Must-Have WordPress Plugins in 2022

There are almost 60K WordPress plugins that you can choose from in 2022. From page builders, spam reductions, quizzes, and photo galleries, all the way to performance, security, and SEO plugins. Just think about what functionality you need for your website, and I bet you can find a WordPress plugin for that. But because this number is so huge, we created a list and reduced this number from 60,000 to just 17 plugins.

The following plugins have over 3 million active users 👇

WordPress plugins with 5+ million active users:

• Contact Form 7
  Downloads: 233+ m | Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars
• Yoast SEO
  Downloads: 458+ m | Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
• Elementor
  Downloads: 202+ m | Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
• Classic Editor
  Downloads: 41+ m | Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
• Aksimet
  Downloads: 256+ m | Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
• WooCommerce
  Downloads: 203+ m | Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Jetpack
  Downloads: 288+ m | Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars
• Really Simple SSL
  Downloads: 93+ m | Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
• Contact Form
  Downloads: 118+ m | Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars

WordPress plugins with 4+ million active users:

• All-in-One WP Migration
  Downloads: 83+ m | Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
• Wordfence Security
  Downloads: 250+ m | Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
• Yoast Duplicate Post
  Downloads: 30+ m | Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
• WordPress Importer
  Downloads: 39+ m | Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

WordPress plugins with 3+ million active users:

• UpdraftPlus
  Downloads: 82+ m | Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
• MonsterInsights
  Downloads: 128+ m | Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
• LiteSpeed Cache
  Downloads: 33+ m | Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
• All in One SEO
  Downloads: 102+ m | Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Ok, I know that this list may be overwhelming. That’s why I narrow it down to just five WordPress plugins that you must have. Maybe you already guessed which plugins are on this list. Let’s take a look 👇

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the WordPress plugin with the highest number of downloads, or 458,837,883 to date, to be more precise(and still counting). This plugin is for everyone, and its users range from the bakery around the corner to some of the world’s most prominent websites.

Yoast SEO provides technical SEO automation, advanced XML sitemaps, and faster loading for all users (paid or free). This WordPress plugin makes SEO and readability analyses on the content and can assist you in creating SEO-friendly content by guiding you on which improvements to make. It can also help you in finding optimization opportunities and so much more.

And below, you can find some of the benefits that you can get if you choose Yoast SEO Premium:

• you can create SEO-friendly content;
• you can save time and spot opportunities with Yoast SEO workouts;
• you’ll get 24/7 premium support;
• you can set up a solid internal linking structure;
• it helps you prevent your visitors from ending up on dead links;
• Yoast SEO automatically adds structured data to help Google understand your site;
• you can make integrations with powerful platforms such as Semrush, Zapier, and Elementor.

Another advantage of this plugin is that they provide regular updates and resolve issues regularly. And the fact that they have over 25K 5-star reviews says a lot. After all, who wouldn’t want to boost their SEO?

Full disclosure, we use Yoast SEO plugin on our blog. Also, we’re always following this WordPress SEO checklist 😉

WooCommerce

When looking for the best eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce is in the top 5 plugins on every list on the internet. Even in 2022, it’s the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin, with over 5 million websites using it. In addition, WooCommerce is an open-source platform, which means you’ll always own your store’s data and content.

Here are some of the advantages if you decide to implement this WordPress plugin:

• firstly you can customize your pages, and it’ll only take minutes;
• next, you can add features and extensions (like various payment methods, which you can see in detail below);
• also, you can run and manage your website from anywhere with the WooCommerce Mobile App.

WooCommerce is highly extensible, which means you can implement almost any eCommerce extension you desire. In other words, you can implement various marketing, technical and logistical extensions (paid or free).

What’s really important for an eCommerce site, WooCommerce offers various payment methods, such as:

• WooCommerce Payments;
• Stripe;
• PayPal;
• Square;
• Afterpay;
• Amazon Pay, and many more.

Finally, you may use this WordPress plugin to create a new store from scratch or integrate it into an existing website. So now let’s move on to the next must-have WordPress plugin.

Jetpack

If you need a WordPress plugin that includes various tools such as security, marketing, design, and performance, I recommend Jetpack. This plugin can help you secure and speed up your site and grow your audience.

Here are some of the tools that this plugin covers:

• Security:
• spam protection for comments and forms;
• malware scanning and fixes;
• real-time backups;
• Performance:
• instant site search;
• global CDN;
• speed enhancements;
• full HD videos;
• Growth:
• social media automation;
• WordPress CRM;
• advanced website traffic insights.

As stated on the WordPress page, this plugin is just about everything. But if you think Jetpack is missing anything, this plugin integrates seamlessly with all popular WordPress plugins. This includes WooCommerce, AMP, Google Analytics, Stripe, PayPal, Akismet, Mailchimp, practically every social media platform, and many more.

And last but not least, this WordPress plugin comes with an iOS and Android app. Therefore, you may restore your site in minutes no matter where you are.

Elementor

Elementor is the leading WordPress website builder, powering over 10 million websites worldwide. In other words, if you need a landing page, an eCommerce store, or perhaps a full-blown website, this is the plugin for you. You don’t even need any programming skills because this plugin requires zero coding. Instead, you can create beautiful websites by dragging and dropping various designed widgets.

If you opt in for this WordPress plugin, you can enjoy many benefits, including:

• unlimited web creations;
• pixel-perfect designs;
• great website kits and template library;
• fully responsive designs;
• accelerated creation workflow;
• fast loading websites;
• translated content to 59+ languages.

Above all, Elementor provides over 90+ free widgets (and counting) for any requirement, all of which may be customized. And it offers seamless integration with many tools, such as:

• Marketing Tools including AWeber, Zapier, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Sendinblue, GetResponse, MailerLite, Drip, ActiveCampaign, and more;
• WordPress Plugins including WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, PODS, Toolset, PeachPay, ACF, Rank Math, MemberPress, and more;
• Social Networks including Slack, Discord, YouTube, SoundCloud, Google Maps, Vimeo, Facebook SKD, and more;
• Other Tools including Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts, Font Awesome, Custom Icons Libraries, reCAPTCHA, and more.

Akismet

Akismet Spam Protection is open-source software that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. This WordPress plugin checks your comments and contact form submissions in order to prevent your website from publishing malicious content.

Akismet has been a part of the WordPress community since 2005, and it’s fully integrated into the top WordPress plugins such as:

• Jetpack;
• Contact Form 7;
• Gravity Forms;
• Formidable Forms.

Akismet filters away hundreds of millions of spam messages from the internet every day, and it has blocked 530 billion spam comments to date. So I’m sure you don’t need any more convincing as to why you should use this plugin.

And here are a few of Akismet’s features:

• automatically analyzing all comments and filtering away spam;
• providing a history of each comment’s status, so you may know which ones were spammed or unspammed by a moderator;
• moderators may check how many comments have been approved for each user;
• blocking the worst spam, saving you storage space;
• URLs are displayed in the comment body to highlight hidden or misleading links.

And if you own a personal blog, you can use this WordPress plugin for free. But for businesses and commercial sites, there are paid subscriptions available.

Conclusion

So we finally got to the bottom of this list. Do you have a favorite plugin that you will use on your WordPress site?

In short, if you have already created your website with one of these plugins, and now you only need web hosting, do not worry; we’ve got you covered! We provide hosting solutions for all your needs, including WordPress Web Hosting.

On the other hand, if you’re just getting started with your business and have a limited budget, here’s a list of the top FREE WordPress themes you can use.

This article was originally published at black.host on May 12, 2022.