55 Best WordPress Plugins – Want Unfair Advantage?

With so many plugins available finding some of the best wordpress plugins can be hard and time consuming! Let me give you a hand.

WordPress is certainly one of the most feature rich and user friendly publishing platforms available today. At the same time it is loved for its openness, extendibility and great open source community. WordPress is today used in serious projects and on large commercial websites besides the millions of hard working bloggers sharing their valuable knowledge. This trend have created a huge market for professional high quality premium themes and recently we have also seen a market emerge for high quality wordpress plugins as nearly any kind.

While WordPress originally gained it’s position in the market by being a pure open source and completely free platform I believe the premium offerings around it today is going to make it even stronger. You see some of the best WordPress plugins are created by expert plugin developers that back their best WordPress plugins with good support for their customers. In some cases free plugin developers provide support, but typically it depends on how busy they are and there is a significant risk that free plugins you rely heavily on, suddenly is not maintained any more.

We all know how time consuming or expensive it can be to implement the perfect website or blog. Making sure the important extension we use are going to be maintained, developed upon and most importantly well supported is key and worth spending a few bucks on. In this post, we will showcase some of the best WordPress plugins. I hope you will enjoy this tour. This article was just updated with more plugins and we also checked all links.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.

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As already mentioned WordPress is an exceptional open source blog tool and the great variety of best WordPress plugins and themes makes it even more useful. Choosing the right extensions can make the difference between whether you succeed or not. Let’s be inspired to make things easier and more effective with these great premium plugins.

WordPress Email Newsletter Plugin – DEMO

The email newsletter plugin is an advanced bulk emailer designed especially for WordPress 3. It is very easy to use and feature rich. Heaps of features which allow you to quickly send professional newsletters to your existing wordpress user database.

Magic Members – Best WordPress Plugins – DEMO

A premium WordPress membership plugin that allows you to create a closed site that’s only available to paying members. It offers lots of great features to totally customize your WP site and transform it into a professional premium content members-only website that’s easy to use. Magic Members best WordPress plugins also allows you to sell your posts and downloads separately.

WPSubscribers – Best WordPress Plugins – DEMO

If your serious about list building and adding a large group followers to your website you need a good list building plugin. There is a lot of them to choose from and I won’t be the judge here, but I think this is one of the best WordPress plugins. It give your visitors multiple chances to connect with you increasing the chances of getting an opt-in.

Gravity Forms – DEMO

Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building. Select your fields, configure your options and easily embed forms on your WordPress powered site using the built-in tools.

AJAX Contact Forms – DEMO

A slick jQuery-based contact form plugin powered by AJAX. Best WordPress plugins that brings style to your plain contact form and reduces page loading. While it’s not as elaborate as the Gravity Forms plugin it gets the job done and makes for a nice upgrade from your free contact form plugin.

WP Robot – Unique Autoblogging Plugin – DEMO

A premium WordPress plugin that permits the administrator to automatically add content and posts to his/her WordPress blog. Currently this best WordPress plugins for autoblogging can add, translate, and rewrite content from RSS feeds, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, YouTube, Flickr, ClickBank and more.

LayerSlider – DEMO

This is the WordPress plugin of LayerSlider! You can create as many layers and sublayers as you want. You can use unlimited images with links. The script is very user-friendly, you can add global settings or local (per slide) settings to each layer or sublayer. You can change delay times, easing types, durations and much more.

Touch Carousel – DEMO

TouchCarousel is a posts content slider WordPress plugin with touch navigation for mobile devices. The Touch feature also works when you use a mouse…pretty cool actually. You can slide custom post types, with custom taxonomies (categories, tags, e.t.c.) and create layout templates using simple templating system

Slider Evolution for WordPress – DEMO

Slider Evolution is a JQuery plugin that lets you easily create powerful javascript sliders with very nice transition effects. Enhance your website by adding a unique and attractive slider! Create an unlimited number of sliders with customized settings for each one, and place them anywhere on your WordPress website with ease. You must check out this WordPress slider demos.

SLIDER PRO – WordPress Slider Plugin – DEMO

Slider PRO is one of the most powerful slider plugins for WordPress on the market (some buyers have been saying that it’s actually the best). The slider offers you 100+ customizable properties, 100+ possible transition effects, 10+ skins and much more. Also, the slider’s administration area is very powerful and uses the default WordPress design, which WordPress users are already familiar with. This slider plugin is carefully coded, using WordPress development best practices, to avoid conflicts with other themes and plugins that are well coded. Please take a look at the list of features at the feature page.

SUGAR SLIDER – WordPress Slider – DEMO

Sugar Slider makes it as easy as it could possibly be to create gorgeous sliders for your WordPress powered site. Forget nasty custom fields and image URLs. You can even forget about manually resizing every image before you upload it. With a huge list of features, Sugar Slider is on of the most advanced and powerful WordPress slider manager.

ROYALSLIDER – DEMO

RoyalSlider for WordPress is a cross-device jQuery content slider with touch-based navigation and fluid layout. It has user-friendly admin area where you can manage slides, change slider settings, customize interface and add blocks-captions using custom WYSIWIG editor.

DDSlider – Best WordPress Plugins – DEMO

DDSliderWP features everything that the jQuery plugin already offered PLUS a custom admin panel, with total management of slides. These best wordpress plugins is worth investigating.

Video Gallery WordPress Plugin – DEMO

The most advanced stock video gallery in the world! Now as one of the best WordPress plugins!

Video Player WordPress Plugin – DEMO

This wordpress plugin will help you administrate the entire video player using a very friendly interface. You’ll be able to customize the player look & feel, playlist and CSS file. Any type of video file that Flash Player supports can be played with this player: – FLV /H.264 encoded video : MP4 , M4V, M4A , MOV, Mp4v, F4V – YOUTUBE – RTMP (using FMS or RED5 ) and RTMP live streaming
You can set this player to any size you want in wp-admin, changing the player width, the player height and the playlist width. You can easy integrate this in your pages using a shortcode.

VidEmbed – DEMO

VidEmbed is a powerful simple to use solution to adding videos inline within your WordPress posts, pages, and widget areas. With support for both self-hosted videos as well as YouTube and Vimeo you can quickly add videos from many sources. With the explosion of media on the web it is important to be able to easily and quickly provide video content to your site visitors.

UberMenu – Top Megamenu – DEMO

UberMenu is a user-friendly, highly customizable mega menu ( or mega drop down menu ) best WordPress plugins. It works out of the box with the WordPress 3 Menu Management System, making it simple to get started but powerful enough to create highly customized and creative mega menu configurations.

WP Sticky Menu Plugin – DEMO

Our sticky Menu Plugin comes with 8 different styling options, plain, shiny and transparent. When you do want your own style based upon your theme then you only have to change a few css lines and it’s just as you wanted it. Each style can be selected through the Sticky Menu Option panel.

Sticky Menu Plugin has it’s own option panel from where you can select your styles, the alignment of the menu (Top or Bottom), the width of the menu (980px or Full Width). You can also select the animation effect for the sliding out and in of the menu.

Sticklr WP – Sticky Side Panel WordPress Plugin – DEMO

Stickr WP, a sticky side panel menu WordPress plugin. Inspired by Envato site-switcher, after released as CSS3 +jQuery, due to popular demand I decided to create this WordPress plugin version. The features are similar with jQuery version, only WordPress version has an intuitively easy administration panel, so you don’t have to know the coding behind it.

Menu Management Enhancer for WordPress – DEMO

The WordPress 3 Menu Management System is excellent, but it can be a bit cumbersome if you’re managing many menu items. The Menu Management Enhancer for WordPress aims to improve the menu management user experience.

Admin Menu Tree Page View – DEMO

This WordPress plugin adds all your pages to the admin menu, so all your pages will always be available within just one click, no matter where you are in the admin area. You can also add pages directly in the tree and you can quickly find your pages by using the search box.

CMS Tree Page View – DEMO

Adds a CMS-like tree overview of all your pages and custom posts to WordPress – much like the view often found in a page-focused CMS. Within this tree you can edit pages, view pages, add pages, search pages, and drag and drop pages to rearrange the order. I personally use this plugin on some site where I have many pages.

Dynamic Step Process Panels – DEMO

Dynamic Step Process Panels for WordPress is one of the more confusing plugins. It’s premium-themed base costs only $25 and allows you to generate dynamic AJAX content in tabbed form. This may include bulleted content, photos, videos, product descriptions, or anything else. These are truly multipurpose best wordpress plugins with resources available to those who understand WordPress’ systems.

WordPress Events Calendar – DEMO

Professional and elegant plugin that adds an Event Calendar to your posts or pages.

attentionGrabber: WordPress Notification Bar – DEMO

This is not directly a Facebook plugin, but it allows you to grab the attention of your visitors by placing a simple, fully customizable banner on your site. attentionGrabber is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to add a notification bar in your website or blog. With this plugin you can easily display facebook Like button, custom texts, Twitter posts and even Feed RSS.

WordPress Message Bar – DEMO

The Message Bar is a professional and elegant plugin that adds a message bar to your pages.

uBillboard – Premium Slider for WordPress – DEMO

uBillboard are slider best WordPress plugins. We have been developing sliders for our WordPress themes for over a year now, and all that experience has been distilled into this one slider plugin. It is a premium quality jQuery-based slider with a nicely polished WordPress admin.

uPricing – Pricing Table for WordPress – DEMO

uPricing is a pricing table for WordPress. We have been developing it for our WordPress themes, but have decided to release it as a standalone best wordpress plugin. It is a premium quality Pricing Table with a nicely polished WordPress admin.

CSS3 Web Pricing Tables Grids – DEMO

This is a pack of pure CSS3 Web Pricing Tables Grids For WordPress with 2 table styles and 12 predefined color versions including hover states.

Facebook Likebox Slider for WordPress – DEMO

Nice looking slider plugin for facebook and other social sites.

FB Page Integrator – DEMO

WordPress plugin that will allow you to create content for Facebook Fan Pages (iframe) using WordPress. You can show an image, SWF file, video from YouTube/Vimeo… FB Integrator using shortcodes for pre and post-LIKE page so you can easily hide content for non-fans and create “Call to Action” on the welcome page.

Facebook Like to Download for WordPress – DEMO

Facebook Like to Download for WordPress allows you to turn the Like Button into a social media like / traffic building download button.

WordPress Like Locker – Like to Read Plugin – DEMO

This is a pretty cool plugin and maybe the first of its kind. It allows you to wrap your post content in a “Like Locker” that will require the user to like the post to view the content. If you have some premium content or a download (could be an ebook, source files to a tutorial) this is a great way to build virality to a valuable resource by asking visitors to spread the word before showing the link.

Facebook Walleria – DEMO

Facebook Walleria is a WordPress Plugin that embeds a number of Facebook Objects into your website. It uses the Facebook Graph to pull information about Albums, Photos, Feed, Comments, Events and presents the information on your website in a sleek style. Instead of doing a double job of updating your site and Facebook profile, Facebook Walleria enables you to update your albums, events and feed on Facebook with the changes appearing in real-time on your website. Facebook sharing for logged in Facebook users is also integrated with Events and Wall allowing interactivity with your visitors. Commenting and Liking has also been enabled on the Wall, thus your visitors can make comments on topics on your feed without leaving your website.

Facebook Quiz Application – DEMO

This facebook application uses as administration wordpress platform, so you can easily install it as plugin on your wordpress website.

Facebook AWD All in one – DEMO

Facebook AWD is an all in one Facebook capabilities for wordpress. Add like button, like box, activity box, FB Comments, Open Graph and FB connect.

SocialBox – Social WordPress Widget – DEMO

With SocialBox you get an absolutely easy to use WordPress Plugin which enables you to add a sleek social widget to your WordPress site or blog. It displays the current numbers of Facebook likes, Twitter followers and YouTube Channel and Feedburner Feed subscriptions. You can enter default values which will be shown if the related API is not reachable.

Post Type Column Editor – DEMO

Easily customize the dashboard columns for all your post types. This plugin gives you a really easy to use way to modify and manage the table columns for your post types. You can display post type entry titles, categories, tags, excerpts, authors, custom meta fields, thumbnails, and custom taxonomies. Customize the columns for each built-in and custom post type separately with a straight forward drag-and-drop interface.

960 Grid System Shortcode – DEMO

Do you have a 960 grid system installed in your WP theme? By using this plugin, writing the post/page content is become very easy. No more typo-error and no need to remember one_fourth, two_third_first or first_for_the_last. You just need to know your grid number for your content such as 9 grids content with sidebar for 12 grid system.

Styles with Shortcodes for WordPress – DEMO

Have you ever been in the situation where you have a great looking WordPress theme, but you are missing some custom styling for different elements? Maybe you don’t know PHP , CSS and Javascript and are not able to implement the cool feature you are missing. Styles with Shortcodes is the solution for this problem. These best WordPress plugins lets you customize content faster and easier than ever before by using Shortcodes. Choose from 100 built in Shortcodes.

Custom WordPress Widget Areas – DEMO

The plugin lets you create an unlimited number of Sidebars (Custom Widget Areas), easily lets you configure them by adding widgets, and then place them directly inside the content of Pages and Posts by simply using Shortcodes. We have also added support for Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies. It recognizes your themes default sidebars and allows you to replace them, as well as allowing you to set individual sidebars for each Page, Post and Category.

Advanced Categories WordPress Widget – DEMO

Advanced Categories Widget is an advance widget that gives you total control over the output of your categories. Support multiwidget, category image, easy to customize and full features. Displays a list of Categories as links. When a Category link is clicked, all the posts in that Category will display on a Category Page using the appropriate Category Template dictated by the Template Hierarchy rules.

Tabs Widget for WordPress – DEMO

This plugin creates a new WordPress widget to display a tabbed panel with different content types on your site. Tabs can rotate one after the other thus allowing for more exposure of the content: your posts are no longer hidden.

Security Ninja – DEMO

This plugin combines years of industry’s best practices on security in one plugin. It has been featured on CodeCanyon – check it out.

Vaultpress – DEMO

Vaultpress is premium backup service for WordPress, brought to you by Autommatic, creator of WordPress. Vaultpress backups your blog’s database, theme files and plugins, keeping multiple revisions (real time) so you can always revert back to any prefered copy.

Special Recent Posts PRO – DEMO

Special Recent Posts PRO is a very powerful plugin/widget for WordPress which displays your recent posts with thumbnails. It’s the perfect solution for online magazines or simple blogs and it comes with more than 60+ customization options available. You can dynamically re-size thumbnails to any desired dimension, drag multiple widget instances and configure each one with its specific settings. You can also use auto-generated PHP code/shortcodes to insert the widget in any part of your theme.

Visual Composer – Shortcode Plugin – DEMO

Visual Composer best WordPress Plugins will save you tons of time working on the site content. Now you’ll be able to create complex layouts within minutes!

TotalFeedback – Get to know what your visitors think – DEMO

Analytics and statistics tell only half the story. To understand why your site isn’t performing as well as it should, you need actual feedback from real users. Enter Total Feedback – a plug-in for WordPress that allows you to create unlimited polls that appear in small unobtrusive popup in the timing of your choosing. The poll collects feedback from your visitors so you can eliminate guesswork and know exactly what to do to improve your site.

Subscribers Magnet – DEMO

Created by MaxBlogPress, these best WordPress plugins allows you to easily integrate email list sign-up forms into nearly every section of your current WP site. Doing so helps you grow your email based newsletter subscription and earn more revenue from your website. Growing a well targeted email subscription list is highly desired by online publishers because it’s one of the best marketing tools available, it increases the probability of additional purchases, and it encourages customer loyalty.

DirectoryPress – DEMO

A premium WordPress directory plugin that transforms your plain WP install into a revenue generating professional online directory website. The script includes several different template themes that vary in color and layout which can be customized to fit nearly any need.

WP Review Plugin – DEMO

This is a great WordPress-powered review plugin. MyReviewPlugin turns WordPress in to a one-click review site with star ratings, editor ratings, custom fields, automatic embedding, automatic plugin installation, 3 great themes and more. Truely one of the best WordPress plugins available on the market if you publish reviews on your website.

WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin – DEMO

A premium WordPress shopping cart plugin built by Tribulant that allows the WP blog admin to sell both digital and physical goods online plus any services the admin decides to offer. Such services may include online teaching courses, hands on training, premium support, or any other non-product related sales that are service oriented. Using this premium wordPress plugin you can easily find ways to monetize your WP blog whether it’s through selling digital products like ebooks, selling online services, or selling any tangible goods.

This was my list of hand-picked Best WordPress Plugins – please leave a comment if I missed a good plugin or if you want to give feedback!