20+ Free Tools Every WordPress Developer Should Know

With so many tools available in the WordPress Directory, are you looking for the ones that can help you take your business to the next level?

There are many paid tools that you can adapt for your WordPress web development, however, with low-budget in the initial stage why not adopt the free ones?

To make your search easy, I have decided to come up with a list of 22+ free tools keeping in mind the basic requirements of a developer to create and run highly-performing WordPress business sites.

1. Generate WP (Faster development process)

It is a development made easy kind of tool for WordPress which helps to decrease the developing time by adding snippets of code.

It has the latest WordPress features and coding standards and different API support.

Features:

• Generate WP uses user-friendly forms to produce valid code.
• There are different types of the generator such as Post type generator, Meta Box Generator, Taxonomy Generator and Shortcodes Generator for the core content.

Benefits:

• Development made easy.
• Improve development speed with no technical knowledge.

2. Pictura (Advertise product and services)

It is a free Photoshop plugin that allows you to use Flickr’s entire database images directly from the design environment. Pictura boost your website visibility and enhance the product features in a convincing manner.

Features:

• It provides different images from the database that adds volume to your site.
• All the images are licensed and available easily.

Benefits:

• You can easily locate images and add immediately.
• It helps to cut the process of finding right images through the web.

3. Basecamp (Centralized project and team management)

Basecamp is a popular project management tool that has a to-do list functionality that divides the work in big chunks of lists which are easy to manage, track, and assign the work to team members.

Features:

• It supports real-time group chat which involves comments directly on to-dos and to-do lists.
• It sets the date for work assignments and provides due date ranges.

Benefits:

• Easily track who is doing what to make powerful decisions.
• Ensure all team members are on the same page to avoid confusion and delay.

4. Duplicator (Migration & Backups)

As the name itself defines, Duplicator serves as a great tool to move or backup WordPress site. WordPress migration and backups are easily handled by this plugin.

Features:

• The basic version provides the cloning facility for database, files and directory filters.
• It allows the developer to develop locally and push up the site to the production server for release, updates, and validation

Benefits:

• This duplicator package can be used to migrate the site to a location you wish to.
• You can pull down a live site to localhost for development.

5. RTL Tester (Quality check)

Implementing RTL support for WordPress site is very easy. Although, it is very important to pay attention to Right to Left languages while developing WordPress themes and plugins.

Features:

• It has the option to simulate the RTL development environment.
• It is a free plugin available from the WordPress repository.

Benefits:

• It is basically used to test themes and plugins in RTL mode.
• With a click of the button, you can ensure that everything works as intended.

6. Theme Check (Website theme standards)

Features:

• It comes free to all the users with maximum benefits.
• It keeps a check on the theme to avoid mistakes and ensure best practice.

Benefits:

• This plugin has the prominent use to verify the theme and keep it worth.
• Before the WordPress review team approves the theme, this plugin will identify the issues.

7. Sumo (Website performance enhancer)

Sumo is a free email capturing tool which can be used to grow your website and track it. There is absolutely no coding required.

Features:

• The collection of all the social app buttons comes in a single plugin.
• It has a number of ways to grow your email list.

Benefits:

• It is used for sharing content, content reading measurement, pop-ups, hello bar and much more.
• One can easily promote his products through social campaigns on the web.

8. UpThemes Framework (Theme customization)

It is particularly a free theme options framework. Besides being extremely lightweight, it uses settings API and theme customizer.

Features:

• If offers WordPress standard media uploader.
• It has various layout options and color schemes.

Benefits:

• All the child themes are responsive which is useful for mobile optimization.
• You can implement options and settings that users can control from their WordPress dashboard things like – layout and color choices.

9. WP Rocket (Automate caching)

This is a very common yet very important WordPress cache plugin. It ultimately boosts the speed of the website and makes it load faster.

Features:

• It takes care of the page caching, caching preloading, and static file compression.

Benefits:

• It speed ups the load timing which helps in page optimization.
• It will make your blog highly optimized.

10. Form Maker (Custom and responsive form developer)

Form Maker is a user-friendly plugin to create highly responsive and customizable forms in a few minutes with simple drag and drop interface.

Features:

• It helps in making custom forms with different fonts, color size by drag and drop facility.
• You can also make multiple page forms using Form maker plugin.

Benefits:

• Using this, it is easier to build complex WordPress forms.
• Its interactive UI provides a pleasant experience

11. Uilang (UI designer)

It is one of the best tools to create dynamic web designs for your WordPress sites. You will surely benefit from incorporating this tool into your workflow.

Features:

• It is a UI focused programming language that adds interactive elements to your site.
• It makes the site attractive by multiple web designs.

Benefits:

• It helps in building custom components and prototypes for creating an attractive UI.
• An attractive UI makes the site more responsive and scalable.

12. WP Legal Pages (legal pages generator)

Legal protection of your WordPress website should be your top priority. WP Legal Pages is a privacy policy generator plugin.

Features:

• Includes privacy policy, DMCA policy and EU Cookie Policy
• One click policy generator

Benefits:

• Protects your website legally
• Quick setup saves time

13. XAMPP/WAMP/MAMP (Local site developer)

XAMPP is the most popular PHP development environment. It is an open-source software incredibly easy and free to install and use.

Features:

• AMPP is a part of XAMPP stands for Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.
• It lets you create an offline server for your computer for development.

Benefits:

• It is easy to install and configure.
• You can start the whole web server+database stack with one command.

14. Evernote (Organized website manager and enhancer)

Evernote is a cloud productivity tool and digital notebook that allows you to store various types of content and access your content seamlessly from various devices.

Features:

• Evernote’s Optional Character Recognition (OCR) technology enables you to snap a picture including text, signage.
• Evernote’s Web Clipper is an alternative to bookmarks in your browser.

Benefits:

• It provides business solution to store online data in one place itself
• You can create collection of notes which can be shared with certain teams

15. WP Site Manager (Content management)

Features:

It provides snippet optimization through the management of Meta information.
It has site Map display and page navigation display.

Benefits:

As it is an open-source software it is available almost free.
It is useful for optimization of various environments through theme switching functionality.

16. Google Apps (G Suite management)

To create various docs, slides, and sheets Google provides entire G Suite that consists of listed apps such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar.

Features:

• Google application tools like slides, sheets, and docs are very helpful for data storage and presentation.
• Adding complete G suite provides a wider range of business solutions.

Benefits:

• By using your official email id you can use various other Google apps like calendar, docs and other Google applications.
• One-click Gmail login to access WordPress sites.

17. InstantWP (portable development environment)

This is a free Bootstrap WordPress theme with a custom homepage and layout. It works well for a freelance website looking to run a blog and display the latest work.

Features:

• It has a very responsive framework so that website looks good on all devices.
• It comes with drag and drop facility to build WordPress homepage.

Benefits:

• Managing portfolio items from WordPress dashboard becomes easy.
• You can easily customize themes with built-in options panel.

18. HootSuite (Social media management)

Enhance your social media management with HootSuite, a leading social media dashboard. It helps you track and manage your many social media network channels.

Features:

• It allows you to manage social profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and even your WordPress blogs.
• It provides cross-platform support and works on all platforms such as MAC, Windows, and Linux.

Benefits:

• It saves times for important things as it streamlines all the social media profiles into one system.
• It lets you supervise your social media profile from a different control panel.

19. Font Awesome (Font designer)

Users arriving at the website are always focused on the design and visual images of the website. Font Awesome is one of the best choices to implement additional styles and images to your website.

Features:

• It comes with a number of font icons which can be styled, positioned and manipulated.
• It is exceptionally easy and requires just a few steps to get it running.

Benefits:

• All the fonts are updated regularly and provide the best user experience.
• Font icons come in a variety of different shapes and sizes because the icons are vector shapes.

20. VVV (Theme & Plugin Developer)

Varying Vagrant Vagrants is an open-source Vagrant configuration created for WordPress Development. VVV is ideal for developing themes and plugins as well as for contributing to WordPress core.

Features:

• It has everything you need to create multiple WordPress sites for debugging, plugin creation and more.
• Vagrants toolkit allows you to work on virtual box leaving your local computer in the workflow.

Benefits:

• The virtual box functionality is an ideal for developing themes and plugins for contributing to WordPress Core.
• We adopt VVV so that everyone has the same environment and makes the project output more relevant.

21. QuickBooks (Accounting & Bookkeeping)

It is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Inuit that accepts business payments and payroll functions. You can also check out this Xero vs. Quickbooks review.

Features:

• It serves as best accounting software for bookkeeping software for a freelancer as well as for small business.
• It supports various features like online banking, mapping features through Google Maps.

Benefits:

• It is integrated with Credit cards, bank accounts and Paypal for payment transactions
• It replaces the retail cash register and tracks the inventory along with customer information

22. ThirstyAffiliates (Link management)

This is a link management plugin for WordPress which cloaks the affiliate links. It empowers the website owner with the tools they need to monetize WordPress website.

Features:

• For any website owner, affiliate marketing is the main source of income. It manages the affiliate links.
• Inbuilt ability to shorten the link and a theft protection by 301 redirections.

Benefits:

• It is an affiliate link manager that helps to add and engage links with pretty URL.
• It works as a guide to insert the affiliate links in your post, pages, and comments.

Wrapping Up

These free tools will help you build your dream site. I am sure you would love to use them and get through the best one that suits your site! Let us know your favourite WordPress tool in the comment section below!