Are you looking for the best free WordPress plugins to enhance your Website’s functionality?
WordPress pretty much runs the internet. The numbers make sense when you look at just some of the many benefits of using WordPress.
Now, as good as WordPress is for getting started, you’ll need to install plugins to make life easier as you progress. Plugins, as the name suggests, are plug-and-play apps that enable you to add new features to your website.
There are over 54,000 plugins available in the WordPress official directory. Some are paid, others are free (or freemium). They are designed to help optimize your site for search engines, protect it against spammers, improve user experience, and a lot more. There is a plugin for everything.
But don’t make the rookie mistake of installing too many plugins. All the free ones will look very alluring and useful, but it’s better to go with the “less is more” approach. Poorly coded plugins can slow down your website and increase the risk of security breaches and site crashes.
Regardless of the goal of your website, below are some essential, cherry-picked free plugins that your WordPress website absolutely must have.
- Best Free WordPress Plugin List
- 1. Responsive Blocks – WordPress Gutenberg Blocks
- 2. Responsive Starter Templates – Elementor & Gutenberg Templates
- 3. Responsive Elementor Addons – WordPress Elementor Widgets
- 4. WP AdCenter – WordPress Ad Manager Plugin
- 5. Hash Form
- 6. WP Cookie Consent – WordPress Cookie Consent Plugin
- 7. WP Legal Pages – WordPress Privacy Policy Generator
- 8. SurveyFunnel – WordPress Survey Plugin
- 9. Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- 10. MailChimp for WordPress
- 11. Duplicator – WordPress Site Duplicator
- 12. WP Super Cache – WordPress Cache Plugin
- 13. Akismet Anti-Spam
- 14. WPForms – Best WordPress Form Plugin
- 15. Elementor
- 16. Popup Maker – An Easy WP Popup Maker
- Wrapping Up
Best Free WordPress Plugin List
There are thousands of free plugins that you can install from the WordPress repository. To make things easier, we tested all the popular ones and have curated a list of the top 15 free WordPress plugins for you.
Here’s the ultimate list:
1. Responsive Blocks – WordPress Gutenberg Blocks
Responsive Blocks by CyberChimps comes with a library of 50+ functional responsive blocks for the Gutenberg editor that lets you build beautiful websites. Gutenberg Blocks are nothing but ready-made designs for Gutenberg editor that will make the process of creating a WordPress website simpler.
Additionally, this plugin is completely free and offers some of the most advanced Gutenberg blocks. With thousands of downloads, it’s sure to make your website a highly unique one.
Features:
- Contains impressive blocks like Info block, Advanced Heading, Multi Buttons, Testimonial, Call to Action, Post Carousel, etc., and much more.
- 50+ fully customizable Gutenberg Blocks
- Advanced blocks like Popup, Accordion, Pricing Table, Count Down, and more.
Pros:
2. Responsive Starter Templates – Elementor & Gutenberg Templates
Responsive Starter Templates plugin is one of the best free WordPress plugins that offers 150+ ready-to-use WordPress templates, thereby making the process of website making simpler.
With this plugin, you get access to fully working and professionally designed ready-to-use website templates built for the Elementor page builder and Gutenberg editor.
Moreover, you just have to import a website template, edit the content, and launch your website. Responsive Starter Templates plugin extends the function of the popular Responsive theme.
Even if you’re a beginner to WordPress, you can create a website in just a few seconds without any coding.
Features:
- 150+ fully customizable Elementor and Gutenberg templates
- From Artist to Business and from Doctor to Plumber, you can find templates in every niche.
Pros:
Responsive Theme
Responsive theme is a fast, lightweight, and modern WordPress theme that helps to load your website within 3 seconds. This theme is SEO-friendly, translation-ready, and fully compatible with all the popular plugins.
Additionally, you can use this theme without any coding knowledge. If you’re a beginner or an advanced WordPress user, this theme is highly recommended.
Also, the Responsive theme is available for free and comes with great customization options, helping you build a great website.
3. Responsive Elementor Addons – WordPress Elementor Widgets
Responsive Elementor Addons is one of the best popular WordPress plugins that enhances your website creation process. With Responsive Elementor Addons, you get access to 50+ performance-optimized widgets that help build beautiful websites.
The plugin makes use of responsive designs making your website suitable for all devices. If you’re concerned about speed, don’t worry, as Responsive Elementor Addons is created with minimal coding and helps to load your website in milliseconds.
Being compatible with popular themes like Responsive theme, Kadence, and Astra, it’s also fully compatible with most plugins.
Features:
- White label Responsive Elementor Addons and Responsive theme
- Cross-site copy-paste between different domains
- Custom styles for contact forms
- 50+ fully customizable widgets
Pros:
4. WP AdCenter – WordPress Ad Manager Plugin
WP Ad Center – WordPress ads plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin for managing ads on your website. It works with all ad types and networks, including Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Ads, and media.net ads.
This plugin allows you to host custom banner ads, sell advertising spaces, and set up third-party advertiser accounts with stylish front-end ordering forms.
You can also monitor ad performances with valuable reports and statistics generated by WP AdCenter. Its integration with Google Analytics allows you to view Ad performances against user behavior.
Features:
- Works with ad types like Google Adsense, Google Ad Manager, Amazon Ads, or media.net ads.
- Display dynamic ads in formats like carousel ads, pop-up ads, scroll bar ads, and much more.
Pros:
5. Hash Form
Hash Form is a user-friendly form builder that lets you create various types of forms effortlessly, from basic to complex ones. With its drag-and-drop interface, you can easily design forms tailored to your needs, regardless of complexity.
With over 20+ elements you can choose the ones which is compatible with the aesthetics of your website and create multiple contact forms.
Key Features of Hash Form:
- Drag and drop functionality
- Multiple email templates
- Import/export forms
- Create multiple forms
- 20+ form elements
Cost: Free
6. WP Cookie Consent – WordPress Cookie Consent Plugin
WP Cookie Consent is a popular option that helps you generate customizable cookie consent banners for your website. It comes with plenty of customization options to help create a unique banner.
This is the only WordPress cookie consent plugin that helps you comply with the EU GDPR’s cookie consent and CCPA’s “Do Not Sell” Opt-Out regulations.
Using this plugin, you can get visitor consent for cookies on your website. The plugin also allows you to display a fully customizable notice with a ‘Do Not Sell’ link on your website and supports WPML, so you don’t have to worry about translation.
Features:
- Multiple templates for cookie consent banner
- Cookie scan, geo-targeting, and script blocker are some of its premium features.
- Show cookie consent notice as a Banner, Popup, or Widget.
Pros:
7. WP Legal Pages – WordPress Privacy Policy Generator
WPLegalPages is one of the most popular and best plugins, a regularly updated legal pages generator plugin. Bloggers, Affiliate Marketers, corporate websites, eCommerce stores, and consultants use WPLegalPages for their legal requirements.
With WPLegalPages, you can generate a professional Privacy Policy, terms of use, terms & conditions, eCommerce returns & refunds policy, affiliate disclaimers & more.
You can also generate professional policy pages as per your requirements across multiple geographies. Well, the plugin offers 30+ expert-vetted legal pages for your WordPress website.
Features:
- 30+ premium legal page templates
- Quick setup wizard
Pros:
8. SurveyFunnel – WordPress Survey Plugin
Most people believe that the best way to increase leads is to learn about your customers. That’s where SurveyFunnel comes in handy. It’s a drag-and-drop WordPress survey builder that’s easy to use.
Top marketers use SurveyFunnel methods to increase conversion rates as it allows marketers to create effective lead quizzes within minutes.
To kick-start your lead generation journey, the plugin offers powerful features like a drag & drop survey builder, a wide variety of types of questions & answers, design customization, opt-in forms, custom thank you pages, and more.
Features:
- Drag and drop builder
- Create responsive forms
- Geo-targeting, custom form styles, progress bar and more
Pros:
9. Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
Who doesn’t want their website to rank on the first page of search engines like Google? Higher rankings equate to higher traffic and, ultimately, more conversions.
On-page SEO, an important aspect in the overall optimization of websites for search engines, is a piece of cake after installing the Yoast SEO plugin. Most WordPress webmasters would agree that it is their go-to plugin when you talk SEO.
It allows you to optimize your blog posts for SEO as you write them by selecting a focus keyword. Furthermore, you can optimize your title tag, meta description, and URL and view it as it would appear in Google search results.
It also evaluates your copy’s readability and gives suggestions on how to improve it. Other features include generating automatically updated XML sitemaps for your website to be submitted to Google for indexing.
Features:
- Get advanced XML sitemaps.
- Add canonical URLs
- Integrates with Elementor
Pros:
10. MailChimp for WordPress
Building an email list is always a good idea. And the MailChimp for WordPress plugin is one of the cheapest (free!) and best ways to do it right.
MailChimp is famed in the blogosphere for being a fine piece of software that allows you to create beautiful email opt-in forms for your newsletter. It also supports seamless integration with a number of related plugins, notably WooCommerce and WPForms.
Features:
- Send out email campaigns to a list of email subscribers.
- Send up to 500 email subscribers.
Pros:
11. Duplicator – WordPress Site Duplicator
The worst feeling you may experience as a webmaster is the regret of not backing up your website when you know you should have.
Luckily, the tedious process of backing up your website or migrating to another domain (or host) is simplified by Duplicator. All you have to do is run the plugin, let it zip your site into a package, move to a new server, and run the installer file. It also boasts zero downtime when moving, migrating, or cloning a WordPress site between domains or hosts.
Features:
- Move, migrate, or clone a WordPress site with zero downtown.
- 2 Step-streamlined installer mode for mega-fast installs
- Cloud Storage to Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and more
Pros:
12. WP Super Cache – WordPress Cache Plugin
Slow page load times cause user frustration and increase bounce rates. Not to mention, site speed is an important SEO ranking factor, so slow speed will also hurt your rankings.
Using a cache plugin like WP Super Cache is one of the primary methods to speed up your WordPress website. So what is a web cache? It is a temporary storage location on your computer for files downloaded by your browser to display websites.
The WP Super Cache plugin generates a static HTML version of your WordPress website and serves that instead of processing the heavier PHP scripts. This results in fewer requests being made to the database and decreased page load time. It also works for visitors using a mobile device.
So, make sure to install this plugin to optimize your site speed, improve search rankings, and avoid frustrating your users.
Features:
- CDN support
- Caching through PHP
- Regular garbage collection technique
Pros:
13. Akismet Anti-Spam
Spam sucks. You don’t want your blog’s comment section to be filled with bogus comments that look genuine. Comment spam will ruin the reader experience and damage your brand.
Akismet Anti-Spam automatically scans all incoming comments for spam and filters them. Moreover, it is very effective and reliable as it’s made by WordPress’s parent company Automattic.
Features:
- Automatically check for comments and filter them as spam.
- Discard the feature that blocks spam.
- View approved comments
Pros:
14. WPForms – Best WordPress Form Plugin
Your website visitors might wish to get in touch with you in order to:
- Request a quote
- Inquire about collaboration opportunities
- Solicit further information
- Appreciate your work
Having a contact form on your website is a must to facilitate two-way communication and improve the user experience. WPForms is an easy-to-use yet powerful plugin to create all the different types of contact forms. Its simple drag-and-drop interface is very beginner-friendly, and it won’t take you more than a few minutes to whip up a functioning, good-looking contact form.
Additionally, it has pre-built templates for you to pick and customize. What’s more, the contact forms produced are responsive, mobile-friendly, and search engine-optimized by default. It even has built-in automatic anti-spam, and you can block bots by adding a CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or Google’s new Invisible reCAPTCHA.
Features:
- Drag and drop WordPress form builder.
- Integrates well with PayPal, Stripe, Square and more
- Provides signature field to collect user signatures.
Pros:
15. Elementor
Another user-friendly, drag-and-drop plugin is Elementor. But hold on to your hats. This one takes the concept of drag-and-drop to a whole new level.
With Elementor, you can design complicated-looking websites without having to code a single line. In essence, it is a powerful page builder that eliminates back-end work by allowing real-time front-end design. It comes with built-in design templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
And again, the end result would be totally responsive and mobile-friendly. Moreover, it also works well as a landing page plugin.
Features:
- AI integration available
- 40+ free widgets
- Performance features include reduced DOM output, faster font loading, lazy loading, and front-end asset loading.
Pros:
16. Popup Maker – An Easy WP Popup Maker
Popups are a necessary evil. They might vex users, but if timed correctly, they can be a big boon for webmasters (and users!). For example, exit-intent popups can help retain one-time visitors by asking them to sign up for an email newsletter in exchange for something useful, such as a free e-book.
And with a user-friendly and highly customizable popup maker like, well, Popup Maker, you can create any type of popup ― opt-in forms, notification popups, video lightboxes, and what have you ― in no time. You can also track popup open count, set click triggers, and set a time delay, among other features.
Features:
- Trigger the popup using time delay or click.
- Various types of popups, including eCommerce, Email opt-in, contact forms, and more
- Integrates with all the popular form plugins
- Customization features like popup sizing, animation, positioning, and more
Pros:
Wrapping Up
This completes the list of vital WordPress plugins that are fundamental to any WordPress website. I hope that you’ll find all the mentioned plugins useful and help you with the issues you currently have or may have in the future.
With these free WordPress plugins, you can create a well-structured and defined website that looks unique and also performs excellently.
However, keep in mind that cluttering your WordPress dashboard with multiple plugins can lead to bad performance and can even slow down your WordPress website. In that case, we recommend using Cyberchimps products for their compatibility with every other plugin and theme.
If you’ve liked reading this article, check out our other engaging articles:
- Best Free Ecommerce WordPress Themes
- Free Website Hosting Services For WordPress
- Best Elementor Addons to Supercharge Your Website
Want to create a unique website? Grab the Responsive Starter Templates plugin.
1 Comment on “Top 15 Must-Have Free WordPress Plugins For Your Website In 2024”
Thank you so much for the detailed list! . It was really helpful and I found at least 6-7 plugins here that I can use to increase the functionality of my website.