15 of the Most Useful Premium Plugins for WordPress

If you read this blog you probably know that I am big fan of WordPress. We use it to run our many blogs here, here, here and here at Network Solutions. There

You also know that I love plugins. I have written about free wordpress plugins that every blog needs and five things you never knew you could do with WordPress. In this post we focus on the most powerful and premium WordPress plugins. Premium as in you have to pay for them, but in almost every case it is worth it. It is said that the right plugin will allow you to improve your site through specific functionality that might otherwise take a lot of time and/or money to set up. Before the era of blogs and plugins almost all of this stuff had to be installed and configured at great expense or created from scratch at even greater expense. So in my search and evaluation of plugins I came across this article on DesignM.AG and here they are:

Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a form creation and management plugin that makes it quick and easy to add simple or advanced forms. Features include conditional form fields, email notification routing, dynamic field population, reply to entries from WP, autoresponers, allow users to create posts through a form (example, community news), and much more. A single-site license costs $39 and an unlimited developer’s license costs $199.

Shopp
Shopp is a premium plugin that will help you to set up an e-commerce website on WordPress. It includes a long list of features including basic inventory management, support for selling digital and physical products, export orders into QuickBooks, breadcrumb navigation, product search, integration with popular payment gateways, flexible shipping calculations, and more. The cost of a single-site license is $55 and a developer’s license is $299.

PHPurchase
PHPurchase is another option for managing an e-commerce site with WordPress. Features include easy product placement, order management, promotions and discounts, control over shipping options, payment gateway integration, an affiliate program and more. A single-site license costs $49 and a developer’s license costs $299.

eStore
eStore is another premium e-commerce plugin. It is geared towards selling digital products and the features include one-click checkout, design freedom, AWeber integration, an affiliate program and more. A single-site license including the affiliate platform costs $64.95.

WishList Member
WishList Member is a popular plugin for managing a membership website. There are a lot of options for running a membership site, but with WishList Member you can get one set up on WordPress quickly and for a comparatively low cost. It offers unlimited membership levels, shopping cart integration, full control over who sees what content, easy member management, secure RSS feeds, and more. A single-site license costs $97 and a multi-site license costs $297.

MemberWing
MemberWing is another option for running a membership site on WordPress. Features include four levels of membership, digital content download protection, gradual content delivery, integration with popular payment gateways and more. A single-site license costs $149.95 and an unlimited license costs $295.

eMember
eMember is a third option for creating a membership site using WordPress. Features include selective content protection, design freedom, integrated with WordPress affiliate software, shopping cart integration and more. A single-site license is $39.95 and a license to eShop ($49.95) is also needed to accept payment.

WPJobBoard
WPJobBoard allows you to add a job board to any WordPress-based website or blog (the DesignM.ag job board is powered by this plugin).  It includes a lot or features that allow you to set up the job board however you want. Features include an unlimited number of categories, promo codes, customization of automated emails, PayPal integration and more. A single-site license costs $97.

OIOpublisher
OIOpublisher is a popular premium ad management plugin that has been around for a few years. It allows you to have full control over the ad space that you sell on your website or blog, and to keep all of the revenue from ad sales as opposed to sharing revenue with an ad network. Ad purchases and expirations are handled automatically to save you time. A single-site license costs $47.

Billboard
Billboard is a WordPress plugin from iThemes that allows you to easily add images — like ads, photos, icons — to your widget-ready sidebars. A multi-use license costs $39.95.

WPReviewSite
WPReviewSite will allow you to easily turn WordPress into a user-submitted review site. The plugin is geared towards providing affiliate marketers with a way to boost income through user reviews. Features include star ratings, comparison tables, flexible display options, an included WordPress theme for review sites, and more. A single-site license costs $97 and a developer’s license is $299.

WFReview
WFReview is another plugin intended for affiliate review sites. Features include the ability to import CSV files to quickly set up tons of affiliate products to be reviewed, ratings, comparison tables, and more. A single-site license costs $89 (with a free trial available) and a developer’s license costs $289.

wpSEO
wpSEO is a powerful plugin to help you improve your search engine rankings and search engine traffic. It offers numerous features related to page/post titles, meta descriptions, meta keywords, duplicate content, performance management and more. A single-site license costs $24.99 and a developer’s license costs $124.99.

WP Auctions
With WP Auctions you can set up and host auctions on your WordPress blog or website. Features include an unlimited number of items to be auctioned, multiple images for each item, display auctions in a post or page, shipping options and more. A single-site license costs $29.99.

WPDirectory Pro
With WPDirectory Pro you can easily set up a directory on your WordPress-based blog or site. Features include payment gateway support for paid listings, customizable templates, custom field integration and more. A single-site license costs $39 and a 25-site license costs $349 (with a few other options in between).

What premium plugins are you using?

I have used many of these above on different projects and they mostly work as advertised. I would be most concerned with the level of support you get and if you can actually talk to a human. Using emails and forums just doesn’t cut it when you paid a couple of hundred bucks and need to get the site running. Have you used any of these? Love any? Hate any? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.