Snug Site

Recommended Frontend WordPress Plugins: Boost User Interactivity & Design

Choosing the right WordPress plugin to improve your website’s front end can be overwhelming with so many options available. To help you out, we’ve put together a list of top frontend plugins ideal for Elementor Pro users.

At Snug Site, we focus on enhancing your site’s look, functionality, and cost-effectiveness by maximizing the use of Elementor Page Builder. This approach often lets us cut down on unnecessary plugins, because, as the saying goes, “fewer plugins means a better site.”

Our selection includes the best plugins for frontend improvements, known for their dependability and outstanding features. Each plugin serves different needs, but all provide a solid starting point. Keep in mind, if a plugin you like isn’t listed, we might still be evaluating it, as our search for the best options is ongoing.

Note: The ‘Paid’ option is displayed only if it’s superior to the ‘Free’ option or belongs to a different developer.

Let’s dive into the frontend plugins that transform your website visitors’ experience.

Note: You are currently viewing the “Frontend” plugins list which are plugins that are primarily designed to add things that a visitor will see and interactive with.

There are seperate Articles available for:

Recommended WordPress Backend Plugins: Are plugins that a visitor doesn’t need to know are humming along in the background.

Recommended WooCommerce Plugins: To add extra functionality to your WordPress online store.

Recommended WordPress Frontend Plugins

Accordion Menu

Free: Iks Menu – WordPress Category Accordion Menu & FAQs
Really good! Also does Taxonomies etc. so great for WooCommerce Product Category Sidebar.

Custom Code Snippets

Free: Code Snippets
Instead of editing functions file, use this plugin.

Comments

Free: wpDiscuz
A full comment suite that includes social login, threads, and much more. Support has also always been great from their team. Well done WPDiscuz!

Conditional Menu Items

Contact Form

Free: JetFormbuilder
Crocoblock offer this amazingly powerful plugin for free. Paid Addons are available. This might be a Gravity Forms killer.

Paid: Elementor Pro
Includes everything you need to make a simple Contact Form.

Cookie Consent

Free: CookieYes

Very easy to set up, and a generous amount of Free visitors allowed.

Custom Post Type

Free: CPTUI 
Easy to use, handles taxonomies, popular free choice.

Paid: Jetengine
The absolute powerhouse of CPT and Custom Field Management

Custom Taxonomy and Post Ordering

Free: Post Types Order
Reorder Posts using Drag and Drop on the native Post and Taxonomy List screens.

Custom User Avatars

Free: One User Avatar
Simple way to add User Avatars when you don’t use Gravatar.

Events Calendar

Free: The Events Calendar
This is a huge plugin with everything you will ever need to publish an Event Calendar on your site.

Advanced Forms

Free: JetFormbuilder
Crocoblock offer this amazingly powerful plugin for free. Paid Addons are available. This might be a Gravity Forms killer.

Galleries

Paid: Elementor Pro
The Widgets that come standard with Elementor Pro are great for most Site Gallery needs.

Google reCAPTCHA

Free: Advanced Google reCAPTCHA
A great all-in-one reCaptcha implementation plugin.

Google Reviews

Free: Widgets for Google Reviews
This “Freemium” plugin is great, although limited with the number of reviews shown, it has some great features, and is a breeze to set up.

LMS 

Free: LearnDash
Simply the best Learning Management Suite you can get for WordPress. Many Paid Addons available to make a full online learning portal integrated with vairous popular WordPress Plugins.

Memberships

Membership plugins all provide content protection, but you’ll need to compare plugins if you have special needs. Below we’ve listed some of our favourites with notes about key features that have previously been important to our clients.
(Note: functionality is mentioned only if absent from any other)

Free/Paid:  Ultimate Member
More “Social” leaning. Role-Based. Member Directory. No native payment system, but good integration with Woo and Woo Subscriptions.

Free/Paid: Paid Memberships Pro
Payment System. Has “Pay by Invoice” prior to Membership Activate (offline payment method). Member Directory. Group Accounts.

Paid: Memberpress
Payment System. Group Account Option. Requires Zapier for most integrations.

Newsletter

Free/Paid: FluentCRM

This WordPress-based Newsletter plugin has a great balance of free and Premium features, the latter being something you will happily pay for if you need them.

Note: We recommend you use a Transactional / Mass Email Sending service provider. So that your host doesn’t suspend your account for mass mailing. https://www.mailersend.com/ is a great affordable choice.

Page Builder

Free: Elementor
Arguably the best Page Builder, and it just keeps getting better with age.

Paid: Elementor Pro
With Elementor Pro, you can essentially build a complete website – this is more than a Page Builder Plugin, it is an easy to use “Theme Builder”.

Popups

Paid: Jetpopup
When the Elementor Popup Builder doesn’t suffice, Jetpopup will fill the needs.

Right Click Protection

Free: Photection
This is a very old plugin – usually I wouldn’t recommend something that hasn’t been update for so long… but… it just works.

Search

Free / Paid: Ivory Search – WordPress Search Plugin

If you need to boost the functionality of the search field, then look no further. This has Ajax search, extra taxonamy and CPT search etc.

Slider

(Sliders are evil and should be banished from the internet)

Social Sharing Links

Free: Super Socializer
This plugin has always served us well, contains the key freatures we look for in this area.

Paid: Elementor Pro
There aren’t any advanced features in this area for Elementor, but if you have Elementor Pro, then likely no need for an extra plugin.

Translation

Free: TranslatePress
We were blown away by how easy and powerful this FREE plugin is, it’s not as in-depth as WPML in features, but does have everything you will likely need to translate pages, and offer a language switcher. Note: You will need to set up Google Translate API.

Table of Contents

Share this article...

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Related Articles...