Readers often ask us 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.
In this article, we’ll share our list of 40 useful blogging tools to manage and grow your blog.
Looking to Start a Blog?
Do you want to start your own WordPress blog? We know that it can be a daunting thought, especially if you’re not a techy expert. But you’re not alone.
At WPBeginner, we have helped over 370,000+ users start a blog. And you can too!
Simply work through our comprehensive step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog. You don’t need any technical knowledge. We explain everything in plain English.
Once your blog is set up, go ahead and check out these powerful tools that will help you grow your blog.
1. All in One SEO
All in One SEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps you bring more free traffic to your website from search engines.
With All in One SEO, you get an instant score for all your posts, pages, and website. This helps you see how you’re doing and it gives you a checklist of exactly how to improve your SEO.
Its built-in tools let you easily create XML sitemap, markup your pages for rich schema, optimize for local SEO, WooCommerce SEO, and more.
2. SeedProd
SeedProd is the best landing page builder for WordPress.
By default, WordPress allows you to showcase blog posts on your website’s homepage. SeedProd helps you quickly create on-demand landing pages for every occasion. Whether you want to launch a product, run a seasonal sale, capture new leads, or grow your email list.
It comes with pre-built templates that you can quickly customize using an intuitive drag and drop interface. This allows you to create stunningly professional pages without writing any code.
SeedProd works with any WordPress theme and it comes with special blocks like countdowns and call to action buttons, optin forms, and more. It also integrates with all top email marketing services, WooCommerce, and other essential WordPress plugins.
3. MonsterInsights (Google Analytics)
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily install Google Analytics on your site and see where your users are coming from and what they do on your site.
MonsterInsights shows you the data you need right within your WordPress admin area. Over 2 million sites use it to see important stats about their website traffic.
You can create special reports in MonsterInsights to see things like which categories or authors are most popular on your blog. You can also track affiliate link clicks, see real-time traffic stats, and make Google Analytics compliant with GDPR.
4. ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates lets you easily manage affiliate links, which can become a time-consuming task. Many website owners use affiliate marketing to monetize their blogs as it’s easy to get started with.
ThirstyAffiliates is an affiliate link manager that allows you to easily add affiliate links, cloak links with pretty URLs, and auto-insert links for keywords. For more details, check out our guide on how to add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates.
Alternative: Pretty Links
5. Shared Counts
Shared Counts is a useful social media plugin for WordPress. It lets you show the number of times your posts have been shared on social media. This is a useful form of social proof.
Shared Counts gives you multiple button styles, and you can choose where to show the buttons (before or after the content or manually). You can also enable Shared Counts for custom post types.
6. SEMRush
SEMRush helps you find competitive search data, so your blog can rank high for the right keywords. You can get insights into your competitors’ strategies in display advertising, organic and paid search, as well as link building.
Using all these tools from SEMRush can dramatically increase your website traffic. This means you will get more leads and more customers.
Alternative: Ahrefs
7. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the best WordPress lead generation tool. It allows you to add beautiful optin forms to your WordPress site and helps you get more subscribers. You can use it to create popups, slide-ins, floating bars, coupon wheels, and more.
OptinMonster 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.
8. WPForms
WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. This drag and drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other types of online forms with just a few clicks.
We use WPForms 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.
The full version of WPForms lets you create surveys and polls, payment forms, file upload forms, user registration forms, conversational forms, and much more.
9. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the best email service providers. It allows you to build your email list, design emails, and send them to your users.
It is very beginner-friendly and at the same time powerful enough for experienced users.
Alternatives: Sendinblue, ConvertKit, and Drip
10. MemberPress
MemberPress is the best membership site plugin for WordPress. It lets you lock content on your site so that members can only access it by paying either a one-off fee or a subscription.
You can create different levels of membership with MemberPress, with each level having different access permissions. You can even use MemberPress to run an online course.
11. PushEngage
PushEngage is a powerful push notification plugin for WordPress. It helps you to get more website traffic, boost user engagement, and ultimately make more money.
With push notifications, you can quickly and easily send out alerts to your site’s users. For instance, you could let them know that you’re running a sale. Here on WPBeginner, we find that push notifications get a higher click rate, engagement, and opt-in rate compared with our email newsletter.
12. RafflePress
RafflePress is the best giveaway and raffle plugin for WordPress. It lets you grow your traffic, engagement, email list, and social media following by running a fun giveaway on your site.
By using RafflePress, you can incentivize actions like visiting your social media profiles, sharing posts, watching videos, and much more. Each time a user takes one of the actions you specify, they will get an entry into your prize draw.
13. Canva
Canva allows you to create beautiful graphic designs, edit images, and create posters, with a simple and intuitive drag and drop interface.
It is extremely easy to use to create things like featured images for your blog. Even beginners can create professional-looking graphics with Canva.
Alternative: Visage
14. Buffer
Buffer 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 could 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.
15. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon has a set of social media feed plugins that let you easily bring your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube updates onto your website. This is a great way to keep your site fresh with new content.
Using Smash Balloon’s plugins lets you embed your actual social media posts on your site so users can interact with them. You can even create an Instagram shoppable feed to boost your eCommerce sales.
16. Grammarly
Grammarly is a powerful AI (artificial intelligence) editor for your website posts and pages. You can copy and paste content into the Grammarly website app. However, the easiest way to use Grammarly is to install the Grammarly Chrome extension.
As well as pointing out spelling mistakes, Grammarly will let you know about grammatical errors and stylistic mistakes. The basic version is free, but you may prefer the pro version for help with tone, formality level, and word choices.
17. Headline Analyzer by MonsterInsights
The MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer lets you optimize the headline for your blog post or landing page. It will give you a score out of 100 along with specific suggestions for improving your headline.
The headline analyzer also includes several helpful lists, such as the list of Power Words and Emotion Words. These can help you make your headlines extra compelling.
18. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is a powerful forms plugin for experienced WordPress users. It offers advanced functionality like the ability to create calculators on your site to help you gather more leads.
For instance, you could create a BMI calculator on a health or fitness site. If you run a real estate website, you could use Formidable Forms to make a mortgage calculator.
19. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the most popular free WordPress backup plugin. It lets you easily create a full backup of your site, which you can then store in the cloud or on your own computer.
You can even set up scheduled backups, so your site will be backed up on a regular basis without you needing to do anything. The premium version of UpdraftPlus supports multisite installations of WordPress, lets you clone your website, and more.
Alternatives: BackupBuddy, Jetpack
20. Sucuri
Sucuri is a website monitoring and security service. It provides real time alerts for any suspicious activity on your website. It prevents malware from infecting your site. If your site is already infected, Sucuri can detect and remove malware.
Take a look at how Sucuri helped us block 450,000 WordPress attacks in 3 months.
Alternative: CloudFlare.
21. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best caching plugin for WordPress. It speeds up your site by storing copies of your website pages. These can be quickly shown to people who visit your site.
There are lots of useful features in WP Rocket, such as built-in lazy loading of images. This helps speed up your site even further, which is better for users and for your Google ranking.
Alternative: WP Super Cache
22. Uncanny Automator
Uncanny Automator is a clever automation plugin that lets WordPress plugins and even different WordPress sites ‘talk’ to one another. For instance, you could use it to sell products on one site but create user accounts on another.
It works like Zapier, but for WordPress. Uncanny Automator is a fantastic way to automate repetitive tasks that would otherwise take a lot of time to handle.
23. Insert Headers and Footers
Insert Headers and Footers is a simple but very useful plugin. It lets you add code to the header, footer, and body sections for your site.
This is something you will often need to do when verifying your site with third-party tools. Many people use Insert Headers and Footers to add their Google Analytics code. However, we recommend using MonsterInsights for this instead as it gives you extra tracking features.
24. ChatBot
ChatBot lets you create an automated chatbot on your website. This means users can get instant answers to their questions at any time, 24/7. It’s a much cheaper option than hiring extra support team members.
ChatBot is powered by AI (artificial intelligence). It integrates with your WordPress site and with live chat software so that the conversation can be easily transferred to a live person if needed.
25. LiveChat
LiveChat is the best live chat software on the market. It works seamlessly with your WordPress site. Your support team members can access the live chat through apps on their computer, tablet, or mobile device.
We use LiveChat on our eCommerce website. It’s very fast, works on all devices, and offers a great user experience. Make sure you use our LiveChat coupon to get 30% off your first payment.
26. Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media automation tool for Pinterest and Instagram. It lets you schedule 10 pins with a single click.
You also get Tailwind’s analytic tools to help you figure out what’s working best. That way, you can schedule your content for times when you will get more engagement.
27. Better Click to Tweet
Better Click to Tweet is a simple WordPress plugin that lets you insert ‘click to tweet’ buttons into your posts and pages. This means readers can quickly and easily tweet a key quote from your content.
It’s a free plugin that comes with a special Gutenberg block, making it very easy to use. Alternatively, you can use a shortcode to put the ‘click to tweet’ button into your posts.
28. Feedly
Feedly is a modern news/RSS feed reader. It allows you to view and read content from all your favorite sites in one place.
Feedly is available on the web, as a browser extension, and as a mobile app on Android and iOS devices.
29. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is a huge stock photography library that lets you buy high-quality images to use on your website. It’s cheaper per image if you get a monthly subscription.
We use Shutterstock’s images here on WPBeginner. They have a wide range of vector graphics, photos, and much more.
30. Google Workspace (G Suite)
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) is Google’s set of connected tools. It includes Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and more.
Many companies use Google Workspace as a key part of their systems. It’s suitable for even small companies as it’s priced per user.
Alternative: Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)
31. Asana
Asana is a project and task management tool that helps teams to organize their workflow. You can use it to create lists of tasks, see your tasks on a calendar, assign tasks to others, and much more.
The basic version of Asana is free and can be used by up to 15 teammates. This is a good option for individuals or small startups.
Alternative: Trello
32. Camtasia
Camtasia is screen recording software available for Windows and Mac. It’s extremely useful for sites where you need to walk users through a process step by step.
With Camtasia, you can easily edit your videos, add graphics, animations, arrows, sounds, subtitles, and more.
Alternatives: Screenflow, CamStudio
33. LastPass
LastPass is a password manager that stores all your passwords in a single secure vault. This means you can easily avoid the temptation to use insecure passwords, or to use the same password for multiple sites.
After installing LastPass, you can use it to autogenerate strong passwords and save them in just one click. Check out our guide on securely managing passwords for more details.
Alternatives: 1Password, Dashlane
34. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that lets you see what topics are popular on Google. You can compare different keywords to see the interest in them over time.
The ‘Trending Searches’ option gives you a real-time view of what people are most commonly searching for. This lets you create content that’s likely to get traffic. You can filter Google Trends by country, too.
35. Quora
Quora is a huge questions and answers website, and is a form of social network. Anyone can post a question and anyone can answer it.
You can drive traffic to your website by looking for relevant questions on Quora to answer. This helps you position yourself as an expert. Plus, if you see a question coming up frequently, that could make a good topic for a blog post.
36. Twitter Search
Twitter Search is a useful way to find out the latest news, reactions, and what’s on people’s minds.
You can use Twitter search to find content ideas. You could also see what users are talking about topics related to your website topic and then reach out to those users to engage them.
37. Google Search Console
Google Search Console was previously known as Google Webmaster Tools. It allows website owners to check how Google sees their website. You can see the most commonly used queries where your site appears.
It offers a comprehensive set of tools that show reports on duplicate titles, crawl errors, search queries, indexed content, and more. Take a look at our guide on adding your WordPress site to Google Search Console for help getting started.
38. BuzzSumo
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. You can search for topics by region, language, time period, and more.
39. TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is a free browser extension and mobile app that helps you run your YouTube channel. It has lots of useful features, like a keyword explorer so you can come up with the perfect titles and tags for your videos.
You can use TubeBuddy to speed up your publishing process and run A/B tests, too.
40. Nextiva
Nextiva is the best business phone service on the market. You can use it for customer calls and conference calls, as it has excellent audio quality.
With Nextiva, you get lots of useful extras like a free local or toll-free number, call forwarding, custom greetings, text messages, online faxes, and much more.
We hope these tools help you manage and grow your WordPress blog. You might also like our article on how to start an online store.
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The post 40 Useful Tools to Manage and Grow Your WordPress Blog (Updated) appeared first on WPBeginner.
