“Free” is one of the most abused words in the WordPress plugin world. Most “free” plugins are really a locked demo: you install one, hit a wall on the third click, and discover the feature you actually needed lives behind a $99\/year paywall. That’s not free \u2014 it’s a trial with no clock.<\/p>\n
This guide is about the other kind: plugins whose free tier does a real job<\/strong>, where features that competitors routinely charge for are simply included at $0. We’ll be upfront that three of the plugins below are ours \u2014 but the point isn’t “use our stuff,” it’s to show you what a genuinely useful free tier looks like so you can spot the difference, whoever you buy from.<\/p>\n A free plugin tier is worth your time when it clears three bars:<\/p>\n Plenty of excellent plugins don’t clear that bar, and that’s a fair business model \u2014 but it’s worth knowing which features you’d expect to pay for that you can actually get for nothing.<\/p>\nWhat “genuinely free” should mean<\/h2>\n
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Features you usually pay for \u2014 and where they’re free<\/h2>\n