15 Best Blog Plugins for WordPress Bloggers in 2023

Are you looking for the best blog plugins for WordPress to start a blog?

WordPress plugins let you add great features and functionality to your blog without writing any code.

With over 59,000+ WordPress plugins available, beginners might find it challenging to select the best WordPress plugins for their website. Also, when you’re just starting a blog, you might not even know what plugins to look for.

At the start, you’ll need a few key plugins to launch your WordPress blog, create a contact form, increase blog traffic, and more.

In this post, you’ll find some of the best blog plugins for WordPress bloggers that you can install to improve your blog instantly.

15 Best Blog Plugins for WordPress

Below are some of the best WordPress blog plugins you should install on your new WordPress blog.

1. SeedProd

SeedProd is the top WordPress drag-and-drop page builder. It helps you easily change the look of your blog and build custom page layouts without writing any code.

You may select from over 200+ professionally designed templates or use their drag-and-drop WordPress page builder to create a unique layout from the start.

Over 1 million websites are using SeedProd to create landing pages. It provides several landing page templates, such as sales pages, coming soon and maintenance mode pages, webinar pages, etc.

Key Features:

• For a quick start, there are 200+ exclusive professionally designed templates.
• It provides pre-built blocks and widgets that you can easily add to your page.
• View a live preview of your page at any time.
• Seamlessly integrates with 3rd party email marketing services like Mailchimp, AWeber, MailerLite, Brevo, etc.
• It prevents spammers and bots from filling in your landing page forms using reCAPTCHA.

Pricing:

A lite version of the plugin is available to download from WordPress.org. However, the premium plans start at $39.50 a year for single sites.

Alternatives to SeedProd

Some best alternatives are Elementor and Divi.

Also, check out Elementor vs. Divi vs. SeedProd Comparison – Which Is The Best?

2. All in One SEO

All in One SEO is the most effective and powerful SEO plugin available. It helps you to improve the search engine rankings of your blog quickly.

Plus, right from your WordPress dashboard, you can check your site’s SEO.

It provides on-page SEO tools like keywords, rich snippets, and headline tools to help you optimize your posts and pages. It also handles technical SEO features such as smart sitemaps, robots.txt, and canonical tags.

The best thing about All in One SEO is that it’s user-friendly, so even if you’re new to SEO, you can use it to get your WordPress blog to rank on search engines quickly.

Key Features:

• Analyze your entire website with an SEO audit checklist.
• Automatically create XML sitemaps for you.
• Support for rich snippets schema.
• Tools to improve local SEO.
• Helps improve SEO for WooCommerce.
• Social media integration.

Pricing:

There is a free version of AIOSEO available. However, to get more powerful features, you can use the Pro version of AIOSEO starting at $49.60 per year.

Alternatives to All in One SEO

Some best alternatives are Yoast SEO and Rank Math.

Also, check out Yoast SEO vs. All in One SEO: Which One is Best for Beginner?

3. MonsterInsights

When your blog takes off, it’s a good idea to track where your readers are coming from and how they use your site. A plugin like MonsterInsights allows you to connect your website to Google Analytics without touching a single line of code.

This robust plugin gives you access to all essential metrics and real-time data, which you can view straight from your WordPress dashboard.

Furthermore, you can also track other relevant metrics, such as downloads and clicks. It also gives you access to other add-ons like Forms to track submissions.

Key Features:

• Custom WordPress dashboard reports.
• Real-time stats for blog traffic.
• Audience demographics data.
• SEO headline analyzer.
• Integrated with WooCommerce, WPForms, CookieBot, etc.

Pricing:

You can use MonsterInsights Lite for free. To unlock more advanced analytics features, you can get the Premium version starting at $99.50 per year.

Alternatives to MonsterInsights

Some best alternatives are ExactMetrics and Analytify.

4. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the top WordPress lead generation and conversion optimization plugin. It allows you to create attractive optin forms to turn your blog’s abandoning visitors into subscribers.

Additionally, with their drag-and-drop builder, you can customize any opt-in form or campaign template.

The advanced display targeting tools in OptinMonster allow you to customize campaigns for each user, allowing you to see the right message to the right person at the right time.

It’s an excellent choice for bloggers, businesses, and e-commerce sites. OptinMonster is required if you want to generate more money from your website traffic. For more details, check our OptinMonster Review.

Overall, OptinMonster is a must-have plugin for bloggers.

Key Features:

• Drag and drop campaign builder.
• Multiple campaign types for actionable marketing.
• Powerful Exit-Intent® technology.
• Seamless integrations with popular services.
• Detailed insights to improve your campaigns.

Pricing:

Optinmonster starts at $9 per month for the Basic plan.

Alternatives to OptinMonster

Some best alternatives are Convert Pro and Thrive Leads.

5. WP Rocket

Your page speed may impact your blog even if you provide SEO-friendly content. As a result, you should use cache plugins to make your site run faster and better. WP Rocket is an excellent cache plugin that provides a plethora of automatic optimization functions for your website.

Furthermore, the plugin is more than simply a caching plugin; it also helps boost your PageSpeed score and loading time. It allows you to customize the settings based on your needs, with advanced features such as XML sitemaps, optimized Google Fonts, lazy loading for images, and so on.

Key Features:

• Page and browser caching.
• Minifies your HTML, Javascript, CSS, and feeds.
• Supports third-party plugins like Jetpack, Yoast, etc.
• WooCommerce compatible.
• Multilingual ready.

Pricing:

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress plugin. It starts from $59 per year for a single site license up to $299 per year for unlimited sites.

Alternatives to WP Rocket

Some best alternatives are W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.

6. Smash Ballon

If you’re a regular blogger, you’re likely active on popular social media platforms. Embedding your feeds on your WordPress site can improve its visual appeal and is a great method to increase your follower count.

Smash Balloon allows you to link several Instagram accounts, combining them into a single feed or splitting them up into different ones. You may also customize each feed and include a Load More button to ensure that the images do not slow down your site. Additionally, you may also integrate your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts.

Key Features:

• Integrate social feeds into your website with ease.
• Create a customized feed.
• Automatically filter content by keyword or hashtag.
• Social content integrates nicely with your site’s content.
• Display the number of likes, shares, and comments.

Pricing:

It starts at $49 a year for each plugin. Alternatively, you can pay $299 yearly for the All Access Bundle, which includes all five plugins. You may also try out the free versions of Smash Balloon.

Alternatives to Smash Ballon

Some best alternatives are Social Snap and Monarch.

7. Pretty Links

If you want to monetize your blog, a link management plugin like Pretty Links can help you. It helps to keep track of your affiliate links. It also allows you to make them shorter and more consistent with your brand so that the URL displays your own domain name.

Furthermore, the Pretty Links Pro version allows you to choose which keywords should be linked and set a target URL. This way, you won’t lose out on any opportunity to monetize your content.

Key Features:

• Auto-link to specific keywords.
• Easily manage and add affiliate links.
• Shareable links for emails and podcasts.
• Supplies tracking data.
• Shortens your affiliate links.

Pricing:

Pretty Links is available for free on the WordPress.org site. The Premium version starts at $79 per year for additional features.

Alternatives to Pretty Links

Some best alternatives are ThirstyAffiliates and Easy Affiliate.

8. WPForms

WPForms is the most beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin. It allows you to create a basic contact form to connect with your readers.

As your blog gets popular, people will want to contact you to discuss partnerships, display ads, guest posting, and other exciting opportunities.

WPForms will help you in quickly create a customized contact form that will protect you from spammers.

Key Features:

• Easy drag and drop form builder.
• Customizable form fields.
• Ready-made form templates.
• Integrates with popular email marketing services.
• Prevents spam through its anti-spam feature.

Pricing:

WPForms Lite is available for free on the WordPress.org site. The Premium version starts at $39.50 per year for additional features.

Alternatives to WPForms

Some best alternatives are Ninja Forms and Formidable Forms.

Also, check out WPForms vs. Ninja Forms: Which One Is The Best Form Builder?

9. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is the most popular backup plugin for WordPress. It is recommended that you create a complete backup before making any major blog changes, such as changing a theme, upgrading a plugin, or updating the WordPress core. You can immediately use UpdraftPlus to restore the backup if something goes wrong.

Things could still go wrong, no matter how diligent you are or how secure your WordPress hosting is. If something like that happens and your site is hacked, you’ll want to be ready. UpdraftPlus makes it simple to restore your site in an issue.

Key Features:

• Manual and automated scheduled backups.
• Use fewer server resources for faster processing.
• Supports backup to cloud services like Amazon S3, DropBox, Google Drive, etc.
• Use fewer server resources for faster processing.
• Creates complete backup logs.

Pricing:

You can get the free version of UpdraftPlus from the WordPress.org site. However, the Premium version starts from $70 per year for two site licenses.

Alternatives to UpdraftPlus

Some best alternatives are BlogVault and BackupBuddy.

10. RafflePress

Next on your list of the best blog plugins for WordPress is RafflePress.

RafflePress is the top giveaway plugin for WordPress. It allows you to create viral giveaways on your blog to generate traffic, get social media followers, and grow your email list.

Furthermore, RafflePress has a simple drag-and-drop giveaway builder and proven giveaway templates that you can use to design a giveaway that captures visitors’ attention.

Key Features:

• Drag and drop giveaway builder.
• Pre-built giveaway templates.
• Powerful social media integrations.
• Highly optimized giveaway landing page.
• Advanced tracking and retargeting.

Pricing:

You can get the free version of RafflePress from the WordPress.org site. However, the Premium version starts from $39.50 per year for a single site.

Alternatives to RafflePress

Some best alternatives are Woorise and Simple Giveaways.

11. MemberPress

MemberPress is the top WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to limit visitors’ access to select pages, posts, and custom post types. It is quite useful in managing your content. Additionally, when your blog grows, you may use this plugin to restrict access for guest contributors.

For more, check out our complete MemberPress Review.

Key Features:

• Powerful user access rules.
• Fully customizable pricing pages.
• Integrates with various payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
• Compatible with popular WordPress plugins.
• Integrates with email marketing services like Mailchimp, Drip, ConvertKit, etc.

Pricing:

MemberPress plans start from $179 a year for a single site license.

Alternatives to MemberPress

Some best alternatives are LearnDash and Restrict Content Pro.

12. Smush

When creating a blog, you must also include images on the blog page itself. When your blog’s content grows, and you don’t compress the images, it can take a lot of space. Additionally, this may slow down the website’s performance.

You can use the Smush plugin to help you compress images on your blogs. It is also one of the best image optimization plugins for your blog website. This plugin might help you optimize your blog images while maintaining their quality.

Key Features:

• Lossless compression.
• Lazy loading.
• Bulk image compression.
• Image resizing.
• Convert to WebP format.

Pricing:

You can get the free version of Smush from the WordPress.org site. However, the Pro version costs $7.5 per month.

Alternatives to Smush

Some best alternatives are Optimole and ShortPixel Image Optimizer.

13. Sucuri

It is important to maintain your WordPress site secure for both you and your users. For this, you can use a WordPress security plugin like Sucuri. It protects your blog from malware threats, DDoS, and other attacks.

To learn more about strengthening your WordPress website’s security, see our ultimate WordPress security guide.

Key Features:

• Monitor blocklists.
• Scan for malware.
• Powerful blog firewall protection.
• Effective security hardening.
• Post-Hack security add-ons.

Pricing:

There is a limited free version, and paid plans start at $199.99 for a single site.

Alternatives to Sucuri

Some best alternatives are WordFence and Cloudflare.

14. Akismet

Blogs are an easy target for spammers, so you should protect your website using a tool like Akismet. This plugin looks through all of your comments and removes any that appear to be spam.

Additionally, It also checks every contact form submission and protects your website from publishing malicious content. You can use its discard feature to block repeated spam messages, saving you a lot of storage space.

Key Features:

• Automatically filter spam comments.
• View the status history for each comment to see where the spam was found.
• Displaying URLs in the comment body to identify misleading links.
• Discard features that block the worst spam to save the storage.

Pricing:

You can get the free version of Akismet from the WordPress.org site. For more advanced features, you can upgrade to its premium version, starting from $10 per month.

Alternatives to Akismet

Some best alternatives are AntiSpam Bee and WP Cerber.

15. Revive Old Posts

Social media is the best way to drive traffic to your blog. However, it can take a lot of your time to manually re-share your content on all of your channels.

Revive Old Posts handles these jobs for you by automatically sharing your new posts on Facebook and Twitter. It also re-posts articles from your archive to increase their reach. Additionally, you may schedule your posts, use hashtags, and track clicks.

Key Features:

• Post to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
• Automatically generate hashtags for post shares.
• Exclude specific posts from sharing on social media.
• Compatible with URL shorteners.

Pricing:

You can get the free version of Revive Old Posts from the WordPress.org site. For more advanced features, you can upgrade to its premium version, starting from $88.5 per year.

Alternatives to Revive Old Posts

Some best alternatives are CoSchedule and Blog2Social.

Bonus Plugins and Tools

Aside from the top 15 WordPress plugins that we mentioned above, we also recommend the following plugins and tools for our WordPress sites:

• Grammarly – An excellent grammar-checking tool that comes with a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancement, and more.
• WP Simple Pay – A simple WordPress payments plugin that allows you to accept credit cards without having to set up a full eCommerce cart. You may integrate Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH debit, and other payment methods.
• CartFlows – Sales funnel builder, eCommerce marketing automation, and lightweight CRM for WordPress.
• Envira Gallery – You can use this plugin to create better album galleries.
• Sugar Calendar – A lightweight WordPress event management plugin. It easily syncs with Google Calendar, allowing you to sell tickets and receive money, and much more.
• PublishPress – This plugin makes it simple to manage your editorial workflow in WordPress.

Wrapping Up – Best Blog Plugins for WordPress

These were some of the best blog plugins for WordPress bloggers to start a WordPress blog.

We hope you use the ones you need to get the best blog results. However, we recommend you not use all of the plugins simultaneously because they are not all completely necessary for your blogs. Using all of them at once may increase the load on your blog website and make it even slower.

If you are looking for a guide to starting your blog, check our article on how to start a WordPress blog and a collection of some best free WordPress themes for a blog.

If you want to make your blog website even faster, we have some tips to speed up your WordPress website as well. Similarly, we have a list of the essential WordPress plugins for your website if you need more plugins.