My Must Have Premium WordPress Plugins

WordPress-Premium-Plugins

I write about a log of WordPress plugins. And normally I recommend one here or there on different posts – based on your needs and what you're trying to do. To be clear, I never recommend plugins that I don't use myself and I never suggest someone buy a plugin I've not already purchased.

What I noticed, and can be seen in some of the comments,  is that people still ask for the “core” set of plugins I use on every site. So here they are.

Premium WordPress Plugins for Every Site

These are plugins that I want on just about every site I work on. They're the go-to list of premium plugins and you can tell, they're not many.

That's because I know people don't want to spend a lot on premium plugins, because sometimes I buy them even if a client doesn't want to pay for them, and because I only want to put a plugin on a site if it really needs it.

Gravity Forms – If you call this a contact form plugin, I'll find you and hurt you. I've called it the best plugin ever. And it's helped me build complex workflow applications, so I know it does more than just contact forms.

FooBox – You want your images to “pop” right? Well, I've shown you how to make them pop with FooBox, the mobile-ready, social-ready image lightbox plugin.

First Page Mobile – I want the 30% of mobile traffic that I get to be able to discover key things about me quickly – my email and phone number, for example. That's why I recommend First Page Mobile. It does one thing, and one thing well.

Now I know that some of you do more than just have a web site up. Some of you do sales and marketing. So I've added two other categories here in case your site needs these.

Search Engine Optimization Plugins

There are a lot of different search engine optimization plugins out there by my favorite (by Yoast) is free. So it can't make the list. But it's on my “install it everywhere” list. What's nice is his add-on, which you'll see below.

HitTail – Everybody wants to get to page one. But as I've told you before, the trick is looking for long phrases rather than a word or two. That's where HitTail comes in and really does an amazing job. Plugin? Only sort of. They give you a snippet of code to put on your site.

Video SEO (for Yoast's free SEO plugin) – If you ever put video on your site, then you're going to want this little add-on. Until I used it, my email newsletter would show up in your inbox with a missing section where my video was. Yoast's plugin solved it.

Sales & Marketing Plugins

Not everyone is in sales. I know that. But for those of you that are, you're ready to make a little bit of an investment. So premium plugins make sense. Here are three you should consider.

Premise – While it's true that Premise can also do content dripping and membership sites, it got it's start with landing pages. So if you're making offers, check out Premise.

ORBTR – I recently wrote about ORBTR's launch on WPDaily.co, but that write up doesn't begin to explain how great this plugin is when it comes to capturing leads and dropping them into slow drip mail campaigns. Visit their site to see the videos.

Easy Digital Downloads – I'm due for writing an entire series on how easy it is to use Easy Digital Downloads. Because Pippin has developed such a relationship with developers in the WordPress community, the number and breadth of the EDD add-ons available is just plain crazy.

So there you go – just 8 plugins in all – and honestly, if you're not selling anything on your site, maybe it's 3 or 4.