to you .... And you can always make test (if they are not banned) ... With or without ... If they are not useful obviously you don't need them ...
As for the Akismet and any other anti-spam plugins, having them active along with SiteProtect can cause problems with receiving comments.
But in general for both plugins, it makes no sense to have two plugins loading up your website that are no longer needed.
The least amount of plugins a website has, the faster and safer its performance.
Thanks Rob!
So I understand that they aren't banned, but they are pretty much useless on WA hosted sites.
BTW I don't have WA hosted sites so this part is not clear to me ... Site Protect can be activated/deactivated on individual level, or is a default feature that cannot be deactivated?
Any time. With all the plugins out there it’s hard to narrow it down to what you really want/need.
Indeed. Not to mention that you can have different sites with completely different requirements.
Yep! It would be interesting to see a comparison of WA’s built-in Tools vs popular plugins.
Cool idea! And it can be done with a few simple tests ... Maybe I'll need a WA hosted site after all :)
no plugins as of yet except for the automatic ones we get installed here by WA launching a new site. still in learning mode it's an avalanche of info around here! I have used Akismet before on a free wordpress site.
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You really come up with interesting acts...never heard of half of these. I'll have to check these out. Thanks.
Thanks for your time Debbie!