What are the best WordPress plugins 2025? Free and premium

The open-source software WordPress is con­sidered one of the best content man­age­ment solutions worldwide. With it, you can start your own blog or build a com­pel­lingly designed website even with little prior knowledge and re­l­at­ively little time in­vest­ment. The pop­ular­ity of the former blog software—now known for its im­press­ive array of built-in features—can largely be at­trib­uted to its extensive selection of plugins.

The useful WordPress ex­ten­sions are quickly installed and expand the platform with numerous features: The selection ranges from ex­ten­sions for search engine op­tim­isa­tion and enhanced security to e-commerce tools and social media plugins.

What is a WordPress plugin?

WordPress already offers the essential functions in its basic version to create new pages, link them together, and start creating new pages right away. However, the content man­age­ment system truly showcases its full strength with plugins, which sig­ni­fic­antly enhance its func­tion­al­ity. Whether it’s ex­ten­sions for shops, security, search engine op­tim­isa­tion, or social media in­teg­ra­tion, WordPress plugins make it possible to expand the open-source platform so that it is perfectly tailored to the needs of the in­di­vidu­al webmaster.

A WordPress plugin is an add-on program. It extends the code of the web ap­plic­a­tion, thereby in­cor­por­at­ing a new function. Tech­nic­ally, each extension or ad­just­ment of the WordPress code is a plugin. Ex­per­i­enced users with pro­gram­ming knowledge also have the op­por­tun­ity to change the code on their own and write new functions into the functions.php file of a theme or create their own WordPress plugin. When down­load­ing WordPress ex­ten­sions, you should always ensure that the source is trust­worthy and safe (such as the WordPress re­pos­it­ory or the IONOS App Centre).

The best free WordPress plugins

WordPress ex­ten­sions are created by a vast community of de­velopers. Whether an extension is offered for free download or requires payment is at the dis­cre­tion of the developer. Often, there are two versions of a plugin, with the free variant having limited func­tion­al­ity, allowing the user to access the full features only upon pur­chas­ing the extension. Below, we first present our top selection of free WordPress plugins.

The best free WordPress plugins for search engine op­tim­isa­tion

Yoast SEO Free

A SEO plugin should be part of every WordPress project. Even hobby bloggers are aware that websites are only read if they can be quickly found on Google. Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress plugins to improve your Google search engine ranking.

With the free edition of the extension, it is easy to prepare your WordPress project for Google and auto­mat­ic­ally assess the read­ab­il­ity of your copy. Although you are limited to one basic main keyword in the free edition, you can plan more extensive keyword strategies with Yoast SEO Premium.

WP Meta SEO

WP Meta SEO also helps you make your WordPress website more search engine friendly. Influence the most important factors of on-page op­tim­isa­tion directly from the WordPress backend by not only editing titles and meta de­scrip­tions but also managing internal links and permalinks or creating an XML sitemap.

In the free version, WP Meta SEO also supports you in embedding your images: The WordPress extension not only ensures that the images are displayed in the ap­pro­pri­ate size but also provides important image SEO-features for the best possible placement in image search rankings.

W3 Total Cache

Caching is an optimal solution to keep the load times of your WordPress project as low as possible—thus im­press­ing your visitors and Google. Once loaded, pages are stored in cache, so no new database query is needed upon re­vis­it­ing. The WordPress extension W3 Total Cache assists with this im­ple­ment­a­tion. It generates static HTML pages, ensuring shorter load times. This way, you improve the per­form­ance of your pages, keeping website visitors satisfied.

Broken Link Checker

Non-func­tion­ing links are frus­trat­ing and can lead to sig­ni­fic­ant issues: they frustrate your readers and send a negative signal to search engines. Manually checking all links is no longer feasible once your web project reaches a certain size. This is where the Broken Link Checker helps.

The WordPress extension auto­mat­ic­ally and regularly checks all internal and external links on the website (including in the comment section) and reports faulty links. It can also detect missing images or redirects. As an operator, you receive no­ti­fic­a­tions either in the dashboard or by email, allowing you to directly replace or disable faulty links, images, and redirects.

Antispam Bee

Annoying spam in comment sections is a daily oc­cur­rence for bloggers and is neither be­ne­fi­cial for search engine ranking nor user ex­per­i­ence. Use tools like Antispam Bee to put an end to the trouble­some spam. The WordPress plugin blocks spam bots before they can access forms or comment fields. Op­tion­ally, the extension can also check already archived pages of a blog for spam.

In the dashboard, the daily updated spam stat­ist­ics show values for the detection rate and the total number of blocked comments. Another plus of Antispam Bee is that it ex­pli­citly complies with European data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions.

The best free WordPress ex­ten­sions for content creation

LuckyWP Table of Contents

Tables of contents are a proven way to structure a blog or the pages of a website. They help readers quickly grasp the layout of texts and also serve as clas­si­fic­a­tion aids for search engine crawlers. A WordPress extension that auto­mat­ic­ally generates a table of contents on the desired page is LuckyWP Table of Contents.

For this purpose, the plugin uses the defined headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.). In the settings, the user can also determine the design and po­s­i­tion­ing of the contents or specify the minimum number of headings needed for the plugin to create a table of contents.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)—sounds com­plic­ated. However, the WordPress plugin es­sen­tially offers a very simple but practical function to list topic-relevant articles or pages under posts. This is a simple trick to increase visitor en­gage­ment by offering them ad­di­tion­al relevant content.

To best visually adapt YARPP’s re­com­mend­a­tions to your own site, CSS basic knowledge is re­com­men­ded.

Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider

If you want to showcase a series of images or photos, gallery plugins like Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider are the perfect solution. This practical WordPress extension helps you publish your images in galleries, sliders, or carousels on your website.

Using drag-and-drop, you select images and photos from your WordPress media library and then drop them into the desired MetaSlider template, which you can place anywhere in your project. You can also define ap­pro­pri­ate metadata and links with the plugin.

Table­Press

The free plugin Table­Press is perfect if you plan to create tables on your WordPress website. These can be filled with text and images as well as links and scripting languages like JavaS­cript. Importing and styling tables using CSS is also possible.

The best free WordPress plugins to integrate forums and online stores

bbPress

bbPress turns your project into a cus­tom­is­able forum or adds one to your existing website. The operator can decide whether the forum should be ac­cess­ible to all visitors or if re­gis­tra­tion is required to read or write posts. The WordPress forum plugin also allows certain topics to be marked as ‘Sticky’ or ‘Closed’.

Setting up a forum with bbPress is straight­for­ward through a central admin account—with just a few clicks, the desired community area is installed and cus­tom­ised to fit your needs.

Woo­Com­merce

With the help of the WordPress shop plugin Woo­Com­merce, a complete online store can be created. Es­pe­cially beginners with a man­age­able product range benefit from the ability to manage all essential e-commerce processes—such as product offerings, shipping, or purchase pro­cessing—through the familiar WordPress interface.

Nav­ig­a­tion and design of your own Woo­Com­merce WordPress webshop can be cus­tom­ised—the setup wizard only generates a main nav­ig­a­tion with the four menu items ‘Shop’, ‘Cart’, ‘Checkout’, and ‘My Account’. To meet the demands of larger, pro­fes­sion­al online shops, the developer Auto­mat­tic offers (paid) premium features for the WordPress shop plugin. Learn more about setting up a WordPress shop with Woo­Com­merce in our article ‘Creating an Online Shop with WordPress’.

Ultimate Member

Whether it’s a forum or online shop: A web project that involves user re­gis­tra­tion as a central element relies on excellent user man­age­ment. The WordPress extension Ultimate Member replaces the standard user man­age­ment of the CMS, making user or customer sign-ups on your site a breeze.

With Ultimate Member, you can quickly and ef­fort­lessly create re­gis­tra­tion and login areas as well as cus­tom­is­able user profiles—directly in the frontend. You can also set up your own dir­ect­or­ies for re­gistered users if needed.

Contact Form 7

For the success of your online business project, it is essential to be ac­cess­ible to your users when they have questions or issues. Since WordPress doesn’t provide forms by default, using a WordPress contact form plugin like Contact Form 7 is highly re­com­men­ded.

Website of Contact Form 7 in WordPress plugin directory

The extension can be quickly and easily in­teg­rated and comes with all the important features. Basic CSS knowledge is required to visually adjust the contact form to match your pref­er­ences.

Ninja Forms

There’s another form plugin that not only has a cute name but is also extremely practical. With Ninja Forms, you can add (contact) forms to your WordPress website where users can enter their in­form­a­tion, such as name, email address, and phone number. These forms can also be com­ple­men­ted with payment options. This way, your website visitors have the op­por­tun­ity to make payments to you easily via PayPal, credit card, and more.

The best free WordPress ex­ten­sions for added security

Really Simple Security

For security reasons and an optimal rating on Google, it is urgently necessary to encrypt data trans­mis­sion on your WordPress website with SSL/TLS or HTTPS. The plugin Really Simple Security (formerly Really Simple SSL) supports you in this endeavour—you just need a valid cer­ti­fic­ate.

Once you have a cer­ti­fic­ate ready and Really Simple Security installed, you can activate SSL/TLS with just one click. If you want to set up ad­di­tion­al security mech­an­isms like HTTP Strict Transport Security, login pro­tec­tion, or a firewall, you’ll need to opt for the paid Pro edition.

Loginizer

Brute-force attacks have been among the most popular methods used by cy­ber­crim­in­als for years due to their sim­pli­city. With the free basic version of the WordPress extension Loginizer, you can ef­fect­ively protect your web project against this type of attack.

When you activate Loginizer in your WordPress project, the plugin auto­mat­ic­ally blocks all IP addresses that have made more than three failed login attempts for 15 minutes. If multiple blocks occur, the lockout period extends to 24 hours. You can, of course, manually remove IP addresses from the blacklist at any time.

All In One WP Security

Over the years, WordPress has become in­creas­ingly secure, but due to its growing pop­ular­ity, it has also become a focus for cy­ber­crim­in­als. With the free WordPress extension All In One Security, you can elevate your project’s security level to a new height—thanks to features like its own firewall, brute-force pro­tec­tion, security scanner, and spam pro­tec­tion.

For par­tic­u­larly critical security elements like the admin username or file sharing, the premium plugin shows a concrete overview with toggle switches in the panel. In the extension’s own dashboard, you can also see a specific security score for your pages, which allows you to read the current status of your project.

The best (paid) premium WordPress plugins

Building on our re­com­mend­a­tion of the best free WordPress plugins, we now turn to the top paid ex­ten­sions of 2025. Often called premium plugins, these paid products typically offer a broad range of features and are fre­quently ac­com­pan­ied by exclusive support from the man­u­fac­turer.

The best premium WordPress plugins for search engine op­tim­isa­tion

WPtouch Pro

With the paid WordPress plugin WPtouch Pro, the layout and func­tion­al­ity of your website on mobile devices are fun­da­ment­ally optimised. The use of this extension ensures that a mobile-friendly version of the desktop version is offered under the same URL—the original version remains unchanged. You can either transfer the entire content one-to-one or customise it in­di­vidu­ally. For example, it is possible to generate al­tern­at­ive menus or landing pages that are better suited for various mobile devices.

WPtouch Pro is a mobile solution supported by Google, ensuring that your website is auto­mat­ic­ally marked as ‘mobile-friendly’. Depending on the selected package, the plugin can be used for 1, 5, 20, or 50 WordPress projects.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is the first choice for many experts when it comes to improving per­form­ance for an optimal Google ranking. The WordPress premium plugin ensures, among other things, that all pages of a project are loaded into the cache, allowing them to be delivered faster. For this purpose, a ‘preload’ bot simulates a visit to the website at regular intervals.

Fur­ther­more, WP Rocket reduces loading time by auto­mat­ic­ally com­press­ing all static files like HTML, JavaS­cript, and CSS documents. Thanks to the LazyLoad feature, the browser of the website visitors loads all embedded images only when they enter the user’s viewport.

Squirrly SEO Pro

Squirrly SEO Pro makes the search engine op­tim­isa­tion of your WordPress project ef­fort­less. To achieve this, the WordPress premium plugin offers a variety of useful and powerful AI-supported SEO features like regular keyword sug­ges­tions, a blogging assistant, content marketing analytics, or the ‘Focus Pages’ feature, which auto­mat­ic­ally high­lights the most promising pages of your website or store for op­tim­isa­tion.

With the ‘Pro’, ‘Webdev Kit’, and ‘Business’ packages, you can use the Squirrly features on 5, 10, or 7 WordPress sites, re­spect­ively.

WP Fastest Cache Premium

In the premium segment, few plugins can compete with WP Fastest Cache when it comes to caching. Using Mod_Rewrite, the plugin generates static HTML content to optimise the loading time of your web project. When you publish new content, the existing cache of the relevant pages is auto­mat­ic­ally cleared. Ad­di­tion­ally, you can exclude any pages from caching as needed.

WP Fastest Cache Premium also provides various features that go beyond caching. This WordPress premium plugin assists with your SEO efforts through functions such as merging and min­im­ising CSS and JavaS­cript code and con­vert­ing images to WebP.

The SEO Framework

The premium plugin The SEO Framework spe­cial­ises in Google-compliant white-hat SEO. The extension optimises WordPress for search engines with the goal of speeding up SEO meaning that the plugin is up to 12 times faster than the com­pet­i­tion. Fur­ther­more, The SEO Framework offers features like pro­tec­tion against SEO attacks and a high degree of auto­ma­tion.

The SEO Framework is available in three versions: ‘Pro’ (2 sites), ‘Business’ (20 sites), and ‘Agency’ (200 sites). There is also a free version for testing the plugin at no cost.

Rank Math SEO

With the WordPress plugin Rank Math SEO, you gain access to numerous features that assist you in the search engine op­tim­isa­tion of your website: from a rank tracker that reveals how your pages are per­form­ing in search engine rankings to a content AI that offers keyword sug­ges­tions, and more. The plugin has three paid upgrades overall—Pro, Business, and Agency. There is also a free version, but it lacks almost all useful features.

The best premium WordPress plugins for marketing and analytics

Opt­in­Mon­ster

Without returning visitors, achieving long-term success for your web project is difficult. Well-func­tion­ing lead man­age­ment, therefore, plays a very important role in managing a website. Es­pe­cially online shop and blog operators rely on optimal tools in the fight for loyal customers or readers. One of the best solutions in this regard is the WordPress premium plugin Opt­in­Mon­ster.

The in­teg­rated drag-and-drop editor allows you to create at­tract­ive forms in just minutes, such as col­lect­ing the user’s email address for initial contact. With simple A/B testing and detailed stat­ist­ics, you can also measure and analyse the ef­fect­ive­ness of different variants.

Taqyeem

A review function on the website or under various posts offers a great way to measure the sat­is­fac­tion of website visitors. In e-commerce, reviews also serve as re­com­mend­a­tions for potential buyers. Ad­di­tion­ally, ratings that can be displayed in Google and other search engine results provide added value for search engine users. The Egypt-based company TieLabs has launched Taqyeem, one of the most suc­cess­ful and best WordPress plugins for in­teg­rat­ing a user review system and present­ing product reviews (e.g., in test reports).

The presented reviews can be in­di­vidu­ally cus­tom­ised with the premium plugin, with more than 500 Google Web Fonts, various ty­po­graphy options, and three rating schemes (stars, points, and per­cent­ages) available.

Mon­ster­Ins­ights

If you want to measure the success of your web project in numbers, the WordPress premium plugin Mon­ster­Ins­ights provides the right found­a­tion. In com­bin­a­tion with Google Analytics, the extension presents you with all relevant numbers in real-time—whether page views, bounce rate, average session duration, or user devices—in a clear dashboard. eCommerce tracking for Woo­Com­merce, Easy Digital Downloads, LifterLMS, and Mem­ber­Press is also possible.

Various other areas of your WordPress project can also be tracked with Mon­ster­Ins­ights. These include, for example, file downloads, contact forms, links and tags, as well as the de­vel­op­ment of SEO score and focus keyword. For each tracking category, the WordPress extension regularly provides clear reports. Caseproof also offers a free plugin version called Mon­ster­Ins­ights Lite, which has fewer features but is good for testing before you decide on a paid upgrade, if ap­plic­able.

SearchWP

Since the search function on WordPress is not optimal and makes finding older website content chal­len­ging, the plugin SearchWP was created. However, it’s not just the search on your website that gets improved. With a Pro upgrade, you gain access to features like Metrics, which shows you what users are searching for. With this in­form­a­tion, you can change and optimise your website’s content ac­cord­ingly. This is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing for online shop owners who want to discover which products generate the most interest.

The best premium WordPress plugins for content creation

WPML

If you want to offer your web content in multiple countries, you generally need different language versions to provide all visitors with an optimal user ex­per­i­ence. The WordPress premium plugin WPML from On­The­GoSys­tems provides the right functions for this. With trans­la­tion aids for posts, pages, taxonomy, and menus, as well as automatic browser language detection, the basic package offers all the features for a mul­ti­lin­gual blog.

The more expensive ‘Mul­ti­lin­gual CMS’ package gives users access to ad­di­tion­al trans­la­tion options, allowing them to translate widgets or texts from themes, plugins, and other WordPress ex­ten­sions. To co­ordin­ate work on mul­ti­lin­gual projects, WPML in this version also allows for trans­la­tion man­age­ment with multiple users.

The Events Calendar

If you want to present a calendar on your WordPress website, you can do this with the premium plugin The Events Calendar. You can choose to create calendars with new events using the extension or in­cor­por­ate existing data from Meetup, Event­brite, Google Calendar, iCalendar, or other sites and apps.

To optimally adapt the calendar to your own pref­er­ences, the code of The Events Calendar has been designed to be par­tic­u­larly developer-friendly. In addition, various views are available to present the entered events, for example, by day, week, or month, or in a list. There is also a free plugin version, but it lacks essential features such as premium support and the events manager.

Restrict Content Pro

A well-struc­tured mem­ber­ship man­age­ment system is in­dis­pens­able for offering premium content. The WordPress extension Restrict Content Pro supports users in im­ple­ment­ing such a paywall and also offers functions for mem­ber­ship or­gan­isa­tion. With the tool, you can create an unlimited number of mem­ber­ship packages, which can easily be equipped with various access rights.

Restrict Content Pro has in­ter­faces to payment services like 2Checkout, Stripe, and PayPal.

Mem­ber­Press

Mem­ber­Press is another WordPress premium plugin for managing exclusive website content. You can define in detail the prop­er­ties for the different mem­ber­ship packages, such as the price, available content, or the duration of the sub­scrip­tion or trial period. Mem­ber­Press then auto­mat­ic­ally generates the re­gis­tra­tion page through which visitors can purchase the re­spect­ive offer—inclusive of a button for the desired payment option.

The extension—if desired—sends no­ti­fic­a­tions via email when, for example, a new mem­ber­ship is initiated, a mem­ber­ship is ter­min­ated, a trans­ac­tion fails, or a user changes their package. Under the ‘Reports’ section, the WordPress mem­ber­ship plugin provides detailed stat­ist­ics about all active and former sub­scrip­tions and payments.

Gravity Forms

With the plugin Gravity Forms, you have access to a WordPress tool that allows you to quickly create forms and embed them on your website using a drag-and-drop function. Ad­di­tion­ally, you can easily collect and manage the data provided by users in this way. Gravity Forms offers three license packages—Basic, Pro, and Elite—from which you can choose. When you upgrade the basic version, you receive Pro and/or Elite add-ons that allow ad­di­tion­al ex­ten­sions to be added. These include, for example, Capsule CRM—a software component that provides you with a customer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment system.

The best premium WordPress plugins for added security

Akismet

Akismet from Auto­mat­tic is the premium solution for combating website spam. The filtering service has been around since 2005 and is available by default to all users hosting their project on WordPress.com in the basic version.

To use the features of the WordPress premium plugin for com­mer­cial sites, you must subscribe to a monthly package. The two paid packages offered for this, ‘Plus’ and ‘En­ter­prise’ (or ‘En­ter­prise Plus’), are char­ac­ter­ised by extended stat­ist­ics and pri­or­it­ised support from the man­u­fac­turer. The extension is regularly updated to promptly respond to current spam trends.

Wordfence Pro

With Wordfence, you get a WordPress security package that protects your project around the clock from malware and other cy­ber­crim­in­al attacks. The core of this package is the WordPress firewall, which receives regular updates to im­me­di­ately recognise known harmful malware sig­na­tures and promptly remove the ap­pro­pri­ate malicious software from the server.

For ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion, an in­teg­rated malware scanner, regular checks of WordPress core files, and vul­ner­ab­il­ity checks are carried out. If needed, with Wordfence Pro, you can also limit login attempts on the server to set up a basic brute-force pro­tec­tion.

Solid Security Pro

Solid Security Pro is another WordPress premium plugin dedicated to pro­tect­ing WordPress projects. Once you have installed the extension, you can overview and configure the various security features via the ‘Security Dashboard’ in the backend to your liking. Among other things, Solid Security Pro offers a malware scanner, 404 error detection for combating bots, and the ability to replace the default URL for user and admin logins.

Solid Security Pro also offers various features to make logging into your WordPress project as secure as possible for all parties. For instance, you can use the plugin to ensure that users must set strong passwords during re­gis­tra­tion. The login itself can be secured with two-factor au­then­tic­a­tion (mobile app, email, or backup code).

The best sources for WordPress ex­ten­sions

Talking about the best WordPress plugins of 2025 is, strictly speaking, a bit chal­len­ging: Since the interests and needs of operators can vary greatly, probably only some of the presented plugins are relevant in most cases. For this reason, in­de­pend­ently searching for suitable ex­ten­sions is def­in­itely re­com­men­ded. The pre­vi­ously mentioned official WordPress re­pos­it­ory, which can also be accessed directly through the content man­age­ment system, is un­doubtedly the most important source for WordPress plugins. Like the IONOS App Centre, every new extension there is checked for func­tion­al­ity and trust­wor­thi­ness, ensuring that down­load­ing WordPress plugins is con­sidered very safe.

However, there are also other sources for ex­ten­sions—es­pe­cially for WordPress premium plugins that are paid from the start and not listed in the official directory:

• Co­deCanyon: When it comes to feature-rich, paid ex­ten­sions, Co­deCanyon is a leading source. The online platform’s directory contains over 5,300 WordPress plugins and also sells ex­ten­sions for other content man­age­ment systems like Joomla or Drupal. Results can be filtered by price, category, sales figures, or rating.
• ac­cess­Press: ac­cess­Press offers a mix of over 100 free and paid WordPress plugins for download or purchase. For all listed ex­ten­sions, you can access detailed in­form­a­tion (de­scrip­tion, release date, price, license, last update time, etc.), doc­u­ment­a­tion, and a live preview.
• GitHub: New WordPress ex­ten­sions are regularly released on GitHub as well. However, the search can be re­l­at­ively com­plic­ated since you can only search the entire developer platform. Nev­er­the­less, those who put in the effort to search through the over 199,000 available re­pos­it­or­ies with WordPress ex­ten­sions will find a lot of useful plugins.

How many WordPress plugins can you install?

There is no limit to the number of ad­di­tion­al ex­ten­sions you can install on WordPress. The number of plugins doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily impact the per­form­ance of a website, and it’s entirely possible for a project to remain just as fast, even with many ex­ten­sions. What matters more than the quantity is the quality of each in­di­vidu­al plugin. In some cases, a single poorly coded extension can sig­ni­fic­antly affect per­form­ance or lead to other issues.

Where does WordPress store plugins?

The fact that the in­stall­a­tion of new plugins is carried out directly within WordPress greatly sim­pli­fies the expansion of the content man­age­ment system. Whether the package is found and down­loaded via the in­teg­rated search or added via the import function, users only need to follow the assistant’s in­struc­tions to add and activate the desired function. The practical listing of all im­ple­men­ted WordPress ex­ten­sions also aids in managing them. Meanwhile, the CMS auto­mat­ic­ally organises the installed plugins into folder struc­tures by placing all ex­ten­sions in the folder wp-content/plugins. Language files and trans­la­tions for the ex­ten­sions, however, are placed in the folder wp-content/languages.

Install WordPress plugins carefully

There are numerous free WordPress plugins, with new ones being added daily. However, too many plugins can lead to a cluttered backend. Ad­di­tion­ally, there’s the danger of un­pre­dict­able ‘in­ter­ac­tions’. In­com­pat­ib­il­ity between different programs and com­pon­ents can quickly create security vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies. Therefore, you should only install plugins that you actually use regularly. Many ad­min­is­trat­ive plugins can be un­in­stalled after just one use.