Topic
Plugins worth installing, and the ones worth removing.
Plugins
Site Kit connects Search Console, Analytics, AdSense and PageSpeed to your admin and shows you the numbers there. It is the least risky way to add tracking, and the dashboard is the least useful part of it.
Plugins
TablePress keeps table data out of your post content and in its own store, which is why the tables survive redesigns — and why they are one shortcode away from disappearing.
Plugins
FacetWP builds the filter sidebar that shops, directories and archives keep asking for. It is very good at it, and it is a subscription your templates end up depending on.
Plugins
FunnelKit replaces the WooCommerce checkout with a funnel — optimised cart, order bumps, one-click upsells and abandoned-cart automation. It works, and it puts your revenue path inside a plugin.
Plugins
SeedProd is two products in one plugin — a coming-soon switch that is genuinely useful for nothing, and a landing page builder that quietly becomes the place your marketing pages live.
Plugins
CleanTalk filters spam without showing visitors a challenge, which is its whole appeal. It does that by sending every submission to a hosted service, which is the fact that should decide whether you use it.
Elementor
The free plugin builds pages. The paid tier builds the parts of a site that repeat — headers, footers, archive templates, single-post layouts — and that is the line that decides whether you need it.
Plugins
PowerPress turns WordPress into a podcast publishing platform by generating the RSS feed the directories read. Understanding that the feed is the product explains every decision around it.
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.