Although a few years ago we could find quite a few RSS aggregators for WordPress, these projects have all been abandoned for some reason or another along the way.
Some of these plugins aren’t even available for download anymore. The reason for discontinuation is quite mysterious, however I suspect that the proliferation of Twitter has played some part in this.
Many people moved from RSS readers to Twitter feed readers, however I still feel that RSS plays a very important role on the web even today. On Twitter there is a lot of microblogging that sometimes distracts me; I find RSS feeds of actual full posts from other websites to be much more enriching. Of course, others might disagree with me. There are many uses for plugins that import RSS content into WordPress, as you can read in one of our other blog posts here.
So here’s a list of the top RSS Aggregator plugins for WordPress.
WP RSS Aggregator
I created this plugin myself as a result of my frustration with the death of other RSS aggregators for WordPress. I wanted to create a news section on WP Mayor, which would import feeds from all the WordPress blogs I followed.
I thought it would be an interesting and useful section, both for readers of this blog and for myself to catch a quick glimpse of all the WordPress news of the day/week.
It started out as a very simple plugin, and I was mildly surprised that so many people were interested in using this plugin. However since it had a good audience I decided to keep working on it and develop it further. You can take a look at an overview of the plugin’s capabilities by reading this recent and in depth review.
The plugin comes with a set of premium add-ons that include functionality such as adding excerpts and thumbnails to your feed items, keyword filtering, sorting by category, the ability to import feeds into posts and any other custom post types, as well as the ability to import the full content of posts even when it’s not provided within the RSS feed, a great tool for creating an auto-blogging or content curation website.
Here’s an overview of the WP RSS Aggregator extensions and bundles:
- Advanced Feeds Bundle – ideal for setting up content curation and aggregation
- Simple Feed Bundle – ideal for setting up list style sections showcasing content from other blogs
- Feed to Post
- Full Text RSS Feeds
- Keyword Filtering
- Excerpts & Thumbnails
- Categories
- Widget
- WordAi & SpinnerChief
The two bundle choices are very popular and provide great value. The Simple Feeds Bundle includes Excerpts & Thumbnails, Categories and Keyword Filtering while the Advanced Feeds Bundle includes Keyword Filtering, Feed to Post and Full Text RSS Feeds, both of which allow you to do almost anything with your RSS feeds.
All premium add-ons are based on a yearly license giving you frequent updates and some of the best support in the WordPress world. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed!
RSS Post Importer
RSS Post Importer is a free plugin found in the WordPress.org repository that is aimed at doing exactly as its name suggests – importing RSS feed items into posts.
This plugin also handles all of the work itself; it imports and publishes full text RSS posts (when using the premium version) from one or several RSS feed sources to your WordPress blog on auto-pilot. This once again helps to make your blogging, content syndication & auto-blogging life easier.
RSS Post Importer also offers a few premium features you can upgrade to. These include Full Text RSS feeds, automated featured images, as well as the ability to import & export your feeds and settings as CSV files.
Other Plugins
FeedWordPress
FeedWordPress has been around for quite some time now. In fact it was first released sometime in 2008, around 7 years ago. This has given it time to mature into a very well-rounded plugin that has been downloaded more than 850,000 times.
It has many features and isn’t purely an RSS aggregator like WP RSS Aggregator. However I think it should be listed here because it can be used as an aggregator on your site. This plugin syndicates articles from as many RSS / Atom sources as you want, and turns them into posts for your blog.
The biggest disadvantage of this plugin is that it is not commercially supported and is basically a labour of love. It only gets updates once or twice a year and support is not guaranteed.
RSSImport
RSSImport is another rather popular and free WordPress plugin to import and display feeds on your blog. It uses PHP in your templates or shortcode in your posts and pages to allow you to add the feed anywhere you’d like.
There is a minimal amount of code that is needed to use the plugin. It also accepts a number of parameters (almost 40) for customising the feed content import. You can also use any of the parameters with shortcodes in posts and pages.
RSSImport also hasn’t been updated in a while, since September 2014 in fact, raising some concerns as to whether it will continue to be maintained or not. Compatibility with WordPress is also slightly backwards, so while it still seems to work for many users, there might be bigger issues in the near future.
Conclusion
When downloading a plugin for a specific purpose, most WordPress users expect a plug-and-play experience where the plugin quickly and painlessly gives them what they are looking for. In the light of this fact, I believe WP RSS Aggregator is the most suitable plugin for aggregation of multiple external feeds into your own WordPress website.
Also, it doesn’t hurt that it offers so many additional features through its add-ons and that it’s in constant development, always incorporating new features to give the user the best possible solutions.
65 Responses
CyberSyn is the only plugin which extracts full text articles from shortened RSS feeds right out of the box. No 3rd-party services or hidden fees.
Thank you Aaron Schwartz for being murdered for developing great RSS technology and the past 10 years while they try to cover it up and hide it from us so we cannot share information and organize.. I have sought a good plugin that continues the fight without shortsighted greedy intentions and have found none except for the rss multiple importer by Allen Weiss, he stopped work on it though, think someone hired him.. I wish there were another open source developer as skilled and Nobel as him.. the world needs this technology more than you need 50 bucks a month..
GREENTV Inc.
HI Looks like a great plugin and just what I need to buy —
My needs are to create a source where I can aggregate feeds together and review them so I can pick and choose what to curate on a very narrow niche topic based on a group of keywords.
Basically a draft gatherer… then I pick and write ro curate or link on the main site.
I want to create a feeder or curatorial source site that gathers and finds for me. keeps everything as draft status.
I should be able to do that here, right?
Can you confirm that this plugin and the advanced bundle features are compatible with WP 4.2.2 and 4.3 (releasing shortly)? I’m starting a new site & business and development cost is an issue. Is there a way to trial this without committing immediately to initial and recurring costs?
Hi Peter, yes I can confirm that they are compatible. You can try out the demo before you purchase.
I need a plugin that can autopost from one WordPress blog to another. Can it be done with this plugin??
Yes it can do so, make sure you get the Advanced Feeds Bundle.
Can this be used for google alerts? Thanks
Yes WP RSS Aggregator can be used for Google Alerts if you get their RSS feed.
Hi,
I´ll import a rss feet at my wordpress site… nobody assisted custom namespace to work with my own fields 🙁
only the wprssaggregator have this at her webpage as info but I can´t find this section at the setting page :-((
shit! a namespace tag is not rocket science!
Please contact support@wprssaggregator.com and the support team will help you out, as this comment is not very clear.
Hi,
at the plug-in wp-rss-aggregator I should buy the add-on “feed-to-post” https://www.wprssaggregator.com/docs/feed-post-general-settings/ to used the custom namespace.
I think, it´s a little bit expensive to pay $80 for a simple xml parsing…
… but I don´t found any alternative to work or use custom namespace tags 🙁
Well what you are mentioning is just one feature that Feed to Post offers, it gives you much more and is excellent value.
I am a complete newbie.I use miro as my podcatcher and i have got some rss feeds(Podcast) in form of videos downloaded in it(on my computer).How do i transfer those feeds to my wordpress site to be used as post for content?
Any idea if there ever be the possibility searching feeds with the built-in word press search?
That can already be done.
Great Post. Honestly I am new to wordpress and suddenly I need this plugin. Just wonder how to sort the feed not by date but by specific content inside it. For instance the feed include word “I am the first” then it will be shown as the 1st position. Thanks for any input.
I haven’t encountered any plugin that can do this, but more info about this use case can help me give you better advice.
Excellent article. It’s a shame there aren’t as many RSS tools readily available today as there were a few years ago.
That might be so but the ones we have now are better than those we had a few years ago 🙂
Jean – I am looking to replicate something like https://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Business+&+Finance/Banking/Capital+Ratios. What I like about it: flags for countries, redirected links, broken up by date, and source mentioned.
Do you know any WP plugin that can do this?
Hi, WP RSS Aggregator can handle that. I suggest you go for the Feed to Post add-on.
But it is not posts that are being created here. It is just a list of items in the feed and grouped by dates. I am not sure that WP RSS Aggregator can do to yet.
You don’t need to show the posts on your site with WP RSS Aggregator. You can store them as any custom post type you wish and then decide not to display the content on your site but just redirect to the original site as this site is doing.
OK – a little over my head to be honest, but good that it can be done. Can you break up posts by day as they have done? Or “Last 24 Hours” “Within the last week” “Older than 1 week”?
You can break down posts as they have done but I’m sure you understand that no plugin can offer a plug and play solution, you’ll need to do some effort to build something like this. WP RSS Aggregator gives you all the material you need to build it though.
If you have some knowledge of building WordPress templates and the WordPress loop then you can easily break up the posts in that fashion.
Furthermore we also offer a customisation service if you’d rather have us do that for you. In other words, we are here to work with you to achieve your aims.
I suggest going through the WP RSS Aggregator documentation, it’s a very flexible plugin. Based on the docs you will probably know whether it’s the right fit for what you want to do or not.
also how about google ajex and yahoo pipes….
i can not decide guys……plz tell me i have apersonal site moud.biz
i want some feeds , kinda mix of everything
plz suggest?
Hi i installed this plugin a week ago, everything seems really great. I love its usability but on the other hand i find only one flow it throws errors when validating from a semantic point of view, it is not that important itself but since i am a perfection freak i thought of mentioning it. It is a minor bug but i thought i should let you know.
Thanks for the feedback, I’m not sure I understand the nature of the flaw you mention, but I’d love to sort it out with you, please email us on support@wprssaggregator.com so we can discuss this.
I’m using this plugin together with Excerpts&Thumbnails, Keyword Filtering and Categories extensions and it works great and is easy to use. I especially like the keyword filtering so that you can really display only the feed content (for each feed source) that is of interest to you. Together with exceptionally awesome support (thanks Jean!), this is a five star plugin!
Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
I was relieve to finally find that works and does everything that I need it to do… but… unfortunately, I am having an issue with it and needed to use a second RSS aggregator, which I hate. Can your plugin support more than one plugin widget on a page? For example, I have one for News in the footer and wanted another one for Latest Shows in the sidebar on a couple of pages. On those couple of pages, the one in the sidebar starts scrolling ok but then scrolls uncontrollably and the one in the footer shows the same feeds as the one in the sidebar even though the widget settings are set differently. I am really hoping there is a fix to this. I’d like to use a couple or more separate RSS widgets throughout my site and so far your plugin seems to do more than the others.
Hi Dani, if you are referring to using the shortcode in multiple locations on the same page, yes that will work. If you encounter any issues please open a ticket on the plugin’s forum and we’ll be happy to help you out https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-rss-aggregator
WP RSS Aggregator Free version is completely not worth for aggregating purpose. and Pro version is costly and over priced.
Better I should hire a freelancer for this. or I should try searching in Envanto marketplace.
Thanks for the feedback Albert, everyone is of course entitled to make his choices. We have put in a lot of work on WP RSS Aggregator and we’re proud of the features it has and the support we offer for it. I wish you luck with your search, and if there are any features that you think are missing from WP RSS Aggregator, do let us know as we’re always on the lookout for more features to offer to our customers.
Hi Jean and Dave,
Yes it is best with all Add-ons. But when it comes to licences and update it is costly. I searched in envanto market place. Found No good WP plugin except one PHP Script. But I want to run this with WP.
Actually I know one Freelancer who can code professional applications Less than $100. and He is good at WP Customization and PHP. I should hire him and use his work for my own purpose also will sell it on Envanto.
Hi Albert, as Dave said pricing is a subjective thing, so there’s not much I can do about that, except that I think the price is right given the value the plugin provides. The strong level of plugin sales and satisfied clients points in that direction too.
Good luck with the freelancer. Sounds like you’ve got a business plan 🙂
Pricing is always subjective Albert, but having spent a lot of time searching for this kind of plugin, I came to the conclusion that WP RSS Aggregator with the Feed to Post add-on is really the best option currently on the market. And paying less than $100 for a plugin that will be one of the main components of the site doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me. I’ve searched on Envato and didn’t find anything close to WP RSS Aggregator in terms of functionality. And what about hiring a freelancer? Seriously, have you got an idea how complex the import functionality is? I suggest you take a look at the files of this plugin, if you can find a freelancer who can build all that for less than $100 let me know, I’d want to hire him myself!
The free version of WP RSS Aggregator works perfectly for those who just want to have some news from other sites displaying on their site, it’s not intended for heavy duty aggregation and that’s fine.
Anyway, just thought I’d chime in with my thoughts as a satisfied customer. Good luck!
Jean, could you share some site links, that display your plugin, in the most creative way?
Best,
John Malloy
Sure John, I’ll be putting up some demos soon.
Keep an eye on the Showcase and Demo pages.
Hi Jean – I am hoping we have found what our client has been looking for 🙂 Using your plug in can we set up news feeds for specific keywords such as “steel prices”.
Also where do the feeds come from, is it only from certain sites? Can we choose sites to pull news from? What are the sites the plug in uses?
OK too many questions – I need to get back to our client so any feedback would be appreciated.
The Feed to Post add-on is perfect if you want to pull in articles from other sites via their RSS feed. You choose which sites you want to use. You can also filter via keywords or keyphrases, and even by the article’s assigned category, this filtering functionality is available in the Keyword Filtering add-on.
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/extension/feed-to-post/
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/extension/keyword-filtering/
Hi all. The service I like best for RSS feeds is here: https://itde.vccs.edu/rss2js/build.php. Pretty basic, easy-to-use, and looks good. They offer some formatting options to that you can use to display a limited number of items, characters, etc. I’m using it on many pages of my real estate blog to automatically display new information about homes for sale.
Enjoy!
– Teri
An ok solution but it’s quite different from the plugins mentioned above, and of course it’s not in built into WordPress. Keep in mind the warning on that site as well: “This service is not guaranteed and is likely to go away.”
I noticed that you didn’t include WP RSS Multi-Importer, which i just set up on my site yesterday. Appears to work ok, with lots of options. However, I did notice however that my site has slowed down a bit. I guess to generating the feeds? Thinking about switching to your plugin. Questions: (1) Can I display/format the feeds differently on various pages of my site? (2) Can I set default images for different categories of feeds that appear if the post doesn’t generate a thumbnail? (3) any tips/tricks to stop the site from slowing down with RSS feed plugins?
Btw – thanks for the info!
I’m not a fan of that plugin’s interface, nor the code itself.
Considering all your questions, the Feed to Post add-on would be the ideal solution for your needs.
Will this work for an industry-specific aggregation site? Thanks
Sure it should be ideal for that purpose.
Thank you
I love the wp rss aggregator plugin. I wish there was a way to it to add multiple posts with seperate feeds for different content or categories.
It is now possible to do that 🙂
Too few to compare really. I don’t even mention the premium and professional solution, but the list too short even for freeware ones. For example: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cybersyn/
Is it possible to make each of these boxes an incoming RSS feed?
https://themes.themeton.com/pressgrid/
these plugin is great
Another awesome article Jean! I look forward to testing out your Wp-RSS-Aggregator plugin on some of my test sites! I am very interested in analyzing the php files of your plugin too, as I am trying to learn as much about this type of coding as possible. I still haven’t gotten my Sublime Text 2 to efficiently sit in my WordPress workflow, so I am still using DreamWeaver because it seems like it requires less steps to update via ftp. Anyways, could you maybe write an article on the the most awesome music aggregator on the Interwebz, Hypem.com? I’ve been inspecting some of their code because I am trying to figure out how they embed their tracks into the music player from the rss feeds of music blogs. They somehow link to the embedded audio, which I think would be optimal as to not overload their own servers, right? I will be sure to let you know once I’ve used your plugin, and if I run into any problems, on my new project, AllMusicBlogs.com.
May the force be with you!
– Houston Golden
Thanks for your comment Houston. Hypem.com is a cool aggregator indeed, however on this blog we only write about WordPress plugins.
Hi Jean,
Thanks for developing this. I have an OPML file with about 500 feeds. Will your plugin be able to process 500 feeds (and more in the future)?
Thanks
Welcome Daudi. There is no limit per se as to how many feeds the plugin can process, so the simple answer would be yes, it will be able to do that. More likely though is that your server will have some trouble as the process of accessing 500 websites and getting their feeds is a lengthy one (a few minutes). I’m currently working on making it as efficient and fool proof as possible in order to handle such amounts without the page timing out.
Woow, thanks. Don’t even know feedwordpress turns feeds to posts too, gona try em out now
Sure Lawrence, you can get previous versions from here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-rss-aggregator/#developers
Thanks, Jean. Is there a way to get a download of version 1? The latest version isn’t working for me in WP 3.5, though version 1 is on another blog, same themes/plugins, settings, etc.
I appreciate you.
Autoblog at WPMU.org is also a good one, like FeedWordPress but a simpler interface for setting up feeds.
I modified it to also support updating posts if that post in the feed gets updated, as well as pull in custom menus built on the site the feed comes from.