WordPress is the most popular content management system.
One in three of all websites on the internet is powered by WordPress. But why?
Source: Zippia
It’s popular, reliable, but most importantly, it’s one of the most customizable Content Management Systems on the planet.
If there’s something you want to do with WordPress, there’s probably a plugin for it. No matter what you’re looking for, from user management to website security – or even SEO, there are plugins available for everything (well, we haven’t found one that puts a fresh coffee on, but we’re sure it’s in development).
With more than 54,000 plugins in the official directory, you can customize every aspect of your WordPress experience.
But let’s talk about agencies.
Specifically, the plugins for WordPress that best help agencies achieve their goals with greater efficiency, accuracy, and ease.
Here’s our list of the top 13 WordPress plugins for agencies for 2023.
1. Atarim
Atarim is one of the best solutions for agencies working with clients – and we’re not saying that just because it’s us!
We created Atarim to help clients work more efficiently on their visual projects, leave feedback directly on a specific section of the website, and eliminate any guesswork.
To use Atarim, our WordPress plugin must be installed on the clients’ website. The plugin allows clients to visually click on any part of their website, including the backend of your website (WordPress admin), and leave comments.
These comments will be automatically turned into tasks, so you can make sure you don’t miss a single suggestion from a client.
Key Features:
- Customizable Kanban boards to view workflows and identify bottlenecks
- Shared inbox for keeping all communications in one place
- Viewing different clients’ websites from a single dashboard
- Overseeing the project progress and user’s activity
- Point-and-click visual collaboration
- Tracking billable hours
Pricing:
We offer a FREE-forever version for one user that lets you add an unlimited number of projects, as well as providing you with everything you need to get on the same page and collaborate with your clients and team.
To add more team members, clients, and collaborators, you’ll need our premium plans.
- Starter: $20 / month
- Expert: $35 / month
- Agency: $50 / month
2. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for making your website optimized for the search engines – helping you rank higher.
Having an SEO-friendly website is critical, since it helps you with:
- Supercharging visibility
- Attracting more traffic
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned expert, Yoast SEO equips you with all the essentials for turning SEO challenges into opportunities for growth and success.
It’s a fantastic tool for growing your traffic in the most cost-effective way out there.
Key Features:
- AI title generator in case you can’t come up with a compelling headline
- Improving readability score, so your content is easier to read
- Optimizing meta description, so you can get more clicks from SERP
- Automated technical SEO fixes, so your technical SEO is in check
- Schema.org structured data integration, so search engines can understand your website better
Pricing:
Yoast SEO offers a FREE version with all the essential features for beginners.
If you’re looking for more advanced features, such as AI title generator, dead links checker, and FULL access to the Yoast SEO academy, you’ll have to hop on their premium plan.
- PRO plan: $99 / year
3. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is one of the best form builder plugins on WordPress.
Agencies are often tasked with creating forms for their clients. Using an intuitive plugin like Gravity Forms makes it easy for agencies to quickly create great-looking forms. Their tool uses a drag and drop builder to help agency owners build WordPress forms. It’s also compatible with WordPress Multisite, letting you create and share forms as you see fit.
It’s WCAG 2.0 AA compliant too, which ensures the website is usable and understandable for the majority of people with or without disabilities – so you don’t have to worry about excluding audiences.
The best part about Gravity Forms is that it allows you to securely collect and analyze data to better understand your audiences. You can also route data to different places, such as a CRM, Zapier, or email.
Key Features:
- Allows digital signatures
- You can add calculations within fields
- GDPR compliant
- Supports Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3
- Integration for popular payment processors such as Square, Stripe, and Mollie
Pricing:
Gravity Forms does NOT offer a FREE version. You will have to hop on one of their three paid license plans:
- Basic: $59 / year
- Pro: $159 / year
- Elite: $259 / year
Alternative: HappyForms is very similar to Gravity Forms, so if you’re looking for a forms plugin, HappyForms is an excellent alternative!
4. ShortPixel
ShortPixel is an excellent image optimization plugin designed for WordPress websites. It automatically resizes and optimizes images to improve website speeds. The ShortPixel plugin lets you optimize images directly from the WordPress Dashboard.
ShortPixel is ideal for agency owners as it lets you quickly optimize past images installed on your clients’ websites. Batch automation reduces image optimization times to a few seconds at most, increasing speeds and reducing bandwidth usage drastically.
Key Features:
- Incredibly fast image optimization
- Converts PNG and GIFs to JPEGs
- AVIF and WebP formats served automatically to compliant browsers
- Large images can be scaled down automatically without compromising on quality
- Load images directly from a CDN to optimize loading times
Pricing:
ShortPixel offers a FREE plan which lets you optimize 100 images a month.
If you’re looking to optimize more images, you’ll need to choose one of their premium memberships:
- Unlimited: $8.25
- Unlimited 5: $33.33
- Unlimited 10: $58.33
5. Members
Members is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for agencies, and for good reason.
It lets you easily manage and edit user roles, instead of sticking with the six predefined roles. With Members, you can easily customize each role and its capabilities, allowing you to set permissions to restrict content for specific users.
It’s very simple to use, and has a very basic UI. Members lets you unlock features that were traditionally available to developers who knew how to code. Since agencies usually work with several users, Members is a great way to manage permissions for your team.
For instance, you can limit content writers from accessing administrative plugins, whereas developers can only be granted specific plugins they need to work with.
Key Features:
- Very simple and effective Role Editor
- Lets you create several User Roles
- Manage content permissions for each user role
- Shortcodes to help you manage access to content
- Integrates seamlessly with other plugins
Pricing:
Members is completely free to use.
6. Advanced Custom Fields
Advanced Custom Fields is a fantastic WordPress plugin that lets agency owners and developers gain full control of their WP edit screens. It allows you to add new fields throughout WordPress.
It can save a great deal of time for agencies that often struggle with the native custom field interface in WordPress. Advanced Custom Fields unlocks greater functionality and lets you create new fields within seconds.
You can always edit settings to see how the field looks. With over 30 field types pre-built, Advanced Custom Fields is just what you need to quickly create new fields for clients.
Key Features:
- Very easy to install
- Lets you easily create extra content fields
- Create customizable ACF blocks to build bespoke solutions for clients
- The Options page lets you add extra admin pages to further edit ACF fields
Pricing:
Advanced Custom Fields has a free WP plugin. However, agencies might want to choose a paid plan to unlock full functionality:
- Personal (1 website): $49/year
- Freelancer (10 websites): $149/year
- Agency (unlimited websites): $249/year
7. Autoptimize
Autoptimize is a godsend for agency owners as it makes website optimization incredibly easy. At its core, Autoptimize quickly aggregates, minifies, and caches styles and scripts.
You can also add lazy-loading to the images on your client’s websites (it supports both AVID and WebP formats).
Autoptimize is an excellent choice for developers, as an extensive API is available so you can easily customize and tailor the plugin to meet the needs of your clients. It automatically concatenates scripts and styles and minifies the HTML code, all of which improves website performance dramatically.
Autoptimize will save you a great deal of time when optimizing sites for your clients.
Key Features:
- Quickly removes unnecessary code from websites
- Lets you lazy-load images
- Preloads fonts in the head to increase speeds
- Cruft removal for removing unused themes or plugins, so you can reduce page size and increase loading speeds
- Aggregates files and scripts to reduce network requests
Pricing:
Autoptimize is a FREE WordPress plugin.
8. PatchStack
In our opinion, Patchstack offers the best security tools for your WordPress website.
You might not realize it, but many plugins you use expose your website to potential security threats and risks.
Patchstack helps you fix all of these threats with their tool!
The best thing about Patchstack is that you can detect and eliminate most of the threats before anything happens.
In fact, their tools help you detect and handle new vulnerabilities in the WordPress core, plugins, and themes 48 hours before they are made public in the database. You can finally stop worrying about updating your site because of the security threats.
Plus, you will receive automatic virtual patches and firewall rules for vulnerabilities found in plugins before they can be exploited and until a security update becomes available.
And if you somehow manage to get hacked or attacked, their experts will jump to rescue.
Key Features:
- Automatic vulnerability detection
- Remote software management
- Real-time protection layer
- Custom protection rules
- Developer reports
- Vulnerability API
Pricing:
Patchstack offers a FREE version that you can use with 10 of your plugins/themes for checking any security threats. You will also get the automatic vulnerability detection and remote software management features.
To get additional features and to be able to check more than just 10 plugins/themes, you’ll need to hop on their premium plans.
- Developer: $99/month
- Business: $499/month
9. LifterLMS
LifterLMS has everything you need to create, launch, and scale courses from your WordPress LMS (learning management system) website.
Their plugin empowers you to easily create beautiful courses, coaching programs, and private communities. You can bring your courses to life, or create captivating multimedia courses using their powerful course builder.
Also, you can offer customizable social learning experiences and private communities on your website. That way, you can grow your online presence faster and get more people to hop on your courses or programs.
LifterLMS handles everything from course creation to managing payments.
You can sell courses, memberships, or any type of training package for either a one-time price, or use any recurring revenue pricing model.
Key Features:
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited memberships
- Sky Pilot Theme
- Unlimited students and teachers
- Email marketing & CRM add-ons
- Ecommerce add-ons for Stripe, PayPal, or WooCommerce
Pricing:
You can get started for FREE and create unlimited courses, memberships, as well as having no limits on teachers and students. To get additional features, such as support, themes, or a membership in their mastermind, you’ll have to hop on their premium plans.
- Earth Bundle: $199 / month
- Universe Bundle: $360 / month
- Infinity Bundle: $1200 / month
10. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is an excellent plugin that’ll help you improve conversion rates for your clients. It’s a robust marketing plugin that can help agencies grow email lists for their clients, reduce cart abandonment, and maximize revenue from each visitor.
OptinMonster lets you create interactive forms that are geared for conversions.
It also offers innovative page-level A/B testing designed to offer improved data analysis for your clients. For agencies, OptinMonster offers a full white-label solution (which removes all OptinMonster branding from the plugin, and allows you to replace it with your own).
You can also create sub-accounts, and manage permissions for each user in your team.
Key Features
- Drag and drop builder
- Geo-location targeting
- Create custom exit-intent popups
- Run targeted campaigns and set specific conditions
- Integrations with all popular apps and marketing platforms such as Mailchimp, Drip, and Salesforce
Pricing
OptinMonster does NOT offer a FREE version of their plugin. You’ll have to hop on one of their paid plans
- Basic: $9/month
- Plus: $19/month
- Pro: $29/month
- Growth: $49/month
11. Elementor, Beaver Builder, Bricks or Oxygen Builder
Page builders are ultimately the best way to build websites these days, and if you’re running an agency, you’ll probably want to consider one of these page builders, as they’re currently the best ones on the market.
Elementor is the most popular WordPress plugin on this list.
It is the number one website builder that you can use to build websites for your clients. The no-code interface is extremely easy to use, and Elementor is jam-packed with pre-built templates, widgets, themes, and other options.
It’s very versatile, and there are a host of additional add-ons that you can choose from to really enhance your experience with Elementor. If you’re planning to let clients make edits directly on the website, then you’ll probably want to go with Elementor.
Key Features:
- Intuitive drag-and-drop editor
- Theme builder for managing and designing every part of your website
- Form builder for creating impressive forms for capturing visitors’ data
- Popup builder for creating effects and animations to grab visitors’ attention
- Motion effects for adding motions and animations to your website
Pricing:
Elemntor offers a robust FREE version of their plugin.
If you’re looking for additional features, such as 100+ pre-made website designs, dynamic content, premium support, or using a pro plugin on multiple sites, you’ll have to choose one of their paid plans.
- Essential: $59 / year
- Expert: $199 / year
- Agency: $399 / year
Beaver Builder is another popular solution for building websites.
It’s very simple to use, but compared to Elementor it is more expensive and has fewer pre-made templates. However, some users prefer not having a ton of options and love keeping things concise, so if this is the case with you, Beaver Builder will most definitely serve its purpose.
Key Features:
- Intuitive drag-and-drop editor with tons of options
- You can use it with most themes and plugins
- Clean code documentation for developers
- Optimized for search engines
- Responsive design
Pricing:
Beaver Builder offers a FREE version of their plugin.
If you’re looking for more advanced features, you’ll need to hop on one of their paid plans.
- Standard: $99 / year
- Pro: $199 / year
- Agency: $399 / year
- Ultimate: $546 / year
Even though it’s technically not a plugin but a theme (and a super fast one truth to be told), Bricks builder is growing rapidly thanks to the amazing results it delivers.
In contrast to other page builders, Bricks is made in Vue – a JS library that lets the browser do the heavy lifting instead of the server. This results in amazing page speed. Without any optimization plugins, Bricks can easily score 100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights.
If you’re a developer running an agency that focuses mostly on building websites, then Bricks might be just the option for you.
Key Features:
- Easy to use visual editor
- Ready-made templates to speed up website creation
- Easily create your own elements with PHP, HTML, and CSS
- Built-In Search Engine & Social Media Settings
Pricing:
Bricks does NOT offer a FREE version of their plugin.
You’ll have to choose one of their premium plans – unlike most website builders, Bricks has a lifetime subscription.
- Starter: $99
- Ultimate: $249
Last but not least, Oxygen builder is another amazing page builder that had great success in 2021.
Compared to others, Oxygen is a bit more complicated and not so beginner-friendly, but the freedom that it provides proved to be something users really liked, which resulted in Oxygen builder skyrocketing.
Key Features:
- Create custom website headers visually, including sticky and overlay headers
- Write custom PHP, CSS, and JS and make any changes to your site
- Drag element edges to set spacing, or drag & drop to re-order
- Get visual control of every part of your website
Pricing:
Oxygen Builder offers a three-tiered lifetime subscription. Although there is no FREE version, you can try their demo.
- Basic: $129
- WooCo: $149
- Ultimate: $179
12. Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet checks all comments on your clients’ websites, including submissions via contact forms, and removes all spam. It also protects your website, preventing it from publishing any malicious content that might affect rankings.
All comment spam captured by Akismet can be reviewed from within the WP dashboard.
If your clients are constantly complaining about spam comments, you can easily install Akismet on their sites to filter such stuff out.
Key Features:
- Automatically checks and filters spam comments and content
- Discard feature that automatically blocks harmful spam, saving disk space in the process
- A status history option is available with each comment
Pricing:
Akismet is free to use for non-business sites. For agency owners, there are several packages available.
- Plus: $8.33 / month, billed yearly
- Enterprise: $41.67 / month, billed yearly
- Enterprise Plus: $208.33 / month, billed yearly
13. HubSpot
The HubSpot WordPress plugin is one of the best CRM, sales, and marketing plugins out there for agencies who are looking to simplify their processes and grow their business as lean as possible.
The best thing about this plugin is that you can integrate it with over 1,030 apps.
This means you’ll benefit from an all-in-one solution that will empower you to simplify data management processes and focus more on improving your product.
The plugin encourages you to use HubSpot’s tools within a WordPress website and if you haven’t heard about HubSpot before, here are some of the features you can get from their tools and with their WordPress plugin.
Key features:
- Email marketing
- CRM and contact management in WP
- Marketing automation
- Live chat & chatbots
- Forms & popups
- Analytics + exit intent
Pricing:
HubSpot offers a FREE version of their tool, but it’s very limited.
We recommend using it only for exploring the tool and getting to know it better. For more advanced features, you’ll need to use their premium plans.
- Starter: $18 / month
- Professional: $792 / month
Conclusion – What’s Your Favorite WordPress Plugin?
These’re some of the most popular and useful WordPress plugins for agencies in 2023.
If you’re looking for more tools, tips, and ways to optimize your workflow and get ahead faster, we definitely recommend checking some of our resources below.
- The Best Image Compression Tools
- 12 Best WordPress Blogs You Should Read & Follow
- 8 Best Design And Creative Approval Software To Use in 2023
These 13 WordPress plugins represent the very best tools for agencies to use.
And of course, whilst we may be a little biased, there’s no doubt that Atarim offers a unique advantage for agencies to make a dramatic difference to their workflow and productivity – perhaps more than any other plugin on this list.
This is because Atarim empowers your team to keep everything organized, eliminate any guesswork, and cut the delivery time of your projects from months to weeks.
We also encourage you to leverage the point-and-click collaboration to allow clients to point at what they’re referring to and immediately leave feedback, say what needs to be changed, and so much more.
If you want to create a seamless workflow and eliminate any friction, we recommend checking out our WP plugin or the Atarim app
- Integrated into the leading visual collaboration platform trusted by 13,000+ agencies (web dev, design, and beyond) worldwide.
- Supporting project delivery for 1,200,000+ of their clients and stakeholders.
- Deliver projects in weeks instead of months.
