Topic
Plugins worth installing, and the ones worth removing.
Plugins
A donation is not a purchase, and running one through a shop shows. GiveWP models donations properly — which is its value, and the reason its donor records are the hardest data on the site to move.
Plugins
MonsterInsights connects WordPress to Google Analytics and shows the reports inside your dashboard. The data is identical either way — the dashboard and the event tracking are the product.
Plugins
Social Warfare is a share button plugin with an emphasis on speed and control. The harder question it raises is whether share buttons still earn the space and the requests they cost.
Plugins
WPScan checks what you are running against a database of known WordPress vulnerabilities. It answers one narrow question extremely well, and mistaking it for general security tooling is the usual error.
Plugins
UpdraftPlus is the most widely installed WordPress backup plugin, and the free version does the essential job. The part that matters is not which plugin you use — it is whether you have ever restored one.
Plugins
Contact Form 7 is free, light and everywhere. The thing to understand before using it is that by default it does not save a single submission — if the email fails, the enquiry is gone.
Plugins
ACF turns WordPress into a genuine content modelling tool. The decision that matters is not free versus Pro — it is whether your field definitions live in code or in the database.
Plugins
Yoast manages metadata competently and does not rank anything. Its real cost is not the licence — it is that the metadata it stores becomes yours to migrate if you ever change plugin.
Plugins
Akismet is effective, nearly effortless, and works by sending every comment to a third party for judgement. That last fact is the one that should decide whether you use it.
Plugins
MemberPress is a membership plugin that owns billing and access together. That integration is its strength, and it is also why the data it holds is the hardest kind to move.
Plugins
WPBakery is the builder most people meet by inheriting a site built with it. Understanding how it stores layouts explains both why it is everywhere and why leaving it is genuinely expensive.
Plugins
Beaver Builder's reputation is for stability and for behaving reasonably when you remove it. Both are real, and neither means a builder-built site is portable in the way people assume.