I thought I’d do a little experiment… find the top 10 WordPress plugins just before Christmas, then again a week later. The top ten, in terms of average growth per day since mid August 2012, are now…
| Plugin name and description | Plugin links | Version, total downloads, last update, tested |
|---|---|---|
| Contact Form 7 Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. |
contact-form-7 home |
5.6 225,684,097 17th June 2022 6.0 |
| Jetpack – WP Security, Backup, Speed, & Growth Improve your WP security with powerful one-click tools like backup and malware scan. Get essential free tools including stats, CDN and social sharing. |
jetpack home |
11.0 278,524,955 7th June 2022 6.0 |
| All in One SEO – Best WordPress SEO Plugin – Easily Improve SEO Rankings & Increase Traffic The original WordPress SEO plugin. Improve your WordPress SEO rankings and traffic with our comprehensive SEO tools and smart SEO optimizations. |
all-in-one-seo-pack home |
4.2.2 99,744,741 21st June 2022 6.0 |
| Yoast SEO Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the Yoast SEO plugin. |
wordpress-seo home |
19.2 441,877,392 28th June 2022 6.0 |
| Akismet Spam Protection The best anti-spam protection to block spam comments and spam in a contact form. The most trusted antispam solution for WordPress and WooCommerce. |
akismet home |
4.2.4 244,898,180 20th May 2022 6.0 |
| XML Sitemaps This plugin will improve SEO by helping search enginess better index your site using sitemaps. |
google-sitemap-generator home |
4.1.5 30,808,962 16th June 2022 6.0 |
| WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time with over 31 million downloads. |
nextgen-gallery home |
3.26 35,615,475 27th April 2022 5.9.3 |
| MonsterInsights – Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress (Website Stats Made Easy) The best free Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. See how visitors find and use your website, so you can grow your business. |
google-analytics-for-wordpress home |
8.6.0 123,800,680 13th June 2022 6.0 |
| gtrans | No info available | |
| WordPress Importer Import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, tags and more from a WordPress export file. |
wordpress-importer home |
0.7 39,389,272 4th April 2020 5.4.10 |
Notes:
- The top three exceed 10,000 downloads per day.
- The first seven exceed 6,000 downloads per day.
- All in one SEO pack is still the most popular: with over 13 million downloads
- Akismet is second, with over 12.5 million.
Personally:
- I’ve stopped using Contact Form 7; I noticed that the CAPTCHA images don’t display in Chrome any more.
- I’m now using Jetpack for a simple contact form.
- I install WordPress SEO more often than All in one SEO.
- I rarely use the Nextgen-gallery or gtrans.