Nowadays, the number of entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises using WordPress to build their business websites are growing rapidly. This is because WordPress offers a robust Digital Experience Platform (DXP) by integrating deeply with most of the other business and enterprise software and services using plugins.
In this post, we are going to see some of the must-have WordPress plugins and tools for business websites. Without these plugins, you are missing out on a whole lot of benefits that WordPress has got to offer. By leveraging the power of these WordPress plugins, you can improve your website’s tracking and analytics feature, search engine optimization efforts, and website speed and performance.
Along with that, you can also automate your tasks and generate more leads from your website. Now, here is a list of must-have WordPress plugins, tools, and services for business websites.
Table of Contents
Jetpack by WordPress.com
Jetpack simplifies managing your business site by providing you with easy to understand visitor stats, security services (brute force protection and 2-factor authentication), and an asset CDN (offload images, videos, and core WordPress files). You can also use Jetpack to monitor your site’s downtime and get instant notifications whenever your site goes down or comes up back again.
Akismet
Coming from the same stable as Jetpack and WordPress.com, Akismet is a popular cloud-based spam protection service for WordPress sites. It helps keep comment and contact form spam at bay.
This will save you a lot of time and can protect you from clicking on dangerous links accidentally. Phishing has been known to capture important business information for long.
Using Akismet, you can either delete all the spam comments automatically or put them under a spam folder for review.
Yoast SEO
Though WordPress is optimized for search engines (SEO) out of the box, it can further be improved by fine-tuning the available SEO options and features. Yoast SEO is the ultimate WordPress SEO plugin to optimize your business website. It contains all the features that you would expect to find in dozens of different WordPress SEO plugins along with some unique features that you just cannot find anywhere else (sitemaps, schema, SEO analysis, readability analysis, keyword density, etc).
MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is simply the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It allows you to customize your Google Analytics feature and access analytics reports right from your WordPress dashboard. If you are running an eCommerce business, you will definitely find this plugin useful as it integrates well with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
It also comes with powerful features like enhanced eCommerce tracking, ads tracking, and forms tracking. It is the perfect Google Analytics solution for all business websites.
I have explained everything about MonsterInsights in my MonsterInsights review. So, don’t forget to check it out.
WPForms
WPForms is an advanced WordPress forms plugin that allows you to quickly and easily build multiple forms for your business site. It doesn’t matter whether it is a complex form with conditional logic, a payment form, or even a simple contact form, WPForms allows you to create them without writing any code.
In just a few clicks, you can create a fully functional WordPress form. It’s that simple. You can also integrate it with your favorite email marketing platform and CRM software. Check out my WPForms review for more information.
GetResponse
GetResponse is one of the best email marketing service providers out there for businesses. Using GetResponse you can build email lists, send targeted emails to your subscribers, and even host webinars about your products. Setting up GetResponse is quick and easy. It comes with built-in tools to add sign-up forms and also works well with OptinMonster, the best lead generation software for WordPress.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster helps you grow your business by collecting emails from your site visitors and turning them into subscribers and potential leads (customer acquisition). OptinMonster is simply the best WordPress popup and lead generation plugin you will ever need to generate high-quality targeted leads from your WordPress site.
Currently, OptinMonster plans start at $9 per month and come with 14 days money-back guarantee. You can check out my full OptinMonster review to better understand its core features and what it can do for your business.
WooCommerce
Does your business primarily revolve around selling physical products or digital goods? You can now create your online store with WordPress using WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin for WordPress that comes with all the features you need to run an online shop. You can sell products, accept payments, send invoices, and more.
You can further extend WooCommerce functionality by installing extensions. Here are some of the best WooCommerce extensions that you can use in your online store. Also, you can find more about it in my WooCommerce review.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is an easy-to-use caching plugin for WordPress which helps speed up your site by caching the static content on your website. This, in turn, leads to a fast load time for your site visitors. This can lead to improved search engine rankings, more page views, and improved conversions. Other features include cache preloading, images lazyload, static files compression, etc.
Also Read: How to Optimize WordPress to Reduce Server Overload.
Also Read: How to Make WordPress Hack-proof.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) for your site which can accelerate your website speed across the globe and provide site visitors with faster load time. Since Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy for your site, it actively blocks your site from suspicious visitors and protects your business’s online assets from DDoS attacks.
This can help you with your search engine optimization activities and provide users with good user experience on your site. You can learn more about CDN benefits and find how to set up Cloudflare on your site from the linked articles.
Sucuri Security
Whether you are running a personal blog or a business website, it doesn’t matter. You need to have a security plugin installed on your site to protect your website from malware and infections. Security plugins can help keep your site secure by preventing brute force attacks, blacklisting bad IP addresses, hardening WordPress, and periodically scanning your files for malware & infected files. I have tried many WordPress security plugins and found Sucuri to be the best in terms of security and usability.
Sucuri offers complete website security, protection, and monitory. It includes their WAF (Web Application Firewall) protection, Quick Fix, a custom CDN, SSL and everything you need to take your company’s web security to the next level.
There are also other WordPress security plugins out there which are as good as Sucuri or sometimes even better. But, I found them difficult to configure because of their confusing interface and settings page with no proper explanation on what each feature does. Oops, and did I forget to tell you that sometimes I got locked out of my own site? 😛
HubSpot
HubSpot offers a suite of inbound marketing, sales, and customer services software. They also offer tools for social media marketing, web analytics, search engine optimization, live chat, and customer relationship management. They are mainly used by small and medium-sized businesses around the globe for managing their business online.
They also offer a free CRM which allows you to add unlimited users, data, and up to 1,000,000 contacts with no time limit or expiration. It’s a must-have tool for business owners.
Buffer
Usually, businesses have (and should have) their own social media profiles/pages which include a dedicated Twitter profile, a Facebook page, an Instagram business account, a LinkedIn company page, etc.
But when you need to share something like announcements, updates or blog posts across all platforms at once, it can take a lot of time. That’s when using Buffer to automate your social media marketing can do wonders for your site.
Buffer allows you to automate your social media marketing efforts. With Buffer, you can share your content at the best possible times throughout the day to all your accounts from a single dashboard. This way, you can save more time and your followers and fans will be able to see your updates more often when they are active.
G Suite
G Suite, previously known as Google Apps for Business/Work offers a suite of web applications like email, docs, spreadsheets, hangouts, online storage, vault, etc., for businesses. This powerful suite of office applications which includes productivity and collaboration tools is affordable, easy to deploy and hassle-free to manage. Most importantly, it allows you to use your own business domain name (@companyname.com) for emails.
When you run a business, it is important that you and your employees use a business email over generic email addresses ending with @gmail.com or @outlook.com. This makes you look professional. All these features make G Suite an indispensable part of your business activities.
Currently, G Suite offers 3 pricing plans – Basic, Business, and Enterprise. The Basic plan offers you 30 GB of cloud storage whereas the Business and Enterprise plans offer unlimited cloud storage. All plans come with 24/7 phone, email, and online support. You can try G Suite for free by signing up for a free trial from the below link.
MemberPress
If your business model primarily revolves around paid memberships, you need MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin for business websites and it integrates with all popular WordPress plugins, payment processors, and email marketing platforms.
Using MemberPress, you can sell online courses, set up your own affiliate management system, build an online community, manage subscriptions, and do much more. In fact, you will get their Affiliate Royale affiliate program management plugin for WordPress along with their Pro plan. You can also use MemberPress to sell other digital products online.
FreshBooks
According to a recent survey by Freshbooks, almost 70 percent of the accountants and bookkeepers feel that small business clients often find accounting software intimidating and difficult to learn. Also, 83 percent agree of them agreed that it’s typical for small business owners to make mistakes when using it.
But that’s not the case when you go with Freshbooks. Freshbooks is a simple and easy-to-use cloud-based invoicing and accounting software for self-employed individuals, freelancers, and small businesses. You can use FreshBooks to send invoices, track your expenses, and collaborate on projects.
Apart from that, you can also collect credit card payments and recurring payments using retainers. Moreover, it offers its own payment gateway service and integrates well with other payment processors like Stripe and CollBox to collect payments. It also integrates with email marketing platforms like Constant Contact, AWeber and WordPress plugins like Gravity Forms to automate actions on your business site. It is also very affordable for most small businesses.
SEMRush
SEMRush is an online visibility and marketing analytics software that can help you find profitable keywords in your niche or industry. SEO plays an important role in managing a successful blog which is important for your content marketing efforts. You can use SEMRush to optimize your business site and create content that your audience wants from you. This will help you get your content in front of more eyeballs and provide your site visitors with a better user experience.
Using SEMRush, you can –
- Find your competitor’s best keywords
- Monitor search rankings
- Monitor your landing pages
- Get insights on your competitor’s advertising strategies
- Monitor backlinks and get detailed information about them
- Perform keyword research
- Discover long-tail keywords
- Analyze website traffic
- Create understandable reports, and more.
BirchPress
BirchPress Scheduler is an appointment booking and online scheduling plugin for WordPress that allows service businesses such as spas, yoga studios, contractors and photographers to accept online appointment bookings. Using BirchPress, merchants can embed booking forms on any page or post on their websites and allows customers to check service availability and book an appointment directly. It is also an effective tool to manage appointments and staffing schedules.
Slack
Slack is an online team management, productivity, and communication tool that can be used to communicate with teams spread across different time zones and locations. Slack is more convenient than email and it can integrate with a ton of other online tools.
Slack is used by small businesses and large enterprises alike to connect with teams inside and outside their company. You can make the most out of Slack by creating separate channels for teams, projects, and clients. You can also connect essential business and development apps with Slack. Currently, Slack offers both free and premium plans.
Intercom
Nowadays, live chat is growing in popularity – thanks to the instant ability for customers to get all their questions answered and doubts cleared. Now, they needn’t wait for more than a day or week to get a reply from the support team to fix their problem. Also, by using live chat for pre-sales support, companies are generating more leads who can be converted into customers easily.
For example, let’s consider you are running a WordPress hosting platform. Most of the people who come to your site are already looking for a new WordPress hosting company. By engaging with them through live chats, you can increase your chances of turning them into customers. Also, once they become your customers, you can retain them by providing them with live chat support.
And when we talk about live chat software, Intercom is the best customer messaging platform out there. By using Intercom for sales, marketing, and support, you can acquire more customers or generate high-quality leads, engage with them, and retain them.
Grammarly
Personally one of my favorite tools, Grammarly is highly recommended for bloggers and writers in general. Grammarly’s AI system primarily relies on machine learning to help you write with better and with confidence. Grammarly can help you correct your spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, and punctuation errors.
The free version is pretty good for normal users. But when you are writing for the web, you need to take extra care. Grammarly Premium performs over 400 checks on your content. It can also check your content for readability issues, perform genre-specific writing style checks, and detect plagiarism. For more details, you might want to check my Grammarly review.
WPML
Do you want to make it easy for your products to be sold around the world? Or do you want to target specific language groups? If so, you should make your website multilingual. And the best way to do that would be by using WPML – the best WordPress multilingual plugin.
By simply translating your website and blog content into different languages, you can increase your website traffic exponentially. Even Neil Patel recommends it. This way, more people will get to know about your products/services and it’s a win-win situation for both you and your customers from around the world.
If you think you are making enough profits just by selling your products to English speakers, you are making a big mistake. You just left a lot of money on the table. Grab the WPML plugin today, make your website multilingual, and share the love.
Astra
Astra is a powerful yet lightweight multipurpose WordPress theme designed for all types of WordPress users – bloggers, hobbyists, and businesses. Using Astra, you can build any type of website for your business without having to learn how to code. Since it weighs less than 50KB and doesn’t make use of jQuery, your website will load in a jiffy.
Astra is also optimized for the new Gutenberg editor and other popular WordPress plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and WooCommerce out of the box. Oh, and it plays well with my list of essential WordPress plugins.
The free Astra theme is currently active on more than 300,000 WordPress sites and has got a 5-star rating on the WordPress theme repository. But I highly recommend you go with Astra Pro which comes at just $59 per year.
Zapier
Most of us love to save time. Here, when you handling so many tasks, you could consider Zapier. Zapier offers easy integrations with more than 1500 web applications. In a few clicks, you would be able to integrate your apps, share data. They do offer a free account. But limited in integrations. When you need more features, you could consider upgrading your plan. The premium plans start at $20 a month.
Schema Pro
Are you ready to really optimize your WordPress blog posts? Then, you need to get your hands on the Schema Pro plugin. It is one of the best WordPress plugins for adding schema markups. At this time, there are so many other schema plugins are available. but for our users, we will always recommend the best one.
By using this, you will be able to easily add Review schema, Product Schema, Movie Schema, Recipe Schema, etc… The team is working hard to bring more powerful schema types to the plugin. It’s an essential one for every business website. Right now, they are running a limited time deal for the premium plugin. You will get the maximum discount on the plugin if you purchase it today!
Trello
Working as a team? For improving productivity and understanding the work, we could use Trello. By using the Rello boards, lists and cards, you can make your work more productive. One recommended tool if you are on a team. There are so many big brands like Adobe, Google is using this software. Thankfully, Trello offers a free version. If you need a more powerful one, you may want to spend $9.99 a month.
Conclusion
If you are running a business website, you must consider these plugins and services. I am pretty sure that this will definitely help you to improve your business’s online presence and performance
Thus I hope you found this list of must-have WordPress plugins and tools for business websites really useful. Please do share this list with your friends, colleagues or acquaintances who are in the process of building their business website using WordPress.
Hey, for affiliate marketing – is there any ideas on improving conversions on a varied site? I own a image sharing site and as such it’s likely to match products to the visitor. Many thanks.
Hey Madlyn, I would suggest you to try using AWeber Email Marketing service to send out automated newsletters to your subscribers periodically. Also, do make sure that you include your affiliate links within the content without spamming. Another option would be to install the Better Related Posts Widget on your site to increase the chances of people clicking through your other posts/products. Now here’s a bonus plugin for your site – Image Sharing Pro which will help your site’s visitors to share your images directly to eleven popular social networks – which means free traffic for your site!
Excellent selection of plugins! In addition, I would also recommend such a useful tool as a calculator. This is a great magnet of target customers for the site and the growth of SEO-indicators. To create calculators you can use the following plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/ucalc/
Great, thanks for sharing your recommendation with us.