With over 59,000 plugins in the WordPress directory alone, it can be difficult to choose the right one for your website.
I’ve run into this problem firsthand while building and managing my own website. While I now have a trusted toolkit of plugins, it took me a while to find the best options for our business in the beginning.
In this guide, I’ll share our specific process for picking plugins for our website. This is the same checklist my team and other WordPress experts trust to find reliable and effective plugins.
Disclaimer: While these factors don’t guarantee you 100% that you’ll choose the right plugin, they will certainly increase your chances of success.
Before you begin
Over the years, we've learned that the first step in choosing a plugin is to clearly define your needs. Start by writing down what you want the plugin to do.
We recommend creating a checklist of the features you’re looking for and sorting them by importance. This always helps us focus on finding plugins that meet the most critical requirements first.
Sometimes it’s impossible to find a plugin that does everything. By prioritizing the must-have features, you’ll find it easier to narrow down your choices and make the best decision.
Don’t worry if you need more than one plugin to achieve your goal. We often combine plugins that work well together to get the results we want. The total number of plugins is not important, what matters is their quality and compatibility.
With that in mind, let’s explore how to choose the best WordPress plugins for your website.
How to search for plugins
In our experience, the WordPress plugin directory is the best place to start when searching for plugins. With thousands of plugins, it offers a wide variety of options, but the sheer number of plugins can make it difficult to find what you need.
We found the search functionality in the WordPress plugin directory to be limiting. Therefore, we often resorted to Google searches or explored WPBeginner’s WordPress plugin category for featured recommendations.
Another approach we recommend is to browse the most popular plugins in the directory. We often find solid plugins that match our needs by looking at the popular options on the first two pages. If there are no matching plugins, then it’s time to do a specific search.
Based on our testing, WordPress plugin directory search results are primarily based on relevance, which helps narrow down the options effectively.
Each search result displays important details such as the plugin’s name, rating, description, number of active installations, author name, and compatibility with WordPress versions. These metrics always help us evaluate plugins quickly.
We recommend choosing plugins that have a large install base, high ratings, and are compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. This combination works well to ensure quality and reliability.
💡What WordPress plugins do we use?
If you’re interested in the plugins we use, check out our Ultimate WordPress Toolkit . It’s a curated list of all the plugins we trust and use, with detailed explanations of why we chose them. This toolkit is a great resource for anyone building or managing a WordPress site.
Find plugins from our expert-curated directory
As an alternative to the plugin search, you can check out WPBeginner’s WordPress Solution Center .
This is a handpicked directory of WordPress plugins and tools. Our team of professional WordPress experts thoroughly tests and reviews each plugin on the list.
This saves you time because you can trust these plugins as the most reliable solutions.
Additionally, detailed reviews allow you to compare pros and cons and see how the plugins work with screenshots and step-by-step instructions.
Plugin Comparison – Which One Should You Download?
Once you find a few plugins, you can open their pages in new tabs to compare them.
Each WordPress plugin page contains information about the plugin, including its features, how to use it, etc. You need this information to decide if the plugin is the best fit for your WordPress site.
The sidebar of the plugin page contains valuable information, including the plugin version, last updated date, active installations, and the minimum WordPress version required to run the plugin.
The last update date and active installations of a plugin can be a good indicator of the plugin’s popularity.
This section will also show the WordPress version that has been tested. If it does not show the latest version, there is no need to worry.
Although plugin authors review their plugins with every new WordPress release, they may only update plugins when necessary. See our article on installing plugins not tested for your version of WordPress for more details.
Plugin Rating
You can also view plugin ratings in the sidebar of the plugin page. The number of stars indicates the rating score, with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.
You should keep in mind that many WordPress users use plugins without rating them. A plugin downloaded by thousands of people may still not have many user ratings.
Plugin Reviews
When a user rates a plugin, they are asked to write a review and give a rating. You can view these reviews by clicking on the rating bar.
For example, if someone gave a plugin one star, you can click on the one star link to read their review.
Another thing to note here is the total number of ratings. If a plugin only has one or two people rating it, for example, then this number doesn’t really matter.
However, if those one or two people leave a good reason for their rating in their review, their rating will carry significance to others.
Support Overview
The Support section of the plugin page sidebar will give you a quick overview of the number of support threads that have been opened for the plugin in the last two months. It will also show you how many of those threads have been resolved.
You can view support posts by clicking the “Support” tab in the plugin’s menu bar. Just like comments, unresolved support posts do not necessarily mean there is a problem with the plugin.
However, if a plugin has a lot of unresolved posts, and the author hasn't responded to any posts in the past two months, then this could mean that the author has lost interest. The plugin might still work for you, but it may not be supported in the long run.
Plugin screenshots
For most WordPress plugins in the directory, you will see a screenshots section below the plugin description. Viewing plugin screenshots is a way to quickly see how the plugin will appear on the front and back end of your WordPress blog.
Sometimes screenshots are more helpful than actual plugin descriptions, which can be long and confusing.
Screenshots let you see what a plugin looks like and what it does. That way, you can quickly decide if you should try it out.
View FAQ and other instructions
Don’t forget to check the FAQ and other considerations section below the plugin description (some plugins may not have this).
These sections usually contain useful information about using the plugin. Sometimes users complain that a plugin does not work without even reading how to use it.
When you try to use a plugin, be sure to read these sections so that you can properly configure and use the plugin on your site. You might find some other great tips there too.
For example, if you’re looking for a plugin that lets you add widgets, you might find that it also offers template tags that you can use in your theme or shortcodes that you can use in posts and pages.
You can also see the plugin author's suggestions for adding your own CSS styles to the plugin output.
Testing the plugin
WordPress plugins can slow down your website if they are not written properly or do not follow WordPress coding standards.
To check this, you can visit Pingdom or any other website speed checking service. Before activating the plugin, test your website’s page speed. Then, take a screenshot or note the results.
After that, go back to your WordPress site and activate the plugin. Now, test your site speed again.
If the plugin is noticeably slowing down your site, you should try looking for a better plugin.
For example, in the screenshot below, you’ll see that one plugin added 0.8 seconds to the load time of our test site, making it noticeably slower.
For more details, you can check out our complete guide on WordPress speed and performance .
Give back to the WordPress community and plugin authors
WordPress is a free community software, and so is the WordPress plugin directory. Plugin authors invest a lot of time, energy, and creativity into writing these plugins.
You can help them in many ways:
- Donate: If you find a plugin useful, and there is a donation URL for the author on the plugin page, please consider donating some money. This is not the price of the plugin, but a token of appreciation.
- Rate plugins: As we mentioned, many users are reluctant to rate plugins that perform well. You can help break this trend. When you find a plugin you like, consider leaving a rating and review. A few lines of text can be enough to let people know about your experience with the plugin.
- Mention the plugin on your blog, Twitter or Facebook.
What to do when a plugin doesn’t work
If a plugin is giving you an error or not working, the first thing you should do is determine if it’s conflicting with another plugin or your WordPress theme.
You need to deactivate all other plugins and activate the default WordPress theme. Try testing the plugin again. If it still doesn't work, then you may want to open a support thread.
Visit the plugin page in the WordPress directory and click on the Support tab. Scroll down until you find the support form and fill it out.
Remember that WordPress plugins are open source, which means they come with no warranty and the plugin authors are not required to answer your questions.
However, most plugin authors care about their code and will do their best to answer support questions. You can check out our guide on how to properly ask and easily get WordPress support .
Bonus Resources
Here are some additional resources to help you use WordPress plugins more effectively:
- Do Inactive Plugins Slow Down WordPress? Should You Delete Them?
- These are the must-have WordPress plugins that support SidelinePlay
- Is it safe to use outdated WordPress plugins? (Explained)
- How to Enable Automatic Updates for WordPress Plugins and Themes
We hope this guide helped you choose the best WordPress plugins. You may also want to check out our experts’ picks for the must-have WordPress plugins for every website and our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .
If you liked this article, don’t forget to share it!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
Was this helpful?