There are some great plugins available for WordPress developers and users. I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of my preferred premium plugins. (Note: these are straight links and not affiliate links) In my upcoming Developer Certification course, I will be going into greater detail on essential plugins as well as how to start building your own plugin when you can’t find a current plugin in the repository. Sign up now to attend the live Developer Certification events.
Gravity Forms
This is one of the two MUST HAVE plugins for every WordPress-based projects I develop. Gravity Forms is a beautiful and simple form creation and management plugin that makes it quick and easy to add simple or advanced forms. Some of the great features include conditional form fields, email notification routing, dynamic field population, reply to entries from WP, autoresponders, the ability to allow users to create posts through a form (a good example would be allowing the community to submit news or pictures), and lots more. A single-site license costs $39 and an unlimited developer’s license costs $199.
Shopp
Whenever I have a client who wants an e-commerce system or some type of online store, I always turn to the Shopp plugin. Shopp is a robust premium e-commerce plugin that includes a long list of features including basic inventory management, support for selling digital and physical products, export orders into QuickBooks, breadcrumb navigation, product search, integration with most of the popular payment gateways, flexible shipping calculations, and more. The biggest benefit to the Shopp plugin is the flexibility and ability to customize the style of ever aspect of the shopping experience. The cost of a single-site license is $55 and a developer’s license is $299.
WishList Member
This is a very popular plugin for managing a membership website with a solid team of developers behind the project. A key selling point of WishList Member is that it is extremely easy to set up a membership section on both a current or brand new WordPress-based website. Features include unlimited membership levels, shopping cart integration, full control over who sees what content, easy member management, secure RSS feeds, and more. A single-site license costs $97 and a multi-site license costs $297.
OIOpublisher
OIOpublisher is a popular premium ad management plugin that has been around for a few years. It allows you to have full control over the ad space that you sell on your website or blog, and to keep all of the revenue from ad sales as opposed to sharing revenue with an ad network. Ad purchases and expirations are handled automatically to save you time. The ad click and impression tracking as well as weekly ad reports can be automatically emailed to your advertisers. A single license costs $47 and can be used on an unlimited number of your own websites.
BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration and the other one of my MUST HAVE plugins. The single backup file created by the plugin can be used with the importer script to quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or even migrate to a new host with different settings. Whether you’re an end user or a developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. Our goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable. Prices range from $25 to $150 depending on number of sites.
