To help you narrow down your search, I’ve handpicked this collection of the best premium plugins for WordPress, based on the many years I’ve been working with WordPress. These are plugins I see time and time again in the backends of WordPress — these are premium WordPress plugins people use and get value from.

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🏗️ Visual Builder Plugins
🔒 Security Plugins
⚡ Optimization Plugins
🔍 SEO Plugins
🛒 Ecommerce Plugins
📝 Forms and Booking Plugins

Best Visual Builder Premium WordPress Plugins

Page builders and visual builders have become an important design tool for WordPress users. Building sites is no longer just for developers — with visual builder plugins, now anyone can create a beautiful WordPress site.

1. Elementor Pro

It’s easy to see why it’s so popular. With Elementor you can build complex, pixel perfect page designs using drag and drop. Want to start designing from scratch? Choose from over 80 design elements and add text, buttons and even forms to your pages. Need a template? There are 100+ pre-designed templates to help get you started.

2. Smart Slider 3

Don’t be confused by the name — this plugin is truly heavy duty, allowing you to create everything from homepage sliders and WordPress carousels to fullscreen video sliders and image sliders.

With the user-friendly canvas and content modes, layers, and huge range of elements and templates, Smart Slider 3 blows every other slider plugin out of the water with the level of functionality it provides compared to other premium WordPress plugins.

3. Divi

The Divi offers user-friendly visual page building that’s really fast. There are 46 modules for everything from text and email optins to filterable portfolios and galleries. A unique feature of Divi is its integrated a/b split testing and conversions rate optimization system, which lets you test different design — no other page builder offers this.

4. JetElements

• post carousel and slider, advanced carousel, and animated box;
• recent, featured, sale, best-selling, and top products;
• image grid, justify, and masonry;
• services and testimonials;
• portfolio, audio players, Parallax effect, and many other amazing tools.

5. Ultimate Blocks

No matter what type of website you maintain, whether a blog, news portal, eCommerce, or else, Ultimate Blocks can help present your content beautifully on posts and pages. Some of the most used blocks of the plugin are Testimonials, Call to Action, Content Toggle, Button, Rating, and Review.

In addition, some of its other exciting blocks are Tabbed Content, Image Slider, Content Filter, Styled Box, and Icon. Based on respective blocks, Ultimate Blocks lets you customize their color, font, size, value, and heading.

Best Security Premium WordPress Plugins

It’s easy to take on an it-won’t-happen-to-me approach when it comes to website security, but chances are, if your website hasn’t already been compromised, it will be hacked sooner or later. That’s why you need security and backup plugins for your site.

6. Sucuri

Premium users get access to an enterprise grade Website Firewall designed to give you the best security protection any website can hope for. It protects your website from a variety of website attacks, including DDoS attacks, exploitation of vulnerabilities, Zero Day disclosure patches, and brute force attacks.

7. Defender

• Security scans
• Vulnerability reports
• Audit logs
• Two-factor authentication
• Safety recommendations
• Blacklist monitoring
• Brute force lockout
• IP lockout device
• Simple security tweaks
• Code checker (for core, plugins and themes)
• Login masking
• File change detection
• Automated backups (via Snapshot)

On top of all that, Defender has one of the most user-friendly UI’s of any premium WordPress plugins for security I’ve used. Tweaking security settings can be a headache, but Defender makes it easy (and strangely, kind of fun!).

8. VaultPress

Best Performance Optimization Premium WordPress Plugins

You’ve got 15 minutes of free time to speed up your site. What do you do? For time-poor site admins who want only the best performance optimization plugins, WP Rocket and Smush are must-have premium WordPress plugins.

9. WP Rocket

In addition to browser caching, WP Rocket also provides:

• Minification and GZIP compression for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files
• Database cleaning
• Lazy loading
• Cache preloading
• DNS prefetching
• File deferring
• Google Fonts optimization

10. WP Smush Pro

A useful feature of WP Smush is the ability to bulk smush images automatically when you upload them to your site so you don’t have to do it manually. It also offers WebP conversion.

11. Optimole

• Optimole optimizes your images automatically
• Picks the right image size for the visitor’s browser and viewport
• Serves images via a fast image CDN​
• Uses lazy loading to display your images

Optimole has full compatibility with popular page builders and you can easily integrate it in your WordPress site. It can be installed in a few clicks and then left in the back-end to do its job.

Best SEO Premium WordPress Plugins

Need some help with your search engine optimization? There’s one premium SEO plugin for WordPress that beats all others…

12. Yoast SEO

The premium version of Yoast SEO includes:

• Advanced XML sitemaps
• Full control over site breadcrumbs
• Set canonical URLs to avoid duplicate content
• Title and meta description templating
• Content and SEO analysis, including readability
• Text insights
• Automatic internal linking suggestions

Best Ecommerce Premium WordPress Plugins

WordPress isn’t just the most popular content management system — it’s also the world’s most popular ecommerce platform when you pair it with WooCommerce.

13. WooCommerce

Beyond the core WooCommerce plugin, the WooCommerce Extensions store provides access to hundreds of free and premium extensions, allowing you to add all sorts of additional functionality to your store.

14. WooCommerce Subscriptions

You can customize Subscriptions to include payment models for both physical and digital goods, but also any services you provide. Create time-based subscription packages that can entice new customers based on package value, e.g. weekly, bi-weekly, and quarterly payments.

15. PH WooCommerce Deposits

• Enhanced Experience: Simplify deposits, secure items now, pay later at checkout.
• Flexible Deposits: Control amounts – fixed or percentage-based, aligning with preferences.
• Automated Invoices: Streamline with auto balance invoices, scheduled customer alerts.
• Seamless Integration: Smooth deposit process, personalized buttons for ease.
• Tailored Schedules: Daily, weekly, monthly payments – flexible choices.
• Product-Centric Control: Customize per-product deposit options, shape your store.

Best Forms and Booking Premium WordPress Plugins

No matter what kind of site you have, you’ll want to keep in touch with people who visit — and for that you’ll need a contact form. With the options below, you’ll have access to advanced features and functionality.

16. Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is available for free, but you can do a lot more by upgrading to the premium version of the plugin. You have control of every elements, and you can easily put it on your WordPress site with widget or shortcode. Whether you choose the free version or decide to upgrade, you’ll have a solid and reliable form that’s easy to use.

17. JetFormBuilder

JetFormBuilder allows integration with leading email marketing and CRM platforms for efficient data collection and enhanced lead generation. MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, and PayPal integrations are available in the free version. Additionally, you can choose ready-made form patterns to start creating the form from the template.

18. Amelia

With Amelia you can receive a booking engine with lots of features, it’s easy to use, you can install it with a few clicks. You can customize it to fit your needs on your website, and it has a tons of demos what you can use.

19. LatePoint

With its user-friendly interface, LatePoint ensures a seamless experience for both administrators and clients. Optimized for speed and responsiveness across all devices, it supports popular payment methods and integrates smoothly with external services.

Whether you’re a fitness coach, beauty salon owner, or consultant, LatePoint adapts to your specific scheduling needs, enhancing user experience and making appointment management effortless and efficient.

20. SureMembers

This plugin streamlines the process of establishing membership tiers, integrating payment gateways, and customizing access rules. Setting up access groups, defining content permissions, and choosing between free or paid memberships is straightforward and hassle-free.

With features like drip content, paywalls, and user role customization, SureMembers provides granular control over content access, allowing for the precise management of posts and resources.

Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or managing multiple sites, SureMembers offers a comprehensive and flexible solution for building and running successful membership websites.

Wrapping Up

There you have it, the 20 best premium WordPress plugins. Do you use any of these plugins? Or do you have any favorites that didn’t make the list? Let us know!

The post 20 Premium WordPress Plugins to Look Out For in 2024 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.