My Favorites & Recommendations
A Few Things I Recommend
Some of the links on this page are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small commission that helps keep this blog up and running. Regardless, you can rest assured that I only recommend products or services I have vetted myself and use personally — those I believe will add value and help you achieve your goals.
WordPress Page Design
Qubely By Themeum
Looking for the best WordPress block toolkit? Once you see what Themeum is doing with Qubely, you’ll be just as big a fan as I am. With custom blocks, pre-built page sections, and starter packs, Qubely opens up unlimited possibilities to easily create beautiful web pages.
- Link: Qubely
Beaver Builder
My favorite WordPress page builder is Beaver Builder because it allows me to pre-create layouts for customers so they're available when they need them. Beaver Builder (and the Beaver Themer plugin) are fantastic tools to help you design great WordPress websites and build flexibility into your workflow. Put simply, it's a fast, easy, and clean solution for people who want a WordPress Page Builder.
- Link: Beaver Builder
Chris was quick to grasp my plans for a membership site and make recommendations accordingly. He was very effective and efficient. His insights on the pros and cons of plugins and recommended go to market strategy was on point. Thanks Chris!
Bob Duprey
WordPress Form Builders
Ninja Forms
If you need a variety of components to create a form-based application on WordPress, you'll be hard pressed to find a richer set of options that are easy to use than those included with Ninja Forms. A robust vetted collection of add-ons extends the plugin capabilities to add features like conditional logic, multi-part forms, save progress, file uploads, payment and donation options, marketing platform integrations, and user analytics to name a few.
- Link: Ninja Forms
WP Forms
Building forms in WordPress can be hard. WPForms makes it easy. With this drag and drop form builder, you can start with a blank slate or with pre-built templates that make creating all sorts of new forms super fast. WPForms add-ons connect your forms to MailChimp, AWeber, and PayPal, and add powerful conditional logic and the available hooks and filters allow developers to extend the plugin and create custom functionality.
- Link: WP Forms
My time with Chris was well worth it. I wanted to pick his brain about a development stack I was planning to use on a new project. Within minutes, he was able to give me the answers I was seeking. I wouldn't hesitate to reach out to him again.
Craig Junghandel
WordPress Membership Solutions
MemberPress
MemberPress is a powerful WordPress membership plugin without the hidden costs found in the add-on market for other plugins — their integrations for things like affiliate programs and payment processing are included! With MemberPress, you can create and track membership subscriptions, sell digital products, and manage your members by granting and revoking their access to posts, pages, videos, categories, tags, feeds, communities, digital files, and more based on what memberships they belong to.
- Link: MemberPress
Paid Memberships Pro
Whether you can to manage professional organizations with thousands of members, create private social communities for unique interest groups, develop robust directory or listings sites by topic or region, or accept recurring payment for content, podcasts, video, and more, Paid Memberships Pro has you covered. This plugin has a lot of features — created as add-ons rather than part of a super-large plugin. While some of the add-ons are free, I recommend purchasing PMPro Plus because it gets you access to everything.
- Link: Paid Memberships Pro
WooCommerce Memberships
Woo Memberships brings your content, woo commerce store, and memberships together. You can restrict your content to members, drip content over time, sell access to memberships, include memberships with product purchases, manually assign memberships, and completely integrate member perks within your store. This is one of the easiest plugins to configure — it’s super clean and easy to manage and one of the best extensions and plugins for membership sites out there — you’re gonna love it.
- Link: WooCommerce Memberships
Chris laser focused in on what the issues are with our project and gave good advice about how to move forward. Talking through the details of what we were trying to do was very helpful. Would definitely work with Chris again if needed.
Sydni Craig-Hart
Ecommerce & Online Learning
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most customizable eCommerce platform for building your online business. No other eCommerce platform allows you to start for free and grow your store as your business grows. More importantly, WooCommerce doesn’t charge you a portion of your profits as your business grows. Hundreds of free and paid extensions in the official marketplace, including Stripe, PayPal, USPS, ShipStation, and MailChimp, make WooCommerce a super flexible, robust, scalable commerce solution.
- Link: WooCommerce
LearnDash
LearnDash isn’t your ordinary “let’s sell an online course” solution, it’s a serious learning management system platform that’s packed with tons of features. With LeanDash you can easily create and sell courses, drip content, and deliver quizzes; reward learners with badges, points, and certificates; manage users, download reports, and so much more! By using LearnDash you have access to the latest e-learning industry trends for creating robust learning experiences. Plus, its simple yet powerful administration capabilities let you manage your users and courses with ease.
- Link: LearnDash
LifterLMS
Create beautiful online courses and quizzes from one screen with LifterLMS, a flexible drag and drop course builder. LifterLMS features include content protection, individual user accounts, personalized student dashboards, course access rules, drip content, prerequisites, start dates, launch windows, and more. Add-ons let you connect your website with tools like Zapier and because no separate ecommerce or membership plugin is required, you can accept payments and enrollments instantly without limits.
- Link: LifterLMS
Finally pulled the trigger on consulting with Chris and let me tell you: worth it. It was obvious from the start that he had spent time thinking about my product and my question, didn't waste any time and dug right into my business with insightful advice. Now for the hard part: going out there and doing stuff!
Clifton Griffin | Reaktiv Studios
WordPress Themes
Astra
Astra is my go-to theme for WooCommerce stores. Astra proves you don't need to sacrifice functionality to build a fast, quick-loading WordPress theme that works with page builders. At Liquid Web we tested over 50 themes for WooCommerce - looking at both performance and price. Astra (and Astra Pro) cleanly beat the competition. It's why we recommend it to all our WooCommerce customers.
- Link: Astra
WooCommerce Storefront
WooCommerce Storefront is an intuitive and flexible, free WordPress theme offering deep integration with WooCommerce. It is built and maintained by WooCommerce core developers so you can rest assured the integration between WooCommerce, WooCommerce extensions, and WooCommerce Storefront is air-tight.
- Link: Storefront
Chris helped bring clarity to a complex project with WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and thousands of users all generating content. Consulting with Chris is well worth the time!
Jeff Hester | Six-Pack of Peaks Challenge
General WordPress Utilities
Yoast SEO
If there’s one WordPress plugin for SEO you have to install, it’s Yoast SEO. From your title tag and meta description to open graph settings and social sharing, this plugin helps make sure that when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), you're taking advantage of every option available to get found more often online. Yoast SEO provides the tools and insights you need to optimize your content and stay focused on what’s most important — your writing!
- Link: Yoast SEO
WP Fusion
WP Fusion is the no-code solution to easily integrate your WordPress website with services like Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, Ontraport, ConvertKit, Drip, Zoho, and other leading CRMs and marketing automation systems. This plugin lets you do more with the software and tools you already pay for and use and ensures your ecommerce, elearning, or membership site and CRM are in perfect sync.
- Link: WP Fusion
Jetpack
Jetpack was designed to be the utility of all utilities to ensure that a WordPress user could install a single plugin and gain access to a wide range features. The plugin is pretty massive in terms of available features, and while most of the features are free, there are Premium and Pro editions that give you even more. The great thing about Jetpack is that if a module isn’t activated, that code won’t run in the background of your site. So the “weight” of the plugin is completely in your control. The two modules I use the most are Analytics to to see who is referring traffic and what posts are popular, and Comments to get notified when people comment and give readers a way to subscribe to comments.
- Link: Jetpack
Whether it's product strategy or a question about which plugin to use, I know Chris will get me an answer faster than anyone else.
Steve Zenghut | Zeek Interactive
WordPress Ecommerce Utilities
CartFlows
You can’t talk about building an online store without talking about CartFlows – the easiest and best way to generate more sales on your commerce site. This WordPress plugin brings the post-purchase features to WooCommerce that it's always needed! If you want to take advantage of sales boosters like order bumps, upsells, downsells, and checkout offers, or want to build sales funnels, split tests, and reduce cart abandonment, CartFlows is the solution.
- Link: CartFlows
Discount Rules Pro For WooCommerce
Discount Rules Pro, handcrafted to increase onsite sales conversions, lets you easily create dynamic pricing and discounts in your WooCommerce store. From offering store-wide discounts, coupons, bulk discounts, BOGO offers, free shipping, and first order savings deals, to discounts based on product variation, user role, order total, product attribute, purchase history, this WordPress plugin by Flycart does it all.
- Link: Discount Rules Pro
Ahoy
Ahoy helps you recover and boost your WooCommerce online store’s revenue with targeted, automated marketing messages. Using Ahoy, you can show the right message to the right person at the right time to increase conversions, reduce cart abandonment, display targeted upsells, and deliver purpose-driven calls to action, including adding a product to cart, applying a discount, showing a form, or following a link.
- Link: Ahoy