What Plugins Do You Guys Use?

Blogging Tools
1

Hi bloggers.

I’m trying to figure out which plugins to pay for and which ones are fine to use for free. Right now, I use Wordfence for security on the free plan. My host backs up my site daily, so I don’t use a backup plugin. I also use the free version of ShortPixel.

I’m considering whether I need a paid plugin for things like a newsletter. I’d love to hear about your experiences! There might be plugins I don’t know about that could be really helpful.

What free plugins do you think are must-haves and don’t need a paid version? Also, which plugins do you think are worth paying for instead of sticking with the free options?

2

I use MailPoet for my newsletter. It’s free for the first 1,000 subscribers, and since I only have 10 subscribers right now, I don’t need the paid plan. I also really like the Broken Link Checker, which is free and very helpful.

3

tbh the paid version of Elementor is totally worth it for the additional features

4

I use all free basic plugins…

  • Yoast for SEO
  • Sassy Social Share for social media sharing options
  • UpdraftPlus for site backups
  • WP Code Lite/Code Snippets to add codes
  • ConvertKit for email subscriptions
  • Grow for Mediavine ads

I try to keep only the necessary plugins and avoid using too many.

5

Also, could someone share how many plugins are too many? What’s a comfortable number of plugins to have without slowing down your website?

6

The quality of plugins matters more than the quantity. One poorly coded plugin can slow down your site, while you could use 100 well-coded minimal plugins with little impact on performance.

7

How can we understand if a plugin is clearly coded and minimal? Any metric?