We are often asked by our users about what tools we use to manage and grow our WordPress blogs. We have listed some of them in our WPBeginner Blueprint, but there are some more that we use on our different projects. Below is a list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog.
Want to start your own WordPress blog? We know that it can be a terrifying thought specially if you’re not geeky. Guess what – you’re not alone.
At WPBeginner, we have helped over 130,000+ users start a blog. And you can too!
Read our comprehensive step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog without any technical knowledge.
Backups are extremely crucial for any online business to grow. We use VaultPress on WPBeginner and all our websites. It is a subscription based service with different plans and pricing. VaultPress offers automated real-time cloud backup solution with one click restore option.
Alternatives: See 7 best WordPress backup plugins compared (pros and cons)
Any website can get hacked or attacked by malware or denial of service attacks. Sucuri is a website monitoring and security service. It provides real time alerts for any suspicious activity on your website. It not only prevents your website from malware but can also detect and remove them.
Take a look at how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 WordPress attacks in 3 Months. You may also want to see our article comparing Sucuri vs CloudFlare to find out which one is better for your business.
Understanding your audience is the key to success for any online business. Google Analytics provides you the statistics you need to understand your audience. It is very easy to install Google Analytics in WordPress and it is free.
Alternatives: 7 best analytics solutions for WordPress.
Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin is the complete website optimization solution for WordPress. It is packed with features and eliminates the need of installing several other plugins. It is also very easy to install and setup Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress. See why we use WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.
Alternative: All in One SEO Pack. Also see our comparison of Yoast SEO vs All in One SEO Pack.
Managing a multi-author WordPress site can be a mess if you don’t know what everyone is working on. Edit Flow offers a smooth editorial workflow management system for WordPress powered websites. It allows you to add custom statuses, leave editorial feedback, view editorial calendar, and execute your content strategy like a pro.
Alternative: Content Progress
TablePress allows you to add tables into your WordPress posts and pages without writing any HTML or CSS. It is simple to use and comes with advance features like sorting columns, exporting data, and using formulas in your tables.
Learn more in our guide on how to add tables in WordPress posts and pages.
As the name suggests, Polldaddy allows you to add polls, surveys and quizzes to your WordPress site. Polldaddy makes it very simple to create polls and quickly embed them into your posts. The only downside is that it asks you to connect to your WordPress.com account.
Alternative: Gravity Forms, SurveyMonkey
Affiliate marketing is the main source of income for many website owners. Adding and managing affiliate links can be a time consuming task, this is where ThirstyAffiliates comes in.
It is an affiliate link manager which allows you to easily add affiliate links, cloak links with pretty URLs, and auto-insert links for keywords. See our guide on how to add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates.
After the deadline allows you to check your WordPress posts and pages for grammar and spelling mistakes. Developed by Automattic, it also checks your posts for style which allows you to improve readability of your content.
Most social media plugins for WordPress slow down your site’s page speed. Floating social bar is the best WordPress social media plugin which only loads your social media buttons when needed. It adds a sticky floating bar on your WordPress posts to maximize your social media visibility.
See how to use Floating Social Bar
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin aka YARPP is one of the most popular WordPress related posts plugin with more than 300,000+ downloads. It supports both thumbnail and text display of related posts and is quite easy to use even for beginners.
Alternatives: 5 Best Related Posts Plugins for WordPress
Beaver Builder is the best drag and drop WordPress page builder plugin. It allows you to easily create any kind of page with your own custom layout regardless of your WordPress theme.
It comes with several advanced and basic modules which are like blocks that you can use in your pages to add different functionalities.
Alternatives: 5 best drag and drop page builders for WordPress.
There are many WordPress slider plugins available on the market. However, most of them slowdown your website significantly. Soliloquy is the fastest WordPress slider plugin. It allows you to create beautiful responsive sliders in WordPress without slowing down your page load times. It is also very easy to use, even for absolute beginners.
Alternatives: Which is the Best WordPress Slider? Performance + Quality Compared
Easy Digital Downloads is the easiest way to sell digital goods with WordPress. It comes with multiple payment gateways, recurring payments, discount codes, reports, and dozens of addons. It is easy to set up, even for beginners, and strong enough for developers to customize easily.
Alternatives: See 5 best WordPress eCommerce plugins compared
Constant Contact is one of the best email service provider. It allows you to build your email list, design emails, and send it to your users. It is very beginner friendly and at the same time powerful enough for experienced users.
Alternatives: Aweber, GetResponse
OptinMonster is the best WordPress lead generation plugin. It allows you to add beautiful optin forms into your WordPress site and helps you get more subscribers (see how we increased our email subscribers by 600% with OptinMonster). It comes with page level targeting, split testing, analytics, and exit-intent technology which allows you to display a lightbox popup when a user is about to leave your website.
See how to build your email list in WordPress with OptinMonster.
WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. This drag & drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other type of online forms with just a few clicks.
We use it on WPBeginner and all of our other sites. There’s a free WPForms Lite version available for those who are looking for a simple solution.
If you want more advanced features, then get the Pro version. Use this WPForms coupon to get 10% off your purchase.
Alternative: Gravity Forms, NinjaForms
It is a proven fact that people find images more engaging than text. However, finding images that you are legally allowed to use is not that simple. CC Search allows you to search through creative commons licensed images. You can restrict the search to look for images you are allowed to use and modify. Check out our guide on how to find and insert creative commons licensed images for your WordPress blog posts.
Also checkout our guide on how to find royalty free images for your WordPress blog posts.
Ever wanted to add professional looking graphics to your site? Canva allows you to create beautiful graphic designs, edit images, create posters, with a simple and intuitive drag and drop interface. It is extremely easy to use even for beginners.
Alternative: Visage
PiktoChart makes it possible for anyone to create beautiful infographics, charts, and presentations. It has hundreds of templates and allows you to upload your own photos. You can use the simple drag and drop interface to create any kind of infographic.
Alternative: Infogr.am
Google Drive makes it easier for you to share documents, collaborate with teams, and access your stuff from any device. Google’s cloud storage service is a reasonably good alternative to desktop office applications. It comes with 15 GB free storage which is shared with your Gmail and Google+ accounts.
Alternative: Dropbox
TimeDoctor is a productivity tool that allows you to see exactly how you spent time while working. It can be used by an individual as well as teams. As a time tracking tool it can monitor websites, applications, and idle time.
Alternative: RescueTime
Ever wanted to schedule emails to send later? Boomerang allows you to schedule emails in your Gmail account. It also allows you to automatically send follow up emails if you don’t get a response in a given time. Boomerang is available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It is also available on mobile and android devices.
Trello is a project management tool. It offers a visual to organize and manage your projects. A typical Trello board is a list of lists displayed as cards. Add team members to any card, assign tasks, and get things done. Trello displays real time activity on the same board and you can everything that is happening on a project.
There is no excuse for using weak passwords or using the same password for different services. But the problem is how do you remember all these passwords? LastPass is a password manager that stores all your password under one secure vault. After installing LastPass, you can use it to auto generate strong passwords and save them in just one click.
Alternatives: 1Password, Dashlane
Twitter is the chatter box of the web. Use Twitter search to find content ideas. See what users are talking about topics related to your website and then reach out to those users to engage them.
Google Search Console also known as Google Webmaster Tools allows website owners to check how the search engine sees their website. You can see the most commonly used queries where your site appears. It is a comprehensive set of tools which show reports on duplicate titles, crawl errors, search queries, indexed content, etc.
See how to add your WordPress site to Google Webmaster Tools
Google’s keyword planner tool gives you an estimate of search volume for keywords. Using this tool you can identify keywords worth writing for. You can also find long tail keywords with high search volume. This will allow you to easily rank your posts for these keywords.
Emotional Market Value headline analyzer tool checks your post titles, headings, and headlines for emotional impact. Studies have shown that users find headlines with higher EMV much more appealing. Testing your headlines for EMV will teach you to write more persuasive titles and call of actions.
Also see: 700+ power words that will boost your conversions
Feedly is a modern news/RSS feed reader. It allows you to view and read content from all your favorite site in one place. Feedly is available on the web, as browser extension, and as app on Android and iOS devices.
See also: 15 Must Have Mobile Apps for WordPress Users and Bloggers
BufferApp provides a better way to share your content across social media. It allows you to schedule and share your content across Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin from a single dashboard. You can plan your whole day’s tweets and status updates in one go.
See our guide on how to schedule WordPress posts for social media with BufferApp.
BuzzSumo helps you analyze what content performs best for any topic or even for your competitors. You can find key influencers to promote your content, monitor your brand mentions, and so much more.
This tool is a must have for all serious bloggers.
Alternative: Nothing compares.
Did you know that you can track outgoing links on your website in Google Analytics? All you have to do is embed a few strings in your URL and then see how this URL performs in your Google Analytics reports.
See our guide on how to track links in WordPress using Google Analytics.
SEMRush helps you find competitive search data, so you can rank high for the right keywords. You can get insights into your competitors’ strategies in display advertising, organic and paid such, as well as link building. Combining the tools from SEMRush, you can surely increase your traffic multiple folds.
Alternatives: RavenTools
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out, its a free service which connects experts to reporters. Experts gets questions from reporters if they need any help in that particular area of expertise. When answering the question you can request the reporter to mention your name, blog, or startup in their story.
Rapportive allows you to see additional information about contacts right inside your Gmail inbox. Information such as their social media profiles, website, job, company, etc. It is available as an addon for Firefox and Google Chrome.
Camtasia is a screen recording software available for Windows and Mac. Extremely useful for sites where you need to walk through users. It allows you to easily edit your videos, add graphics, animations, arrows, sounds, etc.
Alternatives: Screenflow, CamStudio
BuzzStream allows you to manage relationships and run effective link building and outreach campaigns. It is a tool to manage your contacts and influencers in an efficient and personalized way. It helps you find influencers, run out reach and link building campaigns, and focus on your public relations goals.
Your site’s uptime and speed are crucial for the success and growth of your business. Pingdom is a website performance and uptime monitoring service. It offers free tools that you can use to monitor website speed and uptime.
If you manage multiple WordPress sites for yourself or for clients, then you would know how frustrating it could be to update them all one by one. InfiniteWP allows you to manage all your WordPress sites from a single dashboard. See our guide on how to manage multiple WordPress sites using InfiniteWP.
Alternative: ManageWP and iThemes Sync.
Bonus Tools
Here are some bonus tools to help you grow your WordPress powered website.
IFTTT is an online tool which allows you to put the internet on work for you. You can automate your social media sharing, organize your text messages, even handle your calls using IFTTT. Checkout our guide on how to automate WordPress and Social Media with IFTTT.
Slack is a messaging app for teams of all shapes and sizes. It allows you to create a slack for your team and then create chatrooms called channels. You can create private channels as well as public channels.
Team members can also send direct messages to each other and create group chats as well. Users can also send each other files, documents, images, etc.
That’s all for now. We hope these tools help you manage and grow your WordPress blog.
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The post 40 Useful Tools to Manage and Grow Your WordPress Blog (Updated) appeared first on WPBeginner.
