11 must-have WordPress plugins for publishers in 2025

You’re a publisher, your site is developed with WordPress and you want to make it more efficient, more attractive and more effective? You’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’re going to introduce you to the 11 must-have WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2025. These plugins are among the most popular, the most powerful and the most adapted to the needs of publishers.

They’ll help you create a professional website that meets the expectations of your visitors and Google.

But before we unveil these plugins, you may be wondering what a WordPress plugin is, what they’re for, and how to choose them. We’ll explain it all to you!

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system (CMS), used by over 43% of all websites. It offers great flexibility and ease of use, thanks to its active community and thousands of available themes and plugins.

What is a WordPress plugin?

A WordPress plugin is an extension that is installed on your WordPress site, adding new functionalities or modifying its behavior. For example, you can install a plugin to create an online store, optimize your natural referencing, secure your site, etc.

With over 59,000 free or paid WordPress plugins, which you can find on the official WordPress directory, or on third-party sites such as CodeCanyon, WPMU DEV, etc., it’s enough to make you tear your hair out, especially when you’re just starting out! But don’t panic, we’ll help you spot the essential WordPress plugins for site editors.

Why install a WordPress plugin?

Installing a WordPress plugin has several advantages, such as :

• Adding new functionalities to your site, without having to code or modify the WordPress source code
• Customize your site according to your needs and preferences, by choosing plugins that match your theme, audience, purpose, etc.
• Improve the quality and performance of your site, by making it more attractive, faster, more secure, more visible, etc.
• Benefit from support and updates from plugin developers, ensuring compatibility and reliability.
• Benefit from the diversity and richness of the WordPress community, with plugins to suit all tastes and levels.

How to choose a WordPress plugin?

Choosing a WordPress plugin isn’t always easy, as you need to take several criteria into account, such as :

• Compatibility: the plugin must be compatible with the version of WordPress you’re using, as well as with the other plugins and theme you’ve installed on your site. You can consult the plugin’s information, user reviews or test it on a demo site before installing it on your site.
• Popularity: you’ll know quite easily whether the plugin is popular and appreciated by users, by looking at the number of downloads, ratings, comments and so on. You can also consult rankings and comparisons of the best WordPress plugins on the web.
• Quality: take a look at the date of the last update, the number of bugs, documentation, support, etc. You can also consult tests and expert reviews on the web.
• Security: make sure the plugin is secure, by checking that it complies with WordPress standards and best practices, uses secure protocols, is regularly audited, etc. You can also consult security reports and alerts on the web.
• Price: make sure the plugin fits your budget, by looking at the initial cost, renewal cost, additional options, etc. You can also compare the offers and features of free and paid plugins.

Now that you know more about WordPress plugins, why install them, and how to choose them, let’s move on to our selection of the 11 must-have WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2025. These plugins have been chosen for their relevance to the needs of publishers and media.

Yoast SEO: to optimize your natural referencing

Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin for optimizing your site’s SEO. It enables you to improve :

• The content of your pages, with tips for optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, keywords, links, etc.
• Your site’s structure, by helping you create a sitemap, manage canonical tags, avoid duplicate content, etc.
• Your site’s visibility, by helping you configure basic WordPress settings, connect your site to Google Search Console, generate structured data, etc.

Yoast SEO is a free plugin, but you can also opt for the premium version, which offers you additional features such as secondary keyword analysis, page redirection, priority support, etc.

Advantages and disadvantages of Yoast SEO :

• ✅ Step-by-step guide to optimizing your site
• ✅ It covers all aspects of SEO
• ✅ Regularly updated, it adapts to changes in Google’s algorithms
• ✅ It features an academy for mastering the tool and learning SEO basics
• ❌Sometimes too rigid, it imposes rules that aren’t always adapted to your content or your sector (watch out for overoptimization)
• ❌ Ditto for its partnership with SEMRush on keyword suggestion (most of the time it’s irrelevant)
• ❌Too greedy, it can slow down your site or conflict with other plugins

Yoast SEO pricing: free or from €99 per year for the premium version.

Translate without headaches: to translate easily AND keep your site SEO optimized

Translate without migraine is the 2-in-1 plugin that combines the benefits of one-click translation with the ability to maintain your SEO optimizations, even when you’re writing in a language you don’t understand a word of! The plugin lets you :

• Translate entire pages and/or blog posts.
• Benefit from all the power of Deepl, but in 2 clicks and with direct WordPress integration.
• Translate your content simultaneously into multiple languages (35 available!).

Translate without migraine is a free plugin for life! But in short, upgrading to a paid plan will allow you to translate more content, in more languages. This plugin is clearly the darling of the Adrenalead Marketing Team 💙.

The pros and cons of Translate without Migraine:

• ✅ A highly intuitive 2-click translation, ideal for beginners.
• ✅ It stores and translates your SEO optimizations: Hn tags, bold words, internal linking, Yoast.
• ✅ It automatically translates internal links, alt tags, etc.
• ✅ You can change destination languages if you abandon one country in favor of another.
• ✅ The otters are too cute (it’s always nicer to work with a tool that’s nice to look at 🦦).
• ❌ Limited to a single translation language in the freemium version.
• ❌ Paid subscriptions increase from 3 supported languages to 10 (no in-between).

The price of Translate without migraine: free or from €17.99 per month for a more comprehensive version.

Elementor: to create customized pages

Elementor is the most powerful and popular WordPress plugin for creating custom pages. It allows you to :

• Create pages in your own image, using an intuitive visual editor and drag-and-drop elements onto your page
• Build pages adapted to all screens, using a responsive design system that automatically adjusts the size and layout of your elements
• Optimize your pages for the web, using clean, lightweight code that respects WordPress and Google standards

Elementor is a free plugin, but you can also opt for the pro version, which offers additional features such as advanced widgets, ready-to-use templates, dynamic effects and more.

Elementor pluses (+) and minuses (-):

• ✅ It lets you create pages without coding
• ✅ It offers great freedom of customization and design
• ✅ Guarantees optimal page speed and quality
• ❌ It requires time to learn and master the options (to date here’s the easiest training to follow! It’s a gift! 🎁)
• ❌ It can slow down your site or conflict with other plugins
• ❌ Too expensive, if you opt for the pro ++ version

Elementor’s price: free or between $49 and $399 for the pro version.

WP Rocket: to improve site speed

WP Rocket is the most powerful WordPress plugin for improving your site’s speed. It lets you :

• Optimize page loading, using techniques such as caching, compression, minification, lazy loading, etc.
• Improve server performance, using techniques such as preloading, DNS pre-request, connection to a CDN, etc.
• Maximize the user experience, using techniques such as resource prioritization, image optimization, accessibility enhancement, etc.

The (+) and (-) of WP Rocket :

• ✅ Guarantees a significant improvement in your site’s speed, and therefore in your natural referencing
• ✅ It requires no complex configuration, and is activated with a single click
• ✅ It works with all WordPress themes, plugins and hosts
• ❌ It doesn’t offer a free or trial version 🫠
• ❌ It may require advanced knowledge to take full advantage of its features

WP Rocket’s price: from $49 per year.

Feedzy RSS Feeds: manage your RSS feeds

Feedzy RSS Feeds is the most practical WordPress plugin for managing RSS feeds. It’s the extension par excellence that every editor should know about. It allows you to :

• Import RSS feeds from any source, using a URL, keyword, category, etc.
• Display RSS feeds on your site, using widgets, shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, etc.
• Create RSS feeds from within your site, using criteria such as title, content, date, etc.

Advantages and disadvantages of Feedzy RSS Feeds :

• ✅ Saves you time and diversifies your content, by importing quality articles from other sources
• ✅ It lets you customize the appearance and behavior of your RSS feeds, using a variety of options and settings
• ❌It only supports RSS feeds, not other syndication formats such as Atom or RDF
• ❌It can appear too complex, and may require a good understanding of how RSS feeds work and their parameters

To go further, you can take a look at this tutorial (which is a little dated) but is pretty comprehensive on how to integrate it into your WordPress site.

Notifadz: to send Web Push Notifications

This extension promotes engagement and audience monetization for publishers thanks to Web Push Notifications.

The tool enables :

• Configure your template to collect Web Push subscribers, by requesting their prior consent.
• Update your ads.txt for optimal monetization of your subscribers
• animate your community of subscribers free of charge, by relaying your content to them

The pros and cons of Notifadz :

• ✅It’s innovative, allowing you to communicate with your subscribers directly and effectively
• ✅It’s fun, allowing you to create attractive, interactive Web Push Notifications that arouse the interest and engagement of your recipients
• ✅It integrates easily with your WordPress site, and offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface
• ✅Takes charge of Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Safari on Desktop and Android
• ✅100% free for publishers
• ❌Limited to Web Push Notifications
• ❌Does not support HTTP sites
• ❌We couldn’t find a third drawback, but we put it on anyway 🤪

Notifadz is 100% free software designed for publishers who use the Notifadz platform, For the curious, you can check out Adrenalead’s documentations to learn more about Web Push Notification.

Imagify: optimize your images

Imagify is the most powerful and popular WordPress plugin for image optimization. It lets you :

• Reduce the weight of your images, using techniques such as compression, conversion, resizing, etc.
• Improve the quality of your images, using techniques such as retouching, cropping, filtering, etc.
• Improve the speed of your site, using techniques such as lazy loading, webp, CDN, etc.

The pros and cons of Imagify :

• ✅ Guarantees a significant reduction in the weight of your images, and therefore an improvement in the speed of your site, and your natural referencing
• ✅ Requires no complex configuration, and applies automatically to all your images
• ✅It works with all WordPress themes, plugins and hosts
• ❌It only supports images, not other media types like videos or audios

Imagify is free or from €4.99 per month for the paid version

The paid version gives you access to additional features such as unlimited compression and optimization of WebP images, as well as lossless compression and metadata removal.

Redirection: no more 404 problems

Redirection is the most powerful and popular WordPress plugin for managing redirects. It allows you to :

• Create redirects for your pages, using simple or advanced rules, regular expressions, conditions, etc.
• Manage your site’s 404 errors, by detecting them, correcting them, redirecting them, etc.
• Monitor your redirect statistics, by viewing, filtering and exporting them, etc.

Redirection is a free plugin offering all the features you need to manage redirects on your site.

TablePress: to create tables

TablePress is the free, open-source WordPress plugin for creating tables. It allows you to :

• Create data tables, using an intuitive visual editor and by entering or importing your data
• Display tables on your site, using shortcodes, widgets, Gutenberg blocks, etc.
• Customize tables according to your needs, using various options and parameters, such as sorting, pagination, search, etc.

The pros and cons of TablePress :

• ✅It lets you create high-quality data tables, with advanced functionality and customization options
• ✅It lets you manage all your tables from your WordPress dashboard, without having to use other tools or software
• ✅It lets you choose between manual entry or automatic import of your data, depending on your sources and formats
• ❌May seem too complex, requiring a good understanding of how tables and their parameters work

Polylang: to create a multilingual site

Polylang is the most popular and powerful WordPress plugin for creating a multilingual website. It allows you to :

• Create a site in any language, using an intuitive language selector and choosing from over 100 available languages
• Translate your site manually, using an intuitive visual editor, and duplicate or synchronize your content
• Translate your site automatically, using online translation services such as Google Translate, DeepL, etc.

The pros and cons of Polylang :

• ✅It lets you create and manage your languages and translations from your WordPress dashboard, without having to use other tools or software.
• ✅It lets you choose between manual or automatic translation, depending on your needs and preferences
• ❌It only supports the languages supported by WordPress, not regional languages or dialects
• ❌Too expensive, if you opt for the pro version

Polylang is free or from €99 with the option of unlimited translation access.

WPCode Lite: for inserting code into articles

WPCode Lite is the most practical WordPress plugin for inserting code into your posts. It lets you :

• Insert code into your posts, using an intuitive visual editor and choosing from over 20 programming languages
• Display code in your articles, using a dedicated Gutenberg block and choosing from over 10 color themes
• Customize code according to your needs, using various options and parameters, such as line number, copy, fold, etc.

The (+) and (-) of WPCode Lite :

• ✅allows you to insert code into your posts without having to code or modify WordPress source code
• ✅allows you to display code in your posts with a professional, attractive rendering
• ✅It works with all WordPress themes, plugins and hosts
• ❌It doesn’t offer advanced features, such as syntax highlighting, autocompletion, debugging, etc.
• ❌It requires some knowledge of HTML code.

In summary if you need a simple plugin to add headers and footers to your website, the free version of WPCode Lite is sufficient.

Conclusion: go for the must-have WordPress plugins of 2025!

To conclude, here are the key points to remember from this article:

• A WordPress plugin is an extension that installs on your WordPress site and adds new functionalities or modifies its behavior.
• Installing a WordPress plugin has several advantages, such as adding new features, customizing your site, improving its quality and performance, etc.
• Choosing a WordPress plugin involves taking into account several criteria, such as compatibility, popularity, quality, security, price, etc.
• The 11 must-have WordPress plugins to boost your site in 2025 are : Yoast SEO, Translate without migraine, Elementor, Notifadz, WP Rocket, Feedzy RSS Feeds, Imagify, Polylang, Redirection, TablePress, WPCode Lite
• These plugins are among the most popular, most powerful and most suitable for editors, and will help you to create a professional, attractive and effective site.