I found and established these plugins to be the best based on how many clients used each plugin. There are dozens of other plugins we recommend, so this list is rated as “most useful to most websites that market to customers”. Note that NONE of these links have affiliate URL’s, so you can rest assured that there is no monetary bias. In fact, most of these plugins are completely free!

** Plugins are a must for most websites

Marketing:

($) Landing Pages – http://www.optimizepress.com/co-1/

Google Authorship – http://wordpress.org/plugins/authorsure/

**SEO Tools – https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

Content:

**Complete Sidebar Control – http://wordpress.org/plugins/woosidebars/

Editorial Workflow – http://wordpress.org/plugins/edit-flow/

Custom Post Types Plugin – http://wordpress.org/plugins/types/

**Gravity Forms – http://www.gravityforms.com/

Custom Links and Redirects – http://wordpress.org/plugins/safe-redirect-manager/

Minimize Image Sizes – http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/

Handle Files and Downloads – http://wordpress.org/plugins/download-manager/

Administrator Essentials:

**($) Backup Buddy and Migration Buddy – http://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy/

Optimize Database and load time – http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/

Whitelabel rebrand and Simplify – http://wordpress.org/plugins/white-label-cms/

Maintanace Mode and PreLaunch – http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-maintenance-mode/screenshots/

Security:

**Limit Logins – http://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts/

Brute Force Protection – http://wordpress.org/plugins/bruteprotect/

Protection by Proxy (not a plugin) – http://cloudflare.com/

Malware and Hack Recoveries – http://sucuri.net/

Development Tools:

Options Panel Builder – http://wordpress.org/plugins/redux-framework/

Github Updater – https://github.com/afragen/github-updater

Custom Fields – http://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/

Which Template am i on? – http://wordpress.org/plugins/what-the-file/

Query Monitor – http://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/