The best tools for building powerful & flexible websites & more.
Welcome to my personal recommendation page where I’ve curated a list of tools that I use and highly recommend to help you build amazing WordPress websites.
Before I go on, let’s get the important disclaimer out of the way. The links presented below are affiliate links and by using them to make a purchase, a small percentage of that purchase comes to me (at no cost to you).
However, rest assured that these are tools that I use myself and would happily recommend with or without an affiliate link attached. Each one has been fully tested personally. If you’d prefer not to use my links, that is perfectly fine. You can simply Google the product and use that links instead – no hard feelings.
WordPress Page Builders
Page builders make WordPress a more visual platform and help designers create intricate designs without the need to touch a single line of code. Here are my picks of the top WordPress page builders on the market today.
Bricks Builder
Bricks Builder is relatively new to the market but has already released a lot of incredible features, not only for design but also for working with dynamic content. This makes it relatively easy to build highly custom dynamic websites without relying on 3rd party plugins and add-ons.
Elementor
Elementor is the most popular WordPress page builder on the market today with over 14 million users worldwide. Offering an extensive selection of features, including a very powerful free version that may be perfect for low-cost projects.
For those advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to the Pro version which offers WooCommerce customisation, dynamic content, a pop-up builder and much more.
Brizy & Brizy Cloud
Brizy is another popular page builder, but with a much more designer-orientated slant to its interface and toolset. While not as powerful as Bricks or Elementor (Pro), Brizy offers a compelling feature set and also includes a free version.
Like Elementor, you’ll need to opt for the premium version to get access to functions like dynamic content and a pop-up builder.
One of the features that I find most exciting is Brizy Cloud, a version of the Brizy builder that is Cloud hosted but does not rely on WordPress. This makes it perfect for projects where you don’t want to manage WordPress and its constant updates.
Gutenberg Block Plugins
While WordPress page builders are powerful, not everyone wants or needs the features and potential code bloat slowing down their website. Since Gutenberg was introduced, a growing range of incredibly powerful block-based plugins has been released to enhance and expand what Gutenberg offers. Here are my top options!
GenerateBlocks (Pro)
At first glance, GenerateBlocks looks relatively bare-bones compared to some of the other Gutenberg block plugins available. But, don’t let that put you off; you can do an awful lot with GenerateBlocks with a little forward planning and pair it with GeneratePress and you have a very capable suite of tools. Even the free version offers an extensive suite of dynamic content-based tools (which I love).
Kadence Blocks
Kadence Blocks is a very powerful block-based plugin that makes Gutenberg a more powerful option and like most of the tools presented in this section, has a very well specced free version as well as a more powerful premium option. All the key layout tools are included along with a lot of control over each and every one. If you need more, the premium or pro version provides that in spades, including dynamic controls. Paired with Kadnece Pro, you have a powerful combination for building fast-loading websites.
Stackable
Stackable is another top-notch Gutenberg block plugin that offers a lot of great options in the free tier. Paired with a theme like Blocksy provides a solid platform for building optimised websites. Sharing a lot in common with Kadence, Stackable provides a lot of pre-built blocks that make getting a design built much quicker than using a GenerateBlocks but you do sacrifice some of the flexibility and freedom provided by GenerateBlocks.
WordPress Themes
I’ve tested a lot of themes and the following ones are themes I’ve used, and found reliable and feature-packed enough to recommend them here.
GeneratePress (Pro)
Paired with GenerateBlocks, GeneratePress provides the perfect platform to build your websites using WordPress & Gutenberg. While this combination may not offer as many ‘out of the box’ features, it rewards the time and effort you put into it to learn its intricacies. Upgrade to the premium version at you’ll unlock a lot more features that makes it an even more solid option.
Blocksy
Blocksy is a fantastic theme that I’ve been using for a couple of years and provides a solid platform for building your website. While it doesn’t have the benefit of a companion block plugin (coming soon…), it provides a lot of tools to integrate your dynamic content into it. Creating custom post types sees them automatically registered in Blocksy and ready for customisation. Speaking of customisation, there is a fully featured header and footer builder and enough options for customising the design that you may not even need another theme.
Use code WPTUTS for an exclusive 10% discount.
Astra
Another great option for building your websites, Astra has been around for a long time and has racked up over 1 million installs, which is pretty impressive! With its own header and footer builder and tight integration with the Spectra block plugin, you can get an awful lot done with these free tools. Move up to Astra Pro and you open up a lot more functions along with a growing array of premium pre-built starter themes.
WordPress Addons & Plug-ins
There are a lot of great WordPress plugins to extend core functionality, but not all of those available are worth your time or money. Here is a selection of the ones I highly recommend and use myself.
Crocoblock
While I don’t use all the plugins included in the Crocoblock suite, I use and recommend JetEngine, JetSmartFilters and JetSearch if you’re interested in building more dynamic websites. While these tools started out as Elementor exclusives, they are now available for both Elementor (free & pro) and Gutenberg. This combination makes it incredibly easy to build listing websites with powerful custom data, complex filtering & enhanced search capabilities.
Use code WPTuts for a 10% discount.
Dynamic Content For Elementor
If you use Elementor and especially if you build more advanced websites, Dynamic Content for Elementor absolutely needs to be in your toolbox. This insanely powerful suite of tools is like the swiss army knife of Elementor addons. From dynamic data to dynamically generated PDF’s to a full theme builder, this plugin has it all and then some!
WPVivid Backup Pro
While there are a lot of WordPress backup and migration tools on the market, my personal favourite is WPVivid Backup Pro. I’ve been using this plugin for several years and singing its praises. Why? Because it does a lot more than just backup your website. You can do that as well as backup to remote cloud storage, automate backups, migrate your site and more. But, the key feature that makes it number one for me is the auto-backup before an update. This automatically updates ONLY the plugins or theme files that get updated and allows fast rollback should a plugin or theme cause an issue! Awesome!
Use code WPTUTS20 for an exclusive 20% discount.
SEOPress
There are a lot of SEO tools for WordPress, but my personal favourite is SEOPress. While I’ve been using SEOPress Pro for the last 3+ years, you can get amazing results with the feature-packed free version and good quality content.