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It’s better to automate something rather than to burn precious time of doing it yourself. WordPress users can relate to this thing very easily as they have a very special life-saving gift known as “Plugins”. WordPress plugins not only simplify our tasks but also increases the working efficiency.

As there are so many plugins available over the Internet, it becomes confusing to decide which plugin to go for and which one to use i.e free one or the paid one to have better features and more functionality. It becomes important to conduct free WordPress plugin check.

As we all know the fact that the paid plugins have better services and prompt support facility. On the other hand, if we are going to download a free plugin than it’s become important to consider a few aspects before downloading it.

Both the free and the paid plugins come with their own pros and cons. On one hand, where paid plugin comes with prior support, and on the other hand you may have to wait a while to get your problem solved. As sometimes all of the free plugins are not that reliable as we thought and on the other side of the coin, most of the paid plugins are more reliable but yes, not all the times.

Before we dive into comprehensive plugin checklist, let’s have a look these WordPress plugins affect your site’s performance and overall load time of the site. To mind the site’s load time is the most prominent thing as the search engines are more focusing on the site’s performance to rank in the search results.

How WordPress plugins affect site’s load time?

Every plugin comes with a different set of functionality. To perform multiple operations, plugins run several operations which utilise a website’s resources to accomplish the functionality successfully. WordPress plugins leverage and impose extra resource such as CSS stylesheets, JavaScript files, images, etc.

When the plugins make database queries and try to access these queries eventually site’s load time. Many plugins make the HTTP request to load assets like scripts, CSS, and images. As many requests the plugins will make, the site load time will increase with it.

That’s why it is recommended to remove all the un-used plugins to improve the performance of the site.

How to check files created & used by WordPress plugins



If you want to check how many files are being loaded when your website reloads, then there are so many tools you can use to check this. Or you can simply use the built-in feature of your browser. Just right click and select the Inspect option. After this, navigate to the Network option.

Here you will see all the processes and resources are being reloaded again and again as you reload the website. After paying attention to this stats, you will understand why your site is loading slow or loading fast.

Do you need all that plugins?

You need to rethink about this, do you really need all the plugins that you have installed on your site from months or from some years. Just cut the plugins out which you are not using any more. It will not only improve your site’s performance but it will also keep the site clutter-free and free from bugs.

Quick checklist for free plugins

In this blog let’s figure out how to check that “a free plugin is worth downloading or not”. There are many things from which you can easily decide whether you should download a free plugin or not. Here is quick Free WordPress Plugin Check List:

Check it’s compatibility

Sometimes when you download a free plugin and install it on your site, the plugin doesn’t work or works abruptly. So to avoid such situation it’s very necessary to check the WordPress version compatibility of the plugin.

If the plugin is only tested up to only version 4.4 then it will not work properly on the latest WordPress version 4.9.8. Always check the version of WordPress up to which the plugin is compatible.

Check it’s last updated date

Always check on which date the last update was rolled out for the plugin. The latest version you get, better the performance you expect. The benefit of using the latest version is that you will experience a lag free functioning. If the plugin is having a fresh update may be a month ago than it is good to download. And if it is updated before a couple of months or more than you should reconsider whether you should download it or not.

It’s not the case that older plugins don’t work perfectly. Depending on for what purpose you are installing the plugin and what performance you need to get your work done efficiently the last update criteria matters. It also shows the sincerity of the developer, how seriously they look after the maintenance of plugin. So it’s good to check the plugin’s last updated date.

Check for the download counts and reviews

It is the simplest way to check the popularity and the authority of the plugin you are going to download. The number of downloads and reviews for the plugin will give you a pretty good idea about how useful and popular the plugin is. If the plugin is having few thousands of downloads then it can be considered as a good plugin.

Also, check the rating of the plugin just to have some kind of social proof before downloading it. By taking these things into consideration you can be very sure about what you are downloading.

Google it!!

To check the popularity of the plugin just Google it and it will show you the most relevant results about it. By simply Google you will have all the reviews posted on wordpress.org. As WordPress maintains good data of every theme and plugin they have on their site. That way you will have a good idea about it by doing a simple Google search.

User Reviews

Simply go to Google and hit the name of the plugin you want to check, other than WordPress, you will also get the plugin review on many other sites. By doing this. you have a pretty good idea regarding the product. You can also check the comments of users in the community forum.

Responsive or not

If the plugin is for some sort of designing purpose then it becomes necessary to check responsiveness. Suppose if you download a plugin which is for managing the image optimization for better compatibility and if the plugin is not responsive that it is of no use. So before downloading a plugin like this make sure you are downloading the responsive one.

Proper Documentation

Documentation is very prominent if we are installing some software for the first time. Or when we are a newbie to something. No matter free or paid plugin you are using, it should come with documentation.

A complete documentation includes installation steps, basic troubleshooting guides and other important legitimate details regarding the product and the company.

Conclusion for free WordPress plugin check

As from above checklist you can easily decide which plugin to download which will give sheer performance. A good plugin also helps in boosting On Page Optimization. and better productivity to save more time.

Download a perfect plugin which gets perfectly works for your requirement. As the free plugin comes with its own pros and cons, it’s a good idea to do a free WordPress plugin check. If you are doing some really important work in which an accident is unavoidable due to some third-party plugin. In this case, you should go for the Pro version.

The reason for jumping to the Pro version is that with pro version, the company provides prior support round the clock to resolve any kind of issue. If you are stuck in between some problem and need support then, only pro version of the plugin will offer you the fast solution. On the other hand, free plugins also provide support but don’t expect priority.

Have you checked out our utility plugins for your WordPress site to enhance your site’s productivity and save your precious time?