The best WordPress menu plugins

Good websites make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. After all, there’s no point in creating great content if no-one can find it! It’s therefore crucial that your site has a clear, intuitive nav­ig­a­tion system that’s adapted to your audience and ob­ject­ives.

WordPress menu plugins provide features and options that you don’t get in the basic Content Man­age­ment System, allowing you to create at­tract­ive, user-friendly menus for your site.

This article was last updated in August 2021.

Let’s take a closer look at some popular WordPress menu plugins. The com­par­is­on table below lists four plugins and their key features:

The WordPress Content Man­age­ment System comes with everything you need to build a WordPress menu. However, the editing options are rather limited, so you can’t change the structure or ap­pear­ance of your menus much. This is where WordPress menu plugins come in useful. It’s def­in­itely worth in­stalling one if you need any of the following:

1. Re­spons­ive design: In some themes, nav­ig­a­tion elements don’t adapt very well to different screen widths and devices. With WordPress menu plugins, the menus are designed to display correctly on any screen.
2. Mega menus: The advantage of mega menus is that they display all the menu and sub-menu options at once. Users don’t need to pan or scroll, so they can see at a glance what’s available. Mega menus are par­tic­u­larly effective on sites that have lots of sub-pages. If your theme doesn’t support mega menus, you’ll need a plugin to get access to this feature.
3. Custom design: Most themes only have limited options for menu design. The best WordPress menu plugins come with several templates.
4. Images and other media in menus: Putting images, graphics or even short videos in your menus is a great way of grabbing visitors’ attention. E-commerce websites often use pictures to highlight certain products or product cat­egor­ies, for example.
5. An­im­a­tions and other effects: With a WordPress menu plugin it’s easy to add special effects like menu an­im­a­tions and page trans­itions.
6. A user-friendly solution: WordPress menu plugins are generally more intuitive and user-friendly than the built-in WordPress features.
7. Support: If you want access to technical support, it’s a good idea to pay for a high-quality menu plugin. The support team should be able to answer any questions you have along the way.

There are lots of WordPress menu plugins out there, so you need to know what features you want. As a minimum, a good plugin should provide the following:

1. Re­spons­ive design: The plugin should optimise menus for all devices and screen sizes.
2. Mega menus: Even if you don’t need a mega menu to start with, you may find you want to add one later on, so it’s a good idea to look for a plugin that offers this feature.
3. Templates: The simplest way to build your website menus and nav­ig­a­tion elements is to use a template, so look for a plugin with a large selection. Choose the one you like best and tweak it to suit your content.
4. Drag-and-drop func­tion­al­ity and a visual builder: The built-in WordPress menu tool does support drag-and-drop, but most plugins take this a step further. Visual builders are es­pe­cially useful because they show exactly what your menu will look like as you build it.
5. Built-in cus­tom­iser: Feeling creative? For maximum control over the ap­pear­ance of your menus, look for a WordPress menu plugin that lets you customise colours, fonts and sizes, add an­im­a­tions and other effects, and create sticky menus or flyouts in a few clicks.
6. Media support: If you want to use images or other media to highlight certain items in your menus, look for a plugin with media support.
7. Com­pat­ib­il­ity: Make sure you choose a WordPress menu plugin that’s com­pat­ible with any WordPress theme and with Woo­Com­merce. You should also check that the developer updates the plugin regularly, so that it will run flaw­lessly with newer versions of WordPress and Woo­Com­merce.

There are lots of WordPress menu plugins, both free and paid. We’ve picked four that are worth a closer look:

Max Mega Menu is one of the most widely used WordPress menu plugins. The free version has plenty of great features, but there’s also a paid version with added func­tion­al­ity.

You can quickly transform your menu into a mega menu and integrate all kinds of WordPress widgets. The plugin features are simply added to the standard WordPress interface, so you don’t need to worry about getting to grips with a new tool. There’s a handy drag-and-drop editor with options to add an­im­a­tions, trans­itions and icons, and a range of menu formats including flyouts, tabbed menus and vertical menus.

An important point to note is that Max Mega Menu is built with ac­cess­ib­il­ity in mind. People with a visual impair­ment will therefore be able to use the keyboard or voice commands to navigate around your site.

Key features of the Max Mega Menu plugin for WordPress

• Drag-and-drop builder for ease of use
• Com­pat­ible with lots of themes
• Re­spons­ive menus for optimum display on different devices
• Ho­ri­zont­al mega menus
• Supports multiple menus, each with their own con­fig­ur­a­tion
• Animation effects for sub-menus
• Built-in CSS3 trans­itions
• Flyouts
• In­teg­rated WordPress widgets
• Cus­tom­iser for styling menu items
• Templates for simple set-up
• Dashicon support

The pro version of this WordPress menu plugin lets you add a Woo­Com­merce shopping trolley icon to your menu and create tabbed sub-menus and sticky menus.

Like Max Mega Menu, WP Mega Menu has both a free and a paid version. In the free version of WP Mega Menu you can create mega menus with product images, social media icons, and cus­tom­ised back­grounds. For even more options, go for the pro version, which includes features such as tabbed mega menus, custom icons, and menu logos.

Thanks to the intuitive drag-and-drop editor, creating and cus­tom­ising a new menu is a breeze. The visual builder is also ideal for setting out your menu in rows and columns – there really are no limits!

Key features of the WP Mega Menu plugin for WordPress:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder
• Com­pat­ible with lots of themes
• Re­spons­ive menus
• Built-in cus­tom­iser for fine-tuning
• Com­pat­ible with widgets
• Flyout menus are easy to create
• Social media icons
• Dashicons and Font Awesome icons
• In­di­vidu­al menu back­grounds

UberMenu is only available as a paid plugin, for 25 USD (around 20 GBP), but you certainly get a lot for your money. There’s a reason it’s one of the best-selling WordPress menu plugins on Co­deCanyon! Thanks to the clear grid system and live preview mode in the cus­tom­iser, even users without any pro­gram­ming ex­per­i­ence can create highly cus­tom­ised, at­tract­ive nav­ig­a­tion features. UberMenu also has a par­tic­u­larly helpful function that auto­mat­ic­ally creates sub-menus based on criteria such as category, parent item, or page type.

This WordPress menu plugin also supports HTML, short­codes, widgets and much more. This means you can insert product images, Google maps, forms, and search boxes in any of your menus.

Key features of UberMenu:

• Cus­tom­ised layouts (grid system)
• Re­spons­ive, mobile-optimised menus (touch-enabled)
• User-defined re­spons­ive break­points
• In­teg­rated an­im­a­tions for special effects
• Vertical and ho­ri­zont­al menus
• Media support for images in mega menus
• Advanced content: options for in­teg­rat­ing HTML code, widgets and short­codes to create a fully cus­tom­ised mega menu
• Cus­tom­iser with Live Preview mode for changing back­ground colours, font style and colour and more, including for in­di­vidu­al menu items
• Google Fonts
• Automatic gen­er­a­tion of sub-menus based on category, parent item, post type and other criteria
• Tabbed sub-menus for a clearer overview
• Auto-save func­tion­al­ity using AJAX

Mega Main Menu is another premium WordPress menu plugin, also available from Co­deCanyon. It costs 16 USD (around 12 GBP), and offers features such as sticky menus, a range of dropdown formats, and unlimited colour cus­tom­isa­tion. Mega Main Menu adds sections to the default WordPress menu builder, so it’s very straight­for­ward to create your menus.

This WordPress menu plugin is com­pat­ible with mul­ti­lin­gual websites that use WPML or WEGLOT. In terms of look and feel, it is simpler than UberMenu, but an excellent choice if you want to save some money.

Key features of the Mega Main Menu plugin for WordPress:

• Supports different content types, including short­codes, links, text, images, and widgets
• Includes sticky menus and dropdown menus
• Includes ho­ri­zont­al and vertical menus
• Logo and search box can be in­teg­rated in the menu
• Unlimited colour selection, so you can fully customise menus to match your website
• Google Fonts
• More than 1600 vector icons
• Com­pat­ible with WPML and WEGLOT
• Friendly support