These are our “go to” plugins — the ones that we install on every site, or simply find ourselves using again and again. Remember, when it comes to plugins, quality is more important than quantity — here’s what to look for in a plugin.
A few of the links below may be affiliate links, but we’d recommend all of these regardless!
Our Very Own Plugins!
Hubbub Pro
Grow your audience with Social Media Sharing Buttons, Follow Buttons, and powerful website growth tools like Save This.
Smart Custom 404 Page
Easily create your own custom 404-Not-Found Page to guide your user when they happen to land on the wrong page on your site.
Optimize Database After Deleting Revisions
Clean up database “bloat” to help keep your site running quickly. Be sure to schedule it to run at least monthly!
Alt Text Tools
Find and fix missing Alt Text quickly and easily!
Provides a CSV (comma separated values) file that lists all of your images used in your content — and their corresponding Alt attribute.
Speed and Optimization
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is our “go-to” caching and speed optimization plugin, with industry-leading techniques to help get “Good” for Core Web Vitals.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
Our favorite image optimization plugin. It’s easy to use, can scale down large images, has an undo/reoptimize function, and — best of all — the image quality is great.
Perfmatters
Perfmatters is another tool we love for site speed optimization — especially their lazy loading options to help you get “Good” Core Web Vitals.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
Our own free plugin that cleans up database “bloat” to help keep your site running quickly. It’s especially helpful if your site’s been around for a while. Be sure to schedule it to run at least monthly.
Security & Backups
UpdraftPlus Backups
One of the most popular backup plugins, and for good reason. It’s reliable, flexible, and even the free version will do a great job. (We use the premium version for all our clients.)
Two Factor
Add Two Factor Authentication for your WordPress users. Supports a variety of 2FA methods, including email and hardware keys.
Sucuri Security
The Sucuri plugin includes a core integrity file scanner and audit logs. It works best in conjunction with the Sucuri Server-Side Scanner, which is included in all of our WordPress Support Plans.
Widget Importer & Exporter
Very handy for moving widgets from one WordPress site to another, or simply backing up your widgets before making changes. It’s especially useful because changing themes sometimes loses your widget settings. Remember to uninstall once you’re done.
Antispam Bee
Antispam Bee is a good, free alternative to Akismet to provide spam protection for your comments.
Akismet
Akismet is a popular choice for spam protection for your comments and forms. *Paid plan is required for revenue-generating sites.
Simple Cloudflare Turnstile
Cloudflare Turnstile is a user-friendly, privacy-preserving reCAPTCHA alternative. Easily add it to all your WordPress website forms to protect them from spam.
Login Lockdown
Login Lockdown helps prevent brute force attacks on your login page. It also tracks the IPs and timestamps of failed login attempts.
Content Tools
Smart Custom 404 Page
Easily create your own Custom 404 Page to help guide your user when they happen to land on the wrong page on your site.
Alt Text Tools
Find and fix missing Alt Text quickly and easily.
Provides a CSV (comma separated values) file that lists all of your images used in your content — and their corresponding Alt attribute.
Yoast Duplicate Post
If you need a plugin to help manage your content updates, the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin can help you clone posts so that you can edit and update existing posts easily.
Enable Replace Media
This plugin allows you to seamlessly replace an image or file in your Media Library by uploading a new file in it’s place. No more deleting, renaming, and re-uploading files!
Limit Modified Date
Need to make a small tweak or fix to your content and don’t want the modified date to update when you publish your changes? This lightweight plugin can help you limit modified date changes.
Shop Page WP
Shop Page WP is the affiliate shop page plugin for your WordPress website that everyone can easily setup and use. It’s super easy to create a shop page and start adding products immediately.
Find My Blocks
Find My Blocks plugin can help you track down where you’ve used blocks, including Reusable and Nested Blocks.
SEO and Social Media
Hubbub Pro
Our plugin to help grow your audience with Social Media Sharing Buttons, Follow Buttons, and powerful website growth tools like Save This.
Yoast SEO
If you care at all about being found in search engines, or making sure your site looks good when shared on social media platforms, this is the plugin to install.
404 Error Monitor
This plugin logs hits to broken pages on your site. We especially like it because it shows you the “hit count” for each URL, so you can prioritize which links to fix. (Then, use the Redirection plugin to fix inbound links.)
Broken Link Checker
BLC scans your site for broken outbound and internal links, and makes it easy to fix them. You can fix them from within the list of links rather than spending time to load each post or page in the editor, which helps speed the process.
Redirection
Easily redirect broken inbound links with this plugin. It can also monitor for changes to existing pages (when you change the “slug” on a post or page), and automatically add a redirect.
Featured Images in RSS for MailChimp & More
Get images in your RSS instantly and for free. Output blog Featured Images to RSS email campaigns for MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Zoho, Feedburner, Bloglovin’, Feedly, and other services.
ConvertPro
ConvertPro is our go-to optin form and popup plugin, particularly because it doesn’t slow down your site. It’s lightweight, but packed with all the features you need to build your mailing list.
Analytics & Tracking
Google Analytics by Monster Insights
Google Analytics is the gold standard of site tracking—and it’s free! Monster Insights makes it easy to set up the Google Analytics tracking code on your site.
Pixel Your Site
This plugin adds the Facebook tracking pixel to your site easily, including event tracking. If you’re doing any Facebook advertising, this plugin is a must-have.
GA Google Analytics
A lightweight plugin that allows you to connect your site to Google Analytics. Support for Universal Analytics (legacy) and GA4 included.
More Great Tools
Better Search Replace
If you need to make a site-wide change, such as your domain name, this plugin is a lifesaver! As always, be sure to do a database backup first, and remember to uninstall it when you’re done.
Regenerate Thumbnails Advanced
When you change themes, you might need other image thumbnail sizes available for your older images – that’s where this plugin saves the day. We especially like it because it is compatible with Shortpixel. (Once you regenerate thumbnails, be sure to uninstall the plugin.)
WP Recipe Maker
Actively developed and supported, WPRM makes it easy to include all the Recipe metadata that makes both Google and Pinterest happy.
The Feast Plugin
The Feast Plugin is built with food publishers in mind. This plugin is packed with loads of great SEO, user experience, page speed, and user experience features that you won’t find anywhere else.
Fluent SMTP
We like to use this plugin in conjunction with Mailgun (or your host’s SMTP service) for sending transactional emails, such as new comment notifications and password reset emails. Together, they improve deliverability and tracking.
WP External Links
Manage all external & internal links on your site. Control icons, nofollow, noopener, ugc (User Generated Content), sponsored, and if links open in new window or new tab.