How many plugins does your WordPress really need?

One of the main pain points of WordPress-based websites is the number of plugins used. Unfortunately, websites built almost exclusively on plugins are common, which significantly affects their performance as well as maintenance issues.

I wrote more about this anti-pattern WordPress approach in my post about WordPress hate, which you can find here. In this post, I'd like to share my opinion on how many plugins a WordPress-based website actually needs. TL:DR - 0 ;).

What are WordPress plugins?

In short: Plugins are add-ons that can be installed on any WordPress website to extend the WordPress functionality or add a completely new feature. It may be something big, like WooCommerce which transform WordPress website to working eCommerce, but also it may be a very small feature, like adding social, share buttons under the article.

Basically, we can divide plugins into free and paid ones:

• Free: You can install them directly from the WordPress dashboard or download from the official WordPress plugin page and upload to WordPress (e.g. also from dashboard).
• Paid: You can buy them on, for example, marketplaces or creators page. In most cases, you'll receive a .zip file containing the plugin files and an activation key. You can also add the plugin through your WordPress dashboard (or directly to your server), and you enter the key after enabling it.

What distinguishes free from paid plugins? Mostly, it's the features and functionality they offer. However, we shouldn't assume that a paid plugin is better than a free one. There are great free solutions and great paid solutions for specific needs, but there are also plenty of bad plugins, both free and paid. We can also often come across a free and paid version of the same plugin, where the free one includes only basic functionalities and the paid one includes additional, more advanced options.

The number of free plugins is huge and in many cases we can find what we need without having to pay. This offers enormous opportunities which, unfortunately, are used in a wrong way by many people.

When we need a plugin?

In my opinion, a lot of specific logic and features should be implemented in the dedicated theme. It's difficult to find a plugin that perfectly fits our needs and does exactly what we need. Plugins often offer a vast collection of functionalities that offer much more than what we need. If such a plugin is poorly written, installing it and using just one feature can significantly impact the performance of the entire website, as well as its security.

Unfortunately, many people in the WordPress world take a different approach and install plugins for every functionality they need. One share button on X (formerly Twitter) - I'll add a plugin. I need a new CPT - I'll add a plugin. I need add tracking code - I'll add a plugin. I need to take care of security - I'll add a few plugin. And after a while, on a simple website with a few subpages, we have 30 plugins where, after some time, even the developer doesn't know what they do, what they are for and what they can break.

Instead of this approach, I prefer to use plugins when they provide significant value with a small impact on the future maintenance and security of the site. Every website has different functionalities, but there are common elements that, if written from scratch, would be time-consuming, often exceeding the time needed to develop the site itself.

Ok, a lot of words, so let's go with examples:

• SEO - almost each of website need something to handle SEO things. Of course, we could always write a default solution, but why? For our needs, a well-known, free, and well-tested solution like the Rank Math SEO plugin is usually sufficient.
• Contact forms - here too, we can write our own solution, but for the vast majority of websites, Contact Form 7 is a great solution.
• More hardcore example? eCommerce - in this case, writing and testing your own solution takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours (I know, AI does it in an hour ;)), so we choose WooCommerce even more.

To sum up: In my opinion, we need a plugin when the amount of work needed to build our own solution is incomparably greater than the benefits we will achieve. Also, including the future maintenance.

How choose the right plugin?

We already know when we should use a plugin, now it's worth learning how to choose the right one. Basically, we should pay attention to a few things.

#1. Does it do what I need and does it work?

First and foremost, whether the plugin actually does what we need it to do, and whether it does only that. The plugin's description alone often doesn't tell us if it's the right fit, so it's worth testing the solution on a local environment (or using WordPress Playground) to check if it meets our needs and whether the plugin isn't negatively impacting the performance of our website, including its editing capabilities.

#2. Reviews tell you the truth

Every plugin in the WordPress repository has an overall rating and user reviews. If the rating and reviews are negative, it's probably a clear sign that we don't want that solution. Of course, it's worth exploring what specifically users didn't like, but in my experience, I've never had a plugin with a rating of around 1-3/5 turn out to be great.

#3. Things we might miss

In addition to the rather obvious issues outlined in the previous points, we should also pay attention to things that aren't immediately apparent:

• Last update date: if a plugin hasn't been updated in, say, two years, there's a high risk it contains security vulnerabilities. Of course, the last update date doesn't have to be a few days earlier, there are plugins that provide relatively small but useful functionalities and don't need to be constantly developed, but they shouldn't be completely abandoned by their creator.
• Minimum WordPress and PHP versions and the latest tested WordPress version on which the plugin works. We never want the installation of a new plugin to end with a screen saying "There has been a critical error on this website" (especially if we are installing it directly in live env ;)). Therefore, we should check whether the plugin works on the version of WordPress and PHP that is used in our environment.
• Historical problems with the plugin - especially if the plugin covers important functionality of the website and operates on sensitive data, it is worth doing at least a short research for potential leaks and vulnerabilities detected in a given plugin.
• Changelog and support - the "Support" section of the WordPress plugin repository can tell a lot about the plugin's authors. These threads are opened by the community, often containing descriptions of plugin issues. The way the plugin author(s) respond to user feedback and maintain a changelog honestly and conscientiously can reveal a lot about their approach and code writing.

So, how many plugins does your WordPress need?

It's difficult or even impossible to give a single number - a lot depends on the required functionalities, business goals and budget. So, I admit the 0 given in the TL:DR at the beginning of the article was a bit clickbait, but not entirely untrue. There are websites where we don't need any plugins, especially if the business doesn't require SEO investment.

In most cases, however, we'll need some kind of plugin. In my opinion, a standard website showcasing, for example, a company's activities should have a maximum of a few plugins. For me, these are ACF Pro, RankMath or Yoast for SEO, Contact Form 7 for forms, sometimes something for caching. And that's it. Of course, when we're talking about an online store, the situation can change dramatically (for example, if we want to offer multiple payment and shipping methods), but in most cases for a "standard" website the count of plugins I'm using is always less than 5. Very often it is actually two or three.

If your WordPress uses much more, then probably something went wrong, if you want to know what - please contact me - I will check and help.