Plugins help extend the functionality of a WordPress website. They allow for additional features in your website even without knowledge of coding. Most of the WordPress plugins are written in PHP and can be integrated seamlessly into your website.

Although there are plenty of premium plugins available, there is also a plethora of free plugins to choose from. Here at Templatetoaster WordPress website builder and WordPress theme builder showcases some of the best free alternatives to popular paid WordPress plugins.

Antispam Bee || Clean Talk

Antispam Bee blocks spam comments and trackbacks effectively without the need for CAPTCHA functionality. It does this by searching local spam databases for commenters previously marked as spammers. It comes with spam indicators and sends comments for deletion directly.

The plugin limits approval to comments or pings, and will delete other types of comments. The plugin treats BBCode as spam, and deletes existing spam after a set number of days.

Antispam Bee is a great – and, best of all, free – alternative to Clean Talk, which also does not use CAPTCHAs or puzzles. The paid plugin protects logins and comments all at once, and provides detailed statistics of all incoming comments and logins.

W3 Total Cache || WP Rocket

W3 Total Cache an alternative to WP Rocket is a free WordPress plugin designed to increase server performance, reduce download times and provide transparent integration of content delivery network (CDN). It helps in the caching of feeds, database objects in memory or on disk, and search results pages in memory or on disk.

It also helps in the minification of posts and pages and feeds as well as inline, embedded or third-party JavaScript and CSS. It comes with JavaScript grouping by template, and helps improve user experience without changing themes or plug-ins.

Its closest premium rival is WP Rocket, a caching plugin that also helps make your WordPress blog highly optimized for speed and performance. It recycles previously generated and commonly accessed data rather than re-load every single PHP script whenever a site is accessed.

Yoast SEO || Premium SEO Pack

From the name itself, Yoast SEO is a famous search engine optimization plug-in and is a free alternative to Premium SEO Pack. It incorporates a lot of SEO-related features such as:

Snippet editor and real time page analysis functionality to help optimize page content, image titles, meta descriptions and more

XML sitemaps and other optimization options in between

Ability to edit robots.txt and .htaccess

RSS enhancements, permalink cleanup, and header section streamlining

On the paid front, Premium SEO Pack minifies and caches JavaScript and CSS files by optimizing website performance and frontend load time. It comes with the option to exclude or cache files. It downloads remote files when your server has .htaccess password protection.

Sucuri Security || Wordfence

Sucuri Security a free alternative to Wordfence is a website security plug-in built to help website owners identify security issues by conducting baseline environment checks and report on them. It helps configure for regular monitoring with its continuous scanning alerting engine. The end result is an optimized and improved performance.

Sucuri Security uses a layered approach to proactive and reactive security. It features a website application firewall & intrusion prevention system.

Wordfence offers similar features to securing your WordPress website. It comes with country blocking, scheduled scans, password auditing, and website IP address check. LiveTraffic view provides real-time visibility on traffic and hack attempts on your website.

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Smooth Slider || Slider Revolution

Smooth Slider a free alternative to Slider Revolution is a content, video, and images plug-in that creates dynamic slideshows for featured posts, pages, media images and custom post types on a WordPress site. Smooth Slider comes with a responsive design, making it compatible with mobile devices and tablets. It comes with six transition effects and Slider preview in admin panel, and offers SEO-friendly slideshows.

Smooth Slider is the free alternative to the highly popular Slider Revolution, an innovative and responsive WordPress slider plugin that displays content in a beautiful way. Its drag-and-drop editor lets you customize slides.

Contact Form 7 || Gravity Forms

Contact Form 7 a free alternative to Gravity Forms is a simple but powerful contact form plugin that helps manage multiple contact forms as well as customize the contents of forms and mail easily with a simple markup. It offers support for Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, and others.

Meanwhile, Gravity Forms is a premium contact form plugin for WordPress-powered websites. It allows quick and easy integration with a variety of third-party services such as PayPal and offers deeper integration through a variety of optional add-ons.

BackUpWordPress || BackUpBuddy

BackUpWordPress a free alternative to BackUpBuddy backs up your entire website including databases and files on your preferred schedule. It does not require any set-up and works in low memory and “shared host” environment. It also gives an option to have each backup emailed to you.

It is compatible with both Windows and Linux servers. It gives you the option to exclude files and folders from your backup.

Its premium counterpart is BackUp Buddy, which backs up an entire WordPress site, from the database to the littlest of files. It allows you to set up a schedule for running backups, and store back-up files in a safe and secure location. You can restore and move your site quickly & easily in a few steps.

WooCommerce || Cart66

WooCommerce a free alternative to Cart66 is a free e-commerce plugin that lets you sell anything in a beautiful manner. It is designed to easily integrate with WordPress. It gives both store owners and developers complete control.

The popularity of WooCommerce has reached a lot of people, in which more than 30 percent of all online stores are running on this powerful plugin.

As an open-source platform, it allows developers to build the store that their client needs. It is the most customizable e-commerce platform for building online businesses.

On the other side of the spectrum, Cart66 is one of the most secure e-commerce platforms for WordPress. It takes care of securing your website so you can completely focus on your business. It comes with a built-in recurring billing engine and support for more than 100 payment gateways. It also has a built-in tool that restricts access to content on your site.

Conclusion

Whatever functionality you want for your WordPress website, there’s bound to be a plugin that is designed for your needs. With free WordPress plugins, you get an opportunity to enhance your website without having to make an out-of-pocket expense. Of course, you can also opt for the paid option to get more benefits and better after-sales service.