If you want to build a successful WordPress site, you’re going to need a lot of different plugins.
While you can probably get by with quality free plugins for a lot of features, you’ll almost certainly run into some situations where you need premium plugins to add key functionality.
If you need a lot of premium plugins, those costs can quickly add up when you’re paying separate fees to a bunch of different developers.
The Essential Plugin Bundle gives you a way to save money by offering 35+ different plugins for one flat price.
Instead of collectively spending hundreds on separate plugins for popups, sliders, galleries, testimonials, and so on, you can just pay one flat price to Essential Plugin Bundle and access all of those features (plus a lot more).
In our Essential Plugin Bundle review, we’ll share more about the different WordPress plugins that are available in the bundle and then take a hands-on look at some of the most notable plugins that you can get access to.
Essential Plugin Bundle Review: What the Bundle Includes
As I mentioned in the introduction, Essential Plugin Bundle currently offers 35+ different plugins across different use cases, including marketing, design, security, and a bunch of other areas.
Some of these plugins are broad in scopes, such as a full-featured pop-up plugin that lets you create any type of popup offer or a slider plugin with 10+ different slider types.
Other plugins are more focused, such as helping you customize your author boxes or add client logos to your site. Hence, the Essential plugin bundle contains every key plugin which is required on your site header and footer.
One notable detail is that the plugins are built to be compatible with the native block editor (Gutenberg), as well as page builder plugins like Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, and so on via widgets.
For example, if you’re displaying a client logo slider, you can add the widget directly to Elementor, Beaver Builder, and so on.
Essential Plugin Bundle also comes from a WordPress core contributor.
In this section, I’ll divide the plugins into a few different categories and summarize each. Then, in the next section, I’ll take a hands-on look at some of the most notable plugins.
Marketing Plugins
- Popup Anything – A Marketing Popup and Lead Generation Conversions – create any type of popup, including light-box, scroll boxes, floating bars, and more. You can use it for marketing, lead generation, and anything else. This is one of the most powerful plugins in the bundle.
- Countdown Timer Ultimate – creates scheduled, evergreen, or recurring countdown timers.
- WP Testimonial with Widget – display testimonials in 3+ layouts.
Sliders and Galleries
- SlidersPack – supports 10 different slider libraries. This is another one of the most notable plugins in the bundle.
- Album and Image Gallery – create an image gallery with full album support and 7+ layouts.
- WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel – create slideshows using Slick Slider.
- WP Logo Showcase – showcase client/sponsor logos in 6+ layouts.
- Before & After Image Slider – show two images with before/after slider between them.
- WP Responsive Recent Post Slider – display a slider of recent posts in 4+ layouts.
- Accordion and Accordion Slider – create horizontal or vertical accordion sliders.
- Timeline and History Slider – create an interactive timeline of your business history.
- Video Gallery and player – create a gallery or slider of self-hosted or embedded videos (including YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc.).
- Trending Post Slider – display trending or featured posts in 4+ layouts.
- Meta Slider and Carousel – create responsive image sliders or carousels.
- WP Featured Content and Slider – feature any content and display it in a grid or slider.
- Audio Player with Playlist – includes grid and slider layouts, as well as a traditional playlist.
- WP Team Showcase and Slider – display team members in a grid or slider layout.
Blog Post and Blog List Plugins
- Blog Designer – Post and Widget – design a custom blog layout with 8+ layouts including grid, slider, masonry, and more.
- WP News and Scrolling Widgets – display a news ticker or other layouts.
- WP Blog and Widgets – replace your default blog design with a custom layout. Offers 7+ layouts and 100+ design options.
- Portfolios and Projects – create a portfolio with 15+ templates.
- Featured Post Creative – display featured posts in 4+ layouts.
- Post Category Image – list post categories with an image in a grid or slider layout.
- Ticker Ultimate – create a news ticker layout from any post type or RSS feed.
- Post Grid and Filter – display blog posts in a grid, including a category filter option.
- Author Box Ultimate – create a custom author box design, including social profile fields.
General Utility Plugins
- Essential Security – add a variety of security features to harden your site.
- Custom CSS and JS Pro – easily add custom CSS or JavaScript to your site’s <head> or <body> sections. You can insert Google Analytics codes, Facebook pixel code, and so on.
- WP Responsive FAQ – create an accordion FAQ section.
- Footer Mega Grid Columns – create a custom grid layout for your footer.
- Hero Banner Ultimate – add a hero banner to any page, including image or video backgrounds.
- Styles for WP Pagenavi – apply custom styles to the popular WP-PageNavi plugin or the native WordPress pagination function.
- WP Login Customize – customize the WordPress login screen.
- Maintenance Mode – create a custom design to display while you’re working on your site.
- PreLoader for Website – add a custom preloader with 17+ designs.
- Google Fonts Pro – easily add any font from Google Fonts on your website.
WooCommerce/EDD Plugins
- Woo Product Slider and Carousel – display different types of WooCommerce products in a slider.
- Product Categories Designs – customize your WooCommerce category list pages.
How to Use the Essential Plugin Bundle and Plugins
Now that I’ve told you what’s in the bundle, let’s take a hands-on look at how the bundle works and some of the most notable plugins that you get access to.
Each plugin in the bundle is a separate, standalone plugin, so you can pick and choose exactly which plugins you want to install on your site.
This helps you keep your site lightweight and avoid adding weight for features that you don’t plan to use.
I’ll look at four different plugins across a few areas:
- Popup Anything – A Marketing Popup and Lead Generation Conversions
- SlidersPack
- Countdown Timer Ultimate
- Essential Security
Popup Anything – A Marketing Popup and Lead Generation Conversions
Popup Anything is one of the most versatile plugins in the Essential Plugin bundle as it lets you create any type of popup, including the following:
- Lightbox popup
- Floating bars (notification bar)
- Scroll boxes/slide-ins
- Full-screen fillers
- Push notification
You can also choose from different behaviors, including announcements, lead gen, phone calls, or URLs.
For lead gen popups, the plugin will save entries to your database and you can export them as a CSV to add them to your email marketing software or CRM:
You can target your popup to specific pages or other criteria, including the following:
- Referrer
- UTM
- Cookie
- Ad block usage
- Geolocation of the visitor
You can also trigger your popups by various conditions, including the following:
- Time on page
- Inactivity
- Exit intent
- Scroll depth
- Click
To add your popup content, you can use the Classic TinyMCE editor. It’s not a visual, drag-and-drop builder like some other tools, but it does give you a lot of flexibility because you can use template tags to dynamically insert information, including user-specific details like a user’s name:
You also get built-in analytics and A/B testing, which gives you the ability to optimize your popups.
SlidersPack – Create Flexible Sliders/Carousels
The SlidersPack plugin lets you create flexible sliders or carousels from your choice of 10+ different slider libraries.
In terms of the slider source, you can choose between a gallery of images or your latest WordPress posts.
You’ll then get a bunch of settings to control details such as pagination, auto play, speed, looping, and more:
Countdown Timer Ultimate
Countdown Timer Ultimate lets you create a multipurpose countdown timer to highlight upcoming events or deadlines.
You’ll see this a lot on eCommerce stores to highlight deals, sales and offers, which is why the plugin integrates with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. However, you can also use it in non-eCommerce stores, too.
You can choose from 10+ clock styles and customize them to fit with the design of your website.
Essential Security
The Essential Security plugin helps you make a bunch of basic hardening tweaks to your site, including:
- Changing the login page.
- Blocking XML-RPC.
- Hiding version numbers.
- Adding an extra password to access the login page.
- Limiting login attempts.
- Adding a CAPTCHA to the login page.
You can easily toggle on each security feature from the plugin’s settings:
Essential Plugin Bundle Pricing
First off, many of the plugins in the Essential Plugin Bundle have limited free versions that are available at WordPress.org. At the time that I’m writing this post, there are 33+ free plugins available – you can browse them all here.
However, if you want access to all the plugins and the full features in all of those plugins, you’ll need one of the premium plans.
All the premium plans give you access to all the plugins – that’s the whole point of the Essential Plugin Bundle.
There are only two differences between the plans:
- The number of sites on which you can activate the plugins.
- The average support response time and the type of support.
Here is the pricing plan:
- Professional – $149 – license for unlimited sites and instant chat support during working hours (along with the email and ticket support from the other plans).
For WPMayor readers, they have provided an exclusive coupon that will get you 15% off on their professional plan:
Final Thoughts on Essential Plugin Bundle
Overall, if you need the plugins in the Essential Plugin Bundle, the math is pretty clear that you’ll save a lot of money vs buying the plugins individually. You get 35+ plugins for one price, plus any future plugins that the developer releases.
Even if you just need a few of the big plugins, you’ll already be saving money. For example, a popup plugin, slider plugin, and testimonial plugin could easily cost you more than the $99 entry price alone.
Plus, you can also simplify your support needs because you can go through one developer for everything instead of needing to work with separate developers.
The best way to see if it’s right for your needs is to simply try the plugins and see if they can do what you need.
Or, you can also try installing some of the free versions from WordPress.org to see what they’re like.
If you want to get started, you can use the buttons below: