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Best WordPress Plugins for 2025

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WordPress now powers almost half of all websites in the world, and the number keeps growing. Starting out with the right plugins for your WordPress website can lay a great foundation, so I wanted to share my preferred plugins that are great for build...
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Security

Security is something that I never overlook when it comes to a website. Luckily, there are many plugins that helps to boost the security of a WordPress site. I'd suggest you look for one that protects against unauthorized access and comes with a buil... 

 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
JetPack Security is a module part of JetPack, which really helps to add an extra level of safety and security to your site. For larger sites, I'd definitely recommend the premium plan to add the firewall feature.
Security and Backup Services for WordPress Sites - Jetpack
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
One of my favorite features about Wordfence is the login protection. It also comes with a malware scanner and a powerful application firewall.
Wordfence: WordPress Security Plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
This one gives you a comprehensive suite of security features, including a firewall, security scans, and content protection features that I really like.
All-In-One Security (AIOS) – Security and Firewall - WordPress.org
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
Malcare is ideal for larger websites that requires industry-grade protection. It offers brute force protection. The plugin uses a seven-layer security system to really enhance the safety of your site and protect against external attacks.
MalCare: WordPress Security for High Performance Websites

Performance & Speed

The faster your site loads, the better. Google and your visitors loves this. That's why performance plugins on WordPress is a must for me. Use plugins that helps to enable cache features, compress your images, and minify JS, CSS, and HTML files. 

 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
A really great tool if you're looking to add cache features to your site and speed up its loading times!
Speed up Your WordPress Website with WP Rocket
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
While NitroPack isn't exclusive to WordPress, it's a really amazing plugin if you want one add-on that does everything in terms of performance. It optimizes your website to load faster by combining CSS, minifying JS, comes with built-in support for C...
NitroPack | Site Speed and Performance Optimization Solution
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
If you're just looking for a simple plugin to enable cache features on your website, with no complex configurations to worry about, then LiteSpeed Cache is a great choice.
LiteSpeed Cache – WordPress plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
Breeze is still a relatively new player in terms of WordPress performance plugins, but it has a lot of potential. It comes with an automatic cache system, Gzip compression, and the ability to automate cache purges.
Breeze – WordPress Cache Plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
I'd call W3 Total Cache the OG in terms of WP performance plugins. It has evolved a lot over the years and continues to be a great choice among competitors. There are several minify cache methods to choose from, which is definitely a plus.
W3 Total Cache – WordPress plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
While not the most popular choice for WP performance, it gets the job done if you're looking for a free way to speed up your site. Autoptimize was developed by Frank Goossens and helps to minify content to ensure faster loading times.
Autoptimize – WordPress plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
WP Optimize is essentially a 3-in-1 option when it comes to WP performance plugins. It helps to cache your site, clean your code, and compress images, JS, HTML, and CSS.
WP-Optimize – Cache, Compress images, Minify & Clean database ...
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Design & Customization

Designing a website is no longer the same tedious task as it was a decade ago. With the right design and customization plugins on WordPress, anyone can now design a great looking site themselves. 

 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
Elementor is one of my go-to and favorite design plugins for WordPress. Even the free version really takes away the tedious task of coding or having to try and figure out how to change specific layout elements on your site.
Elementor: Website Builder — Create a Website Now
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
I'll be honest, not my absolute favorite builder for WordPress, but I've had several clients prefer this one, so I got to use it a couple of times. It works really great for different kinds of sites, especially with the drag-and-drop editor it uses.
Divi — The Ultimate WordPress Theme & Visual Page Builder
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
While not a complete page builder, Modula is really great if you're looking to showcase galleries of photos. I've found it very useful when showcasing portfolios, but there are many other potential uses for the plugin.
Modula - Responsive Photo Gallery Plugin for WordPress

SEO, Growth & Traffic

Every website needs visitors before it can become successful. With great SEO, growth, and traffic plugins, you can really take a site to the next level. 

 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
When it comes to SEO in WordPress, you really can't ask for a simpler way to do it than Yoast SEO. It takes the complexity out of SEO and makes it simple for anyone to optimize their own site, including pages and posts.
SEO for everyone • Yoast
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
RankMath offers a more advanced take on implementing on-page SEO on your WordPress site. It comes with integrated AI tools, so you'll be able to easily optimize content for high-performing keywords. It also features schema markup, which is definitely...
Rank Math - Best Free WordPress SEO Tools in 2025
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
The SEO Framework is an often-overlooked SEO plugin for WordPress that's perfect if you're someone who wants a lightweight, straightforward, and simple solution to optimizing the content you post.
The SEO Framework – Fast, Automated, Effortless. – WordPress plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
CrawlWP isn't an SEO optimization plugin, but rather an add-on for WordPress that helps to get your latest content crawled by major search engines. I say it's definitely a must have, as it ensures search engines crawls your websites quickly and this ...
CrawlWP SEO - WordPress Instant Indexing & SEO Insights
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
If you prefer to keep things simple, then Slim SEO gives you the ability to optimize your site without having to explore hundreds of features. I've found the automatic meta generation to be very useful. It also adds schema markup to your content, so ...
Slim SEO - Fast & Automated WordPress SEO Plugin
 
Gerhard Homveld profile picture
If you're not planning to use an all-in-one SEO plugin on your WordPress site, but rather manually do your SEO or use an external tool, you should at least make sure you have proper XML sitemaps that will help with the indexing of your WordPress webs...
XML Sitemap Generator for Google – WordPress plugin