You’ll find yourself in situations where you want to add some functionality into a website. However, it isn’t readily available on WordPress or in the WordPress theme you’re using.
You can assign the task to a developer or do it yourself if you have the time and the expertise. Plugins usually offer a better solution. There are thousands of WordPress plugins on the market. Thus, your chances of finding what you need are quite favorable.
Plugins typically come in three flavors – OK, pretty good, and best in class.
Limiting your choice to the best in class category pays dividends. But the search can time consuming since the number tends to be quite small.
Our selection of 10 of the best in class WordPress plugins for 2019 should make your search easier. One or two of these premier plugins will provide a solution to a problem you currently face.
When Amelia’s authors created this plugin, they created a cool and innovative way to make small business owners and web designer’s clients happy. Amelia automates a business’s appointment booking and management process to make it extremely reliable, highly efficient, and a real time saver.
This WordPress booking and appointments plugin gives businesses an almost instantaneous return on their investment. It also reduces management and employee stress and keeps a business’s clientele satisfied with the service they receive.
Amelia is a perfect match for businesses like health and fitness centers, consulting firms, and beauty parlors and spas; businesses that rely heavily on an efficiently managed client booking and appointments process.
This flawless booking specialist can make appointments 24/7 so clients are never kept waiting. Appointments are made to fit in with employee availability, Amelia takes care of appointment changes and cancellations, send appointment reminder e-mails, and accepts online payments.
Amelia’s automated system relieves managers and employees of having to take and manage every booking and allows them to devote more time to their core roles and responsibilities.
Listing the table and chart-building features and functionalities the wpDataTables plugin brings to the table would take up far more room that has been allocated to this review. Needless to say, wpDataTables is the most comprehensive table and chart-building WordPress tool on the market today.
What can this all-in-one WordPress plugin do for you?
– It can accept huge volumes of complex data (thousands and even millions of rows) and summarize them in professional-looking tables or charts in minutes.
– It accepts data from multiple sources and data in most of the common formats (including Excel, Google Spreadsheets, MySQL and MS SQL).
– wpDataTables tables and charts are interactive and responsive; and since they are frontend editable, they are easy to update or maintain,
– wpDataTables integrates with most form builder plugins including Gravity Forms and Formidable forms.
– Want an easy-to-read, color coded table or chart? Not a problem.
20,000 delighted users have given wpDataTables a 4.7 star average rating.
NextGEN Gallery is a free WordPress gallery plugin that’s perfect for building simple galleries, larger galleries (thousands of images) and several styles of galleries and albums. This free version may in fact be the only version of NextGEN you’ll ever need, since it’s been the industry standard WordPress gallery plugin for the past 12 years.
Like many free versions of software tools, NextGEN Gallery is a good starting point, but when the need to upgrade begins to make sense, you’ll want to look into what NextGEN Pro offers.
The Pro version brings with it a wide variety of options and extensions, including eCommerce extensions. These additional tools will give you far greater flexibility when creating your gallery designs.
There’s also a middle ground. You can for a fee use a selection of the Pro extensions with your NextGEN Gallery plugin.
We suggest you give the free version a try and go from there.
MapSVG doesn’t just improve your website map design capability, it introduces you to a whole new world of mapmaking possibilities. With this versatile WordPress plugin, you can integrate image maps, Google maps, and interactive vector maps with your other website content.
MapSVG also enables you to add markers and directory information to your maps, overlay SVG files on them, and more.
Content personalization works by displaying targeted content to different audiences. Logic Hop’s toolbox of ready-made solutions makes it easy for anyone to personalize their site based on UTM codes, geolocation, social media posts, actions visitors take on your site, and even what they’re interested in. The numbers don’t lie – with sites easily performing 200% better! Logic Hop is a must-have plugin for marketers and anyone making money online. Want to increase conversions? Start personalizing.
Rank Math SEO is a virtual Swiss Army knife of SEO-enhancing tools and features that are ready for you to apply to create SEO-friendly website content. This handy WordPress plugin loads fast and is delightfully easy to use.
The feature you’re almost guaranteed to like best is the in-depth Content Analysis function that will help you produce content search engines love to see.
Some website users seek entertainment, but most seek information, and the ability to provide useful information is often key to a website’s success, and that of the business it represents.
The Heroic Knowledge Database plugin makes creating a useful and informative knowledge base for your website as simple as it is to create pages and posts. Among this WordPress plugin’s multiple features is the ability to present knowledge base users with a lightning-fast search capability.
Blog2Social is an all-in-one solution for businesses struggling to post and cross promote social media content on a variety of networks in a well-organized, meaningful fashion. Blog2Social is available as a web app and as a WordPress application.
Users will find the drag and drop social media calendar invaluable for scheduling and posting content across 16 different social media networks.
If you have yet to come across a software solution that puts artificial intelligence to work for you, here’s an opportunity to do so. The WordLift plugin provides AI-driven software solutions to any issues you might encounter in creating SEO-friendly content.
WordLift partners with WooRank to assess your site’s SEO characteristics and give you the information you need to make improvements.
Anyone can create a FAQ page, but building one that makes users feel like they’re getting personalized assistance from customer support takes a little more thought, and a tool like Heroic FAQs which is designed to make the process as easy as possible.
The Heroic FAQs plugin will save you a ton of time by helping you create meaningful questions and answers, ordering and categorizing them, and even adding images and videos when appropriate.
Conclusion
No matter which of these software solutions you might select. You can expect to receive immediate benefits plus a solid return on your investment. Select two or more and you can expect to save a ton of time. You can avoid having to go the DIY route, and make your website users as happy as clams in the process.
These tools and plugins are created to extend website capabilities. They will also extend your capabilities as a web designer.
If it were not for this article which I clicked on from my inbox, even though it was just generically about plugins and not specifically about a booking system- I would not have known about the fantastic Amelia and would have gone down the Simplybook route that my client had asked for, which is way more expensive. Amelia has proven to be a perfect solution for this client and I am so so happy I clicked through (more often than not I don’t). So thank you for the list – I have yet to check out some of the others but Amelia was bought and has been implemented as a result of this article.