The 3 Favorite Plugins of Our Users

WordPress is the most used CMS in the world. In fact, WordPress is running around 30% of the entire web. That probably wouldn’t be the case if it wasn’t as customizable as it is.  And while a lot of this customization comes from the CMS itself, the vast number of available plugins surely contributes to that.

Without its ease of use, WordPress wouldn’t be anything that it is now. But a huge part of this easiness comes, again, thanks to the plugins.

We’ve talked with a number of our users, to determine the plugins that are used by most of them. A little more than 1000 people participated in our poll. Among them, there were business owners, bloggers, internet marketers, e-commerce shop owners, designers, photographers…

In a word, people from every walk of life.

Soundly, most of the people that we interviewed are not using the same plugins, but they are using plugins that are ‘healing’ the same type of ‘illness’.

That is to say that our users (and presumably, all of the WordPress’s) were looking to overcome the absence of essentially the same features.

Of course, we have to mention that if you are able to code your own solutions to what you need your WordPress to have, you probably will pass on the opportunity to install plugins, and thus leaving your WordPress installation as clean as possible.

In the same time, there is no reason to lose a ton of work hours to create something that has already been created.

And let’s be honest here, most of us don’t know how the plugins are created in the first place, let alone how to do it by ourselves. But that’s the beauty of the WordPress environment. You don’t have to be able to build it, to use it.

Most Used Types of Plugin

As I’ve mentioned already, the websites of the people we talked with, couldn’t be more diverse and different. Even the e-commerce shops were so different from one another, product-wise and design-wise, that there was basically was no place for comparison.

Around 60% of the people that we interviewed, were first-time website owners. And except their fulfillment with our WordPress Hosting Service, most of them shared how mesmerized were they with the almost infinite choice of plugins.

But there are some numbers that were interesting to us. No matter if the user was a first-time website owner or had an established business, the type of plugins that they are using was more or less the same.

Nearly every one of the website owners that we’ve spoken with had a contact page, and thus, was using some type of contact form plugin.

Again, nearly everyone that had any Social Media presence, were using some kind of Social Share Plugin.

As you can imagine, people that had implemented SEO as a marketing technique, had a plugin that was helping them to get to their goals. And people that were trying to optimize the performance of their WordPress websites, were using speed optimization plugins.

You got the point. Every one of the interviewed people was using plugins to help them reach their goals.

But even though a lot of people were using different plugins to achieve the same results, there are a few plugins that were more popular than all of the rest.

I figured that they are the favorite plugins of our users. Although, they were merely the most installed. Still, they are so important to a webmaster that without them the websites were to present its users with a much different experience.

So, which are the favorite plugins of our users?

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is probably the most popular contact form plugin. And for a good reason. The plugin is easy to use, allows you to customize the form the way you wish, and most importantly it is free.

Furthermore, you can add more than one contact forms to your website, and each of them can be linked to a different email account.

The form supports CAPTCHA, spam filtering, and Ajax-powered submitting.

Simple, customizable and with a lot of features, Contact Form 7 is probably the most famous plugin from them all.

Yoast SEO

With the rise of the search engines, people naturally started to put their efforts in becoming number one in the SERP’s.

To achieve that, you need to have some level of knowledge about On-page SEO, the rest is hard work.

But there is a way to skip on all of this, by using a plugin that will help you to write your articles the right way.

It is definitely not a coincidence that Yoast SEO and Contact Form 7 are among the 6 WordPress Plugins that you Absolutely Need to Use.

Wordfence

Having a website is a responsibility. And you can’t afford to be careless about your website’s security.

Wordfence is one of the top security plugins out there. The plugin has a feed with suspicious activity, a firewall, and a website scan.

Also, if something ever goes wrong, you’ll get an email, that will notify you of the event.

According to users from all over the world, Wordfence is the best security WordPress plugin. And if you are eager to trust in the wisdom of the crowd, maybe you can give it a try.

WooCommerce

Hardly anyone that wants to create an e-commerce shop, based on WordPress, will try something else than WooCommerce.

Of course, there are other solutions. But yet, WooCommerce is so straightforward and easy to use, that it is leading all other e-commerce plugins way behind itself.

Most of those plugins have their positive sides. And taking giving them a try is probably something that will be worth your while.

Furthermore, the fact that WooCommerce is the choice for most of the existing e-commerce shops based on WordPress, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the best solution for your own shop.

But if we leave the leadership of WooCommerce behind, I believe that it is a really good solution for creating your first e-shop. With this plugin, you can create an absolutely functional e-commerce shop, with all of the important elements that we tend to overlook. Namely, a number of payment methods, product availability, product description and images, and even taxes.

Conclusion

The usage of plugins, naturally, differs from site to site. Still, there are plugins that are leading in the race for more installed plugins. This is happening mostly because of their usefulness. But also, their marketing, and price (if paid).

So, bear in mind that not every plugin that is on the top is the best, and not every plugin that is not on the top is not worthy of your attention.

Yet again, the plugins listed here, are most likely the best in their realm. So, if you need a plugin for some of those reasons, you can turn to this list.