Everything in the world comes with a price. It’s nature’s way of balancing the scales. So don’t be surprised when the premium WordPress plugins can cost you a lot. You need to spend something in order to acquire something that you really need. In our modern world, money is most often that ‘something’ I was referring to.
It is, of course, good to find free WordPress plugins that you could use with your blog or the website that you are currently developing. However, free plugins have drawbacks.
They work for a particular time frame only
Some work at a very minimal amount
The full features won’t be utilized unless you buy the plugin
That, my friend, is but natural. Of course, our WordPress developer buddies work hard to brainstorm, design, and code, troubleshoot and re-code these plugins. They exert their utmost effort to help you with your daily WP needs. This is the main reason why some plugins can never be free, even if we wanted them to be.
Of course, you wouldn’t want to throw away your money for some crappy plugin. I know that choosing the best plugin still depends on your personal needs but having a guide on which plugins to buy is a very considerable advantage.
1stwedesigner.com presents these plugins that were deemed to be the most practical, cost-effective and advantageous. Let’s try them!
UberMenu ($16)
UberMenu has uber-exciting features. It is a user-friendly and fully customizable responsive mega-menu WordPress plugin. It is very easy to use. It works with most WordPress 3 menu-enabled themes. It includes over 20 style presets, ranging from horizontal to vertical menus and supports both slide and fade effects for sub-menus (you can also deactivate this if you want).
Uber Menu comes with the following features:
Fully responsive
Lighter weight and more efficient than JavaScript
iPhone & iPad compatible
Full-width sub-menu option with ability to define the number of columns
It has various click, hover, or hover intent triggers, which can improve the overall design of the page
Gravity Forms (Personal: $39, Business: $99, Developer $199)
Gravity Forms is one of, if not, the best contact form plugins for WordPress. It enables you to quickly build and design your WordPress forms using a form editor. You can choose from fields to configure your options and embed these forms in your WordPress-powered site.
It comes with the following features:
Multi-page forms
Form settings
Limit entries
Advanced fields
Schedule forms
Standard fields
Pricing fields
Post Fields
Intense WordPress Plugin ($18)
Intense is a WordPress plugin that provides you with a very big library of short codes, custom post types and more. Being built through Twitter bootstrap, this plugin will surely provide you with the most essential codes you need in the easiest-to-use interface. This plugin is so intense that you wouldn’t look for anything anymore.
It comes with the following features:
Short code dialogs
Easily adds 59 different animation effects such as animate an item on mouse hover, on mouse click, or when scrolled into view.
Parallax content sections and images
Many image hover effect options with Adipoli and Effeckts
Filter Blog, Portfolio and FAQ with transition effects using MixItUp
Logos Showcase ($13)
Do you want to display a set of images as a grid or in a carousel slider? Well, this plugin is perfectly fit for you! Perfect to display the list of clients, supporters, partners or sponsor logos in your website, create a grid of images with external or internal links, and to show off your best photos.
It comes with the following features:
Easy to use pre-built styles and tooltips to enhance your logos
Filter by categories
Widget ready
Custom feature name
Bulk uploading
SabaiDiscuss ($20)
Q&A plugins come in handy, especially when you want to attract discussions. SabaiDiscuss is a very potent candidate for the best discussion plugin there is. Re-imagine the services of Stack Overflow or Yahoo Answers with this plugin! Sabai is an ideal tool for websites that aim to attract more discussion and hits.
It comes with the following features:
Post and edit comments inline
Tag questions with auto-suggest
File attachments to questions and answers
Code syntax highlighting using Google Prettify
10 email notification templates
Integration with the Cubepoints plugin
Social Locker ($21)
Social Locker helps your content to be seen by more people. Its main feature allows you to lock a certain part of your content until the user clicks the social buttons. It is a great way to get traffic and customers!
It comes with the following features:
Any URL to like/share/tweet/+1.
Analytic tools
Facebook Like
Facebook Share
Twitter Tweet
Google +1
LinkedIn Share
SEO-friendly
Anticipate ($39)
Are you taking a lot of time building your website? Or just updating? Anticipate will help you build the excitement. It is a very good maintenance mode plugin that allows you to post an alternate “coming soon” page while you build your website. Once you activate the plugin, your visitors will be redirected to the Anticipate landing page.
It comes with the following features:
Complete localization
Progress bar
Email collection
Social networking
Paypal File Download ($25)
If your website wants to sell digital contents, like e-books, PDFs, ZIPs and more, this is the plugin that you are looking for. Paypal File Download Plugin for WordPress is still the easiest way to sell online. It is built in with IPN, email delivery and expiry.
It comes with the following functions:
Multiple products with different prices, editable in the Products settings page
Guided insert-in page
Support for 26 different currencies
Edit the email that goes out when payment has been successfully processed
Expire links after a customizable amount of time to prevent abuse
Zero code experience required
Attention Grabber ($12)
Attention Grabber is a WordPress plugin that adds a notification bar to your website. With this plugin, you will be able to display custom texts, Twitter posts and RSS feeds. It is a very simple and yet powerful way to market your products and share your content.
It comes with the following features:
Unlimited bars
Fixed and inline position
Animation effects
Multiple fading messages
Click counter for each bar
6 Pre-designed themes
Support for short codes (You can add your own short codes too)
7 Pre-built short codes: Facebook Like, Twitter Like, Google +1, Post title, Page title, Link, Multiple messages
WordPress Advanced Image Lazy Load ($12)
This plugin allows your website to load faster without sacrificing the quality of images. It provides the user with a better browsing experience by delaying the loading of images. Images which are outside the visible portion of the page that the user is viewing won’t load before the user scrolls down to them.
Look out for the following features:
Search engine friendly plugin
Ready to use, no action is needed for existing or future images on posts/pages
Improving images selection performance by customizing default selectors for several site sections
Cascading enabling/disabling levels :
Level 1 : Enable or disable for the whole website
Level 2 : Enable or disable for all posts and pages
Level 3 : Enable or disable for all images within a specific post or page
Level 4 : Enable or disable for a specific post’s or page’s image
Customizing the loading of images
Possibility to also hack theme images that are not part posts/pages to be lazy loaded
Conclusion
These are just few of the best WordPress plugins that will make you say, “It’s worth every penny”. They are not just premium plugins; they actually make your website better and they actually work. They will make your website more comfortable to use and makes your overall workload easier. So, what are you waiting for? You can now swipe those cards because these plugins rock!