Monthly ArchivesApril 2022

Let’s say someone is visiting your site, and it’s slow to respond, hard to navigate, or just plain boring. There’s no way around it — they’ll go somewhere else.

But here’s the good news: WordPress has a ton of great plugins to help ensure your website visitors have a great experience.

Read on to discover the best WordPress UX plugins and how they can elevate your website.

What Is WordPress UX?

UX stands for user experience. It refers to how a user interacts with your business, or in this case, your WordPress website. It covers everything from the first page load to the checkout process on your ecommerce website.

Described another way, if a user interacts with it, it’s part of the user experience.

Why Should You Care About WordPress UX?

Have you ever opened a website to find that the page takes forever to load? Or maybe the images don’t load? Have you ever tried to make an online purchase, but checkout fails?

We all have at least once. Like most people, you likely left the website without achieving your desired result. That’s the kind of experience you want to avoid for your website users.

While WordPress UX plugins help you steer away from negative user experiences, they aren’t the only thing that can make or break your website. Quality managed WordPress hosting also plays a huge role. After all, if your hosting is not up to the task, your user’s experience will suffer.

Accessibility and reliability are why WordPress stands out above the rest. If paired with the right hosting plan and high-quality plugins, it’ll offer website visitors the best user experience and take your business to the next level.

WordPress UX: Top 10 Plugins

Now that you know what WordPress UX is and why it matters let’s explore the 10 of the best user experience plugins in the market.

1. Smush

Poorly-formatted images often cause websites to load slowly. That’s where Smush, the ultimate WordPress image Optimization plugin, comes in. Created by the awesome folks over at WPMU DEV, Smush makes optimizing images easy. It lets you compress images into the smallest file size without sacrificing quality.

You can even automate image optimization. So every time you upload new images, Smush will automatically optimize them for you. It’s simply ideal for speeding up WordPress.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $5/month when billed annually.

2. The Events Calendar

If promoting events is your thing, a calendar that looks good and works well is a must-have. The Events Calendar is the most popular event planner plugin for WordPress for a few reasons.

For one, the plugin is easy to set up, and you can add events in just a few steps. Once created, website visitors can see the event calendar in a month, week, or day view. The premium WordPress version adds myriad features like advanced widgets, recurring events support, and top-notch customer support that helps you keep your website’s UX up to standard.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $99/year.

3. Broken Link Checker

Don’t you hate it when you click on a link, and instead of seeing what you expected, you see a big ugly 404 Not Found message instead?

Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress UX plugin that ensures your users will always click on a link and see exactly what you want them to see. No more 404 errors. The best part is how easy this plugin is to set up. Just install and activate.

Price: Free. The Premium plan costs $29/year.

4. Tawk.To

Offering website visitors a live chat feature is a huge boost in terms of WordPress UX. After all, having the opportunity to engage with the company in one click instills users with a sense of confidence that encourages them to buy your service or product.

If you want to show availability when users need you most, consider using a plugin like Tawk.To. The live chat plugin connects you with users in a snap. Unlike other plugins, Tawk.To handles the chat service on its servers. That means numerous chat requests won’t bog your website’s server down, preventing crashes.

Price: Free.

5. WP Rocket

As we mentioned earlier, speed determines the quality of your website’s user experience. In that sense, having a fast-loading website is essential.

WP Rocket is a performance optimization plugin that helps you speed up WordPress. It lets you optimize every page on your website quickly and safely. WP Rocket integrates with many content delivery networks (CDNs) and plugins like Smush to optimize your images.

Price: Plans start at $49/year.

6. Really Simple SSL

Nowadays, there is no excuse for not having an SSL. In fact, most managed WordPress hosts include a free Let’s Encrypt certificate, and they apply it automatically to every part of your website. But what if your hosting provider doesn’t offer it?

You’ll need to install an SSL yourself. While Really Simple SSL won’t install an SSL for you, it will ensure that every page of your website has the reassuring padlock most customers expect to see in the address bar. Once your SSL is installed, all you have to do is install Really Simple SSL and click the activate SSL button.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $169/year.

7. iThemes Security

While we are on the topic of security, iThemes Security is another important plugin to note.

WordPress websites are at constant risk of many different cyberattacks. With iThemes security, you can instantly mitigate these threats and ensure your sites remain secure and safe from malware and hackers. The plugin also offers IP blocking so you can ban repeat offenders.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $80/year.

8. Forminator

While there are many excellent WordPress form plugins, Forminator is one of the best.

You can create any form for any purpose quickly and easily. You can even use it to create quizzes, polls, calculations, and take payments through Stripe and PayPal.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $5/month when billed annually.

9. Akismet Spam Protection

Most people familiar with WordPress know about Akismet Spam Protection. After all, it’s included in any new WordPress installation. That alone speaks volumes of the quality of the plugin.

Visitors care about comment spam. Nobody wants to read their favorite blog and see the comments section filled with spammy links to unrelated products they are not interested in. Akismet Spam Protection is the best way to keep your comment sections healthy and on-brand.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $10/month when billed annually.

10. WP Mail SMTP

Are undelivered emails affecting your website’s user experience? Get WP Mail SMTP by WPForms. With this simple plugin, you can ensure that every email arrives where and when it should.

Price: Free. Premium plans start at $99/year.

Pair Your Plugins With Reliable WordPress Hosting

A poor user experience can destroy your business in an instant. But given the number of available plugins in today’s market, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Once you have the plugins installed, leave the rest to Hostdedi. Our managed WordPress hosting plans give your website what it needs to offer its visitors a reliable, smooth user experience. Try it out today.

Magento offers advanced reporting features that allow you to track search events, product sales, and checkout abandonments. But it doesn’t provide insights into metrics such as customer demographics, devices, and behavior flows.

To access those insights, you need Google Analytics — a free tool that tracks online traffic across devices and platforms using a small snippet of code.

You can add Google Analytics in Magento 2 without an extension or custom code. You only need access to the Magento admin panel and a Gmail account to start.

Here’s how you can add Google Analytics in Magento using both a Universal Analytics (UA) tracking code and the latest generation Google Analytics 4 (GA4) global site tag.

How To Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Google Analytics is a user-friendly tool that facilitates data-driven decision-making and helps you improve conversion rates. It’s no surprise that according to W3Techs, 56.5% of all websites on the internet use Google Analytics for online traffic analysis.

Here’s how you can get started with analytics for Magento in four simple steps.

1. Set Up a Google Analytics Property

Sign in to your Google account and open Google Analytics. If you haven’t signed up for a free Google Analytics account, you can go to the Google Analytics landing page and click on the Get started today button to configure Google Analytics.

Enter an account name to identify the account in the Analytics dashboard. You can use your company, website, or any other descriptive name of your choice.

Customize how you wish to share tracking data with Google by checking or unchecking the checkboxes in the Account Data Sharing Settings section. You can uncheck all boxes without affecting your ability to add Google Analytics in Magento.

Once you’ve made your selection, click Next to proceed.

Enter a name for your Google Analytics property, set the reporting time zone, and select a currency.

Currently, Google creates a Google Analytics 4 property type by default. However, you can also create a Universal Analytics property by following these steps:

1. Click Show advanced options in the Property setup section.

2. Switch the Create a Universal Analytics property toggle.

3. Enter your store URL in the Website URL box.

4. Choose between creating both a GA4 and UA property or a UA property only. You can leave the enhanced ecommerce reporting option enabled.

5. Click Next when you’re done.

Select your industry, business size, and options that best describe how you plan on using Google Analytics. When you’re done, click Create.

You’ll see the Google Analytics Terms of Service Agreement popup. Select your country, accept the data processing terms, and click I Accept to finish.

After that, you’ll be redirected to the Google Analytics admin area to configure your tracking code.

2. Copy Your Tracking ID and Google Analytics 4 Global Site Tag

The steps to access your tracking code or Measurement ID vary based on the analytics property type. If you’ve created a UA property, you can find the Google Analytics Tracking ID for your website in the Google Analytics admin area.

Navigate to the admin section and select the UA account and property using the dropdown menus. Then, go to Tracking Info > Tracking Code.

Copy the Tracking ID and head over to the Magento admin.

If you’ve created a GA4 property during the setup process, you can copy its global site tag by selecting the GA4 account and property in the Google Analytics admin and clicking on the Data Streams option.

In the Data Streams section, click on the data stream you’ve created for your online store.

In the Web stream details section, copy the code snippet inside Tagging Instructions > Add new on-page tag > Global site tag (gtag.js) and head over to the Magento admin to add Google Analytics in Magento.

3. Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Log in to the Magento 2 admin panel and go to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Google API. Expand the Google Analytics tab, uncheck Use system value, and change Enable from No to Yes. Add your UA Tracking ID to the Account Number text area and click Save Config.

Optionally, you can also set Anonymize IP to Yes to hide visitor IP addresses and set Enable Content Experiments to Yes to use ecommerce tracking with A/B testing.

If you’re using a GA4 property, you’ll need to add the global site tag to your website’s <head> section. Inserting the code at the starting of the head section ensures that events are tracked even when users prematurely stop a page from loading.

To add Google Analytics in Magento using the global site tag, navigate to Content > Design > Configuration in the Magento admin. In the Action column of the Design Configuration page, click on the Edit hyperlink beside your preferred ecommerce store view.

Scroll down to the HTML Head section, expand it, and paste the GA4 site tag in the Scripts and Style Sheets section.

Click Save Configuration.

Make sure you refresh the Magento cache to update the changes on the frontend.

4. Verify Google Analytics Is Working

Open the Google Analytics dashboard and navigate to the Realtime section of your newly created property. You’ll be able to track live visitors on your site.

If you can’t see any live visitors on your dashboard, here are a few ways to troubleshoot Magento analytics tracking:

1. Disable all ads and analytics blocking features in your browser.
2. Verify the Google Analytics code in the backend is correct.
3. Flush the Magento store cache.

After following these steps, you should see real-time activity in the Google Analytics tracking dashboard as potential customers view products and initiate the checkout process.

Final Thoughts: How To Add Google Analytics in Magento 2

Google Analytics is extremely easy to set up and use. Although you don’t need to be an ecommerce marketing guru or Magento developer to add Google Analytics in Magento 2, you need technical skills to host and optimize a Magento store.

Managed Magento Hosting by Hostdedi eliminates the complexities of hosting a Magento store with Magento-optimized servers. All our plans include PCI-compliant hosting, auto-scaling, 24/7/365 support, and a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee.

Sign up for a plan today.

Curious which service clients want you to add or which products would do better in your online store? Ask your customers by creating a survey with a WordPress survey plugin.

Research and data should drive the decision-making process in your business. Website analytics and sales data can only tell you so much. Market research surveys help you gain valuable insights into your customers’ wants and needs. This guide to the best WordPress survey plugins in 2022 will help you decide how best to add surveys to your WordPress website.

What to Look for in a WordPress Survey Plugin

WordPress survey plugins come with various features, from simple survey plugins to more complex ones for businesses. How do you know which one is right for you? Think about the types of surveys you need and identify the plugin with features to support those surveys.

Features to Look for in a WordPress Survey Plugin

Question Types. How many types of questions and responses does the plugin support? Will your respondents need to upload files or rank or rate selections?

Customizations. Can you customize the look and feel of the survey to match the rest of your website?

Integrations. Do you need to sync survey data into your CRM or use your email service to follow up with respondents? Make sure the survey plugin you choose supports the integrations you need.

Reporting and Analysis. Surveys don’t help much if you can’t interpret the data. Look for plugins that have data visualization tools and built-in reporting capabilities.

Mobile Responsiveness. This point should go without saying in 2022, but make sure your surveys work on small screens. More than half of your respondents will probably take the survey from their phones.

In addition to features, evaluate costs to determine the best WordPress survey plugin for your business.

Benefits of Using a WordPress Survey Plugin

As an alternative to using a plugin, you could use a program like SurveyMonkey or even Google Forms. But, these programs don’t offer the same benefits as a plugin.

Advantages of Using a WordPress Survey Plugin

Styling. Match your survey design to your website.

Integrations. Tie your survey into the systems you already use to run your website.

Data Control. Maintain total control of your customer data inside your WordPress databases instead of with a third party.

6 Picks for the Best WordPress Survey Plugin

No matter what type of surveys you need, the plugins on this list should work for you.

1. WPForms

WPForms is one of the most popular drag-and-drop form builders for WordPress. The plugin offers a simple interface that streamlines the process of creating forms.

Pricing

WPForms offers four pricing tiers:

• Basic at $79 per year
• Plus at $199 per year
• Pro at $399 per year
• Elite at $599 per year

Prices are current as of January 2022 and don’t include any introductory discounts.

Features

Survey creators will like the advanced field options, validations, and conditional logic. The plugin also includes templates to jumpstart your survey or form creation process. At the Pro and Elite levels, WPForms includes a survey and poll add-on. The survey add-on includes data analysis and visualization tools to simplify displaying and digesting survey results. The add-on also includes NPS scoring, Likert field questions, and real-time poll results.

Learn More About WPForms

2. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is another drag-and-drop form and survey creation plugin for WordPress. The plugin makes creating complex forms easier and includes visualization tools to display results.

Pricing

Formidable Forms offers four pricing tiers:

• Basic at $79 per year
• Plus at $199 per year
• Business at $399 per year
• Elite at $599 per year

Prices are current as of January 2022 and don’t include any introductory discounts.

Features

Formidable Forms includes multiple field and question types, templates, and conditional logic. You’ll need to upgrade to the Business or Elite plans for the full survey and polls toolset. The higher-priced plans include additional templates, question types, and survey-specific features. The survey options include limiting responses to prevent the same person from submitting multiple times, reporting with graphs and charts, and automatic scheduling so you can close surveys at a certain date or after collecting a set number of responses.

Learn More About Formidable Forms

3. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is another popular drag-and-drop survey creation and form-building tool for WordPress. The plugin boasts a user-friendly interface and an ample list of integrations with email systems, CRMs, and payment portals.

Pricing

Gravity Forms offers three pricing plans:

• Basic at $59 per year
• Pro at $159 per year
• Elite at $259 per year

Prices are current as of January 2022 and don’t include any introductory discounts.

Features

Don’t let the lower price fool you. Gravity Forms’ feature set is on par with the other drag-and-drop survey tools on this list. All plans include unlimited forms, validations, conditional logic, and multi-page forms. Survey, poll, and quiz features are only available on the top-tier Elite plan. Survey field type options include Likert Scale, running, rating, checkboxes, dropdowns, and open text fields. The Elite plan’s survey features also enable you to view, filter, and analyze survey results in your WordPress dashboard.

Learn More About Gravity Forms

4. QSM: Quiz and Survey Master

Unlike other plugins built for form building, this one focuses specifically on surveys and quizzes. The emphasis on surveys comes at the expense of the user interface. Creating surveys in this plugin is not as simple as some of the form-builder plugins we’ve already reviewed.

Pricing

QSM offers three pricing plans:

• Basic for $129 per year
• Plus for $179 per year
• Pro for $199 per year

Prices are current as of January 2022. QSM also sells lifetime licenses in lieu of annual subscriptions.

Features

QSM is a great option because, unlike the first three plugins we’ve reviewed, you don’t have to upgrade to the highest-paid plan to unlock survey features. Survey field questions and analysis are included even on the Basic plan. You’ll only need to upgrade to unlock additional integrations and conditional logic. The interface is slightly more clunky to use and isn’t as easy to customize. QSM includes themes you can pick from to determine how your survey displays. If you want to customize the style of your survey to match your site exactly, you’ll probably want to choose a different plugin.

Learn More About QSM

5. Crowd Signal

Crowd Signal is a survey-building tool from Automattic, the team behind WooCommerce, Tumblr, and WordPress.com (Yes, there is a difference between WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org). With this easy-to-use tool, you can start collecting customer feedback in no time.

Pricing

Crowd Signal offers three pricing plans:

• Free
• Premium at $180 per year
• Business at $540 per year

Prices are current as of January 2022.

Features

The Free plan limits you to 2,500 responses. For unlimited responses and surveys with branching, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. While Crowd Signal includes a WordPress plugin, the paid plans include access to the software’s full platform. You can embed surveys in emails or on other websites. Crowd Signal is a great option if you need to collect survey responses outside of your WordPress website.

Learn More About Crowd Signal

6. YOP Poll

YOP Poll is an open-source survey plugin for WordPress. The plugin doesn’t offer the same features as the more robust form-building plugins on this list, but it could work for simple surveys.

Pricing

Free plugin with no required subscription or add ons.

Features

YOP Poll allows you to add a simple multiple-choice poll question to any page or post in WordPress. The plugin includes an option to ask for additional information. So you could add custom questions to the end of the polls. You’ll have to export the additional custom fields from WordPress and use another tool to view and analyze the data. This tool could work if you need to collect quick data or insights such as what visitors think or a new website. But if you need to ask follow-up questions or do an in-depth analysis, you’ll want to pick a more feature-rich plugin.

Learn More About YOP Poll

Which WordPress Survey Plugin is the Best?

Deciding which plugin to use depends on the types of surveys you need and your budget. Many of the plugins also work for different types of forms. You’ll want to consider what other uses you’d have for a form builder to decide which of these plugins work best for your website.

Getting Started With WordPress Plugins

Before deploying surveys with a WordPress plugin, you’ll need a WordPress website. Hostdedi offers the best-managed WordPress hosting plans to take the hassle out of running a WordPress site.

In addition to the best security and uptime, Hostdedi offers many resources on WordPress for beginners, including explaining what is WordPress and how to make sure you’re using the right WordPress version.

Pick your plan and get started with Hostdedi managed WordPress hosting today.

What’s old is new and trendy again, especially when it comes to selling used clothes online. What used to be the hallmark of garage sales and thrift stores is now one of the fastest-growing ecommerce trends.

Whether you’re looking to clean out your closet or start your own resale shop, selling used clothes online has never been easier.

In this post, we’ll review how to sell used clothes online and share best practices to ensure you get top dollar for your clothing.

Options for Selling Your Clothes Online

The best way to sell used clothes online may be through one of the many apps and marketplaces devoted to reselling clothes. Think of these apps as digital consignment stores.

If you’re wondering where to sell used clothes, start with one of these apps or websites:

• Poshmark. This app is simple to use. Take pictures of your items and start selling right away. Poshmark does keep 20% of the final sale price, though.
• ThredUP. With threadUP, you can clean out your closet all at once. They mail you a package. You fill it with everything you want to sell and ship it back to them. They provide you with an estimate and handle the rest if you want to proceed.
• Depop. This global fashion marketplace allows sellers to list their products quickly. Depop also charges one of the lower commissions at only 10%.
• Flyp. Flyp works a little differently than other marketplaces. The app connects sellers with professional sellers. You just take a picture of the items you want to sell, and the app connects you with one of their professional sellers. The seller handles the photography, listing, and fulfillment for you.
• eBay. eBay’s tried and true marketplace is one of the original places to sell clothes online. Sellers’ fees vary by product category. Clothing ranges from 8% to 12.9%.
• Mercari. Mercari works a lot like eBay. Sellers just pay a fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents for each payment received from a buyer.
• Tradesy. Tradesy is a marketplace dedicated to clothing, shoes, bags, and accessories. Sellers pay a flat commission fee of $7.50 for items sold for less than $50 or 19.8% for items greater than $50.

Options for Starting an Online Resale Store

What if you’re interested in more than cleaning out your closet? Gen Z shoppers tend to be more concerned about the environment. They also are more cost-conscious and look for higher quality products. Fast fashion is notorious for poor quality and sustainability. As Gen Z enters adulthood, you can expect greater interest in buying quality used clothing online.

Many clothing resellers shop their local thrift stores as well as the marketplaces we’ve already reviewed to find their inventory. When it comes to listing that inventory in their own online shop, they have two options: using a marketplace or setting up their own ecommerce website.

Setting Up a Storefront on a Marketplace

Resellers can use any of the marketplaces for their store. Some platforms, like eBay, even have options for creating your own storefront. Others may have an option to build a profile where people can view your selling ratings and see all your available inventory.

The downside to using a marketplace is the selling fees, which could eat up to 20% of your sales price. If you’re purchasing used clothes to sell online, the platform selling fees could make your profit margin slim.

Building Your Own Ecommerce Store

Consider building your own online store to make more money selling used clothes online. You’ll need to pay for hosting and possibly your ecommerce platform, but the only seller fees you’ll pay will be the payment processing fees for a credit card.

Building an online store is not as intimidating as it sounds. With the right online store builder, you can create a store without ever writing a single line of code.

Selling used clothes through your own online store also allows you to collect customers’ email addresses to utilize email marketing for special promotions or when you add new inventory.

Best Practices for Selling Used Clothes Online

You should follow some basic guidelines no matter which way you sell clothes — on a marketplace or through your own store. These best practices will help you avoid customer complaints and earn the most money for your items.

Tips for reselling used clothing online include:

• Use Quality Photos. Images sell. Post professional quality photos for your listings. Take DIY product photos in an area with good lighting so shoppers can clearly see the clothes’ patterns, colors, and conditions.
• Use Keywords in Your Listings. Apply SEO best practices to your listing titles and product descriptions. Use the keywords people might type in a search bar to find the type of clothing you’re selling. If you’re selling a premium brand, include the brand in the title to grab shoppers’ attention.
• Accurately Describe the Condition. Don’t say something is “like new” if it’s stained and ripped. You’ll have the most luck selling quality items, but if your clothing does have normal wear and tear, let buyers know what to expect when they see the item in person. No one wants a surprise when unboxing an online order.

Sell Used Clothing Online with StoreBuilder

If you want to open your own online resale shop, StoreBuilder by Hostdedi makes the process fast and simple. Just answer a few questions about your business, and StoreBuilder takes care of installing and setting up your ecommerce store. You just need to customize the look and add your used clothing lists.

Try StoreBuilder risk-free for 30 days.

From claims of how to make hundreds of dollars working from home to less savory offers, no one likes spam. But if you run a WordPress website, you probably deal with a lot of it.

We’ve assembled this list of the best WordPress anti-spam plugins to help you combat unwanted comments, emails, and form submissions.

Protecting your site from spam increases the site’s security and ensures it won’t get slowed down by spam. Keep reading to learn what to look for in a WordPress spam plugin and our picks for the best WordPress anti-spam plugins.

What are Anti-Spam Plugins?

Anti-spam plugins block spam submissions on your WordPress website. As your website traffic grows, you’re likely to see an increase in submissions from bots. WordPress user registration and comment forms are two of the most common targets for spammers, no matter what version of WordPress you use.

Key Features to Look for in WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins

• User Friendliness. How does the plugin filter out spam? Does it make users solve a math equation or decipher a nearly illegible CAPTCHA? Look for a plugin that balances security and not annoying users.
• Registration Blocking. The default settings in WordPress allow registered users to post comments freely. Spambots utilize this loophole by registering an account for your site. Look for a plugin that blocks site registrations from bots to decrease spam comments.
• Trackback Validation. If you have trackbacks enabled, when someone links to your blog, their website is linked in the comments. Spammers use this technique to populate sites with links. Spam plugins with trackback validation use IP addresses to determine if the trackback is legitimate.
• Reporting. Reviewing the spam statics from your anti-spam plugin will give you an idea of whether you should adjust your settings.

Benefits of an Anti-Spam Plugin

For small sites, managing and preventing spam is a mostly manual process. You can change the comment, registration, and trackback settings to reduce spam. But if your site has other contact forms or gets a lot of spam, manually adjusting settings and blocking spammers’ IP addresses might be too time-consuming. And it’s probably not the best experience if you’re newer to the WordPress platform.

You’ll end up playing a game of Whack-a-mole, where as soon as you shut down one spammer, three bots replace it. An anti-spam plugin automates the process, giving you the best protection and saving you time.

9 Best WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins

There are a lot of anti-spam plugin options. Below are the ones we recommend. Consider which one might work best for your site.

1. Akismet Spam Protection

Developed by the team behind WooCommerce, Jetpack, and WordPress.com, Akismet is one of the most popular anti-spam WordPress plugins. The plugin requires an API key to use. Keys are free for personal use, but business websites need to purchase a subscription. The plugin works by checking any comment or form submissions against a global spam database. Akismet flags suspicious submissions and prevents them from publishing to your site.

• Active Installations: 5+ million
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Automattic
• Pricing: Free for personal use. Commercial plans range from $10 to $250 per month.

Download Akismet Spam Protection

2. Spam Protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk

CleanTalk’s anti-spam WordPress plugin blocks spam with minimal disruption to your user experience. Users won’t have to put in a CAPTCHA phrase, answer questions, or count photos of bridges. When someone registers, subscribes, or comments, the plugin analyzes the content and automatically quarantines comments most likely to be spam. The plugin is compatible with many of the most popular WordPress plugins, including WPForms, Elementor, Gravity Forms, and Contact Form 7. After a seven-day free trial, the plugin requires a CleanTalk subscription.

• Active Installations: 100,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: CleanTalk
• Pricing: Start at $8 per month for one website

Download Spam Protection, AntiSpam, FireWall by CleanTalk

3. Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee is a great option for people looking for a free anti-spam plugin for WordPress. The plugin’s limited options work well for preventing spam in comments. But, it doesn’t work for site registrations and forms. If you’re looking for one plugin to block spam on forms and comments or need more advanced features, consider one of the other plugins on this list.

• Active Installations: 700,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Pluginkollektiv
• Pricing: Free

Download Antispam Bee

4. WordPress Zero Spam

WordPress Zero Spam is another great choice for people who want a free anti-spam plugin for WordPress. Unlike Antispam Bee, this plugin works on comments, user registrations, and login attempts. WordPress Zero Spam supports several popular form builder plugins, including Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Fluent Forms. Your users will love this plugin because it doesn’t rely on CAPTCHA. Instead, the plugin uses a combination of artificial intelligence, advanced spam detection techniques, and databases of malicious IP addresses to block spam submissions or login attempts.

• Active Installations: 30,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Highfivery LLC
• Pricing: Free

Download WordPress Zero Spam

5. Titan Anti-Spam & Security

This all-in-one plugin offers spam protection, malware scanning, site accessibility checking, and security and threat audits. You can use the basic features for free but need to upgrade to unlock all the plugin’s advanced spam and security features.

• Active Installations: 100,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: CreativeMotion
• Pricing: Limited functionality available for free. Paid plans start at $55 per year for one site.

Download Titan Anti-spam & Security

6. Captcha by BestWebSoft

This plugin adds CAPTCHA to prevent spam on comment forms, login, password recovery, and registration. CAPTCHA options include an invisible CAPTCHA, character recognition, and simple math. The free version of the plugin works with most native WordPress forms. You can buy a premium license from CodeCanyon for a one-time fee if you need compatibility with additional form builders like Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, or Gravity Forms.

• Active Installations: 8,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: BestWebSoft
• Pricing: Limited functionality available for free. Upgraded version available for a one-time fee of $19.

Download Captcha by BestWebSoft

7. WP Armour

Instead of an annoying CAPTCHA field, this plugin uses the honeypot approach. The plugin adds a hidden field to forms. Users can’t see the field, so they leave it blank. But spambots can’t tell it’s hidden, so they fill it out. If the honeypot field contains data, the plugin knows it must be spam and doesn’t submit it. The free version works with many popular forms and page builders. For additional spam settings or additional plugin compatibility, the developer offers a paid version for a one-time fee.

• Active Installations: 20,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Dnesscarkey
• Pricing: Limited functionality available for free. Upgraded version available for a one-time fee of $19.99 for one site.

Download WP Armour

8. Stop Spammers Security

Stop Spammers Security offers more than 50 configuration options to protect your WordPress website from spam. The plugin has options for using CAPTCHA fields or the honeypot method. The free version protects the standard WordPress comments, login, and registration forms. To use the plugin with other plugins like Contact Form 7, you need to purchase the Premium version.

• Active Installations: 60,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Trumani
• Pricing: Limited functionality available for free. Upgraded version available for a one-time fee of $29.00 for one site.

Download Stop Spammers Security

9. WP Cerber Security

Another all-in-one security solution, this plugin protects against spam, hackers, malware, and brute-force attacks. The plugin’s unique anti-spam engine works for registration, comment, contact, and other forms. WP Cerber Security works with Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, Formidable Forms, Fast Secure Contact Form, Gravity Forms, Caldera Forms, HappyForms, and Contact Form by WPForms. The free version of the plugin includes many spam and security features. Upgrade to a premium version for additional spam protection and automated malware scans and integrity checks.

• Active Installations: 200,000+
• WordPress Repository Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
• Developer: Cerber Tech Inc.
• Pricing: Limited functionality available for free. Upgraded version available for $99 per year.

Download WP Cerber Security

What is the Best Anti-Spam Plugin for WordPress?

If you’re just trying to prevent spam, Akismet is a great option. Millions of WordPress sites trust the app making it the best spam comments WordPress plugin. If you’re looking for additional security features, WP Cerber Security is a great choice because it offers the most features and integrations with other plugins.

Protect Your Website With Quality Hosting

As we discussed in our guide to WordPress, one of the most important things you can do to protect and secure your website is to pick the right hosting provider.

At Hostdedi, our managed WordPress hosting plans offer fast, reliable, and secure hosting. When paired with your anti-spam plugin, you can trust your site will run smoothly. Pick your plan and start building or migrating your site today.

Recently we looked at the basics of getting started with using Git for source control in your projects. While that’s a great starting point, there are a bunch of other commands and Git workflows that will help you wrap your head around using Git in your daily coding work.

Git Workflows

When I started using Git, I figured I knew how to use it properly. My ideal approach was to make all changes in one spot without branches and then commit them to the repository and keep working.

While it was better than not using version control, it took me a while to realize that I wasn’t using most of the power that Git provided. To get Git working for me, I needed to have a strategy to branch and merge my changes.

Then git-flow came out and I adopted it as my strategy. I still remember feeling like I was peeking behind some curtain to where the amazing developers were. I now had insight into how they worked and could start to become one of them.

But git-flow doesn’t fit every scenario, so while we’re going to look at it we’ll also take a look at a few other methods of keeping your Git projects organized including how I manage my projects as a lone developer.

git-flow

Looking at git-flow now, I acknowledge that the software landscape has changed greatly in 10 years and git-flow may not be the best option for your team. When git-flow was written, it was rare to deploy an application many times in a day. Instead, you probably did a major version number and release every few months or weeks if you were on a particularly agile team.

Let’s take a look at what git-flow is.

If you want to see the full deep explanation with charts and Git commands for Git Flow, you should read this post.

In git-flow, two branches have an infinite lifetime. First, main which should reflect code that is ready to be deployed to your live/production environment.

Second, we have our develop branch. This branch should have the latest changes that are ready for the next release of our software. When the changes in develop are ready to be deployed to our live application, we merge them into the main branch and tag them with the version number that corresponds with the release number.

Outside of the two major branches, there are three types of supporting branches.

1. Feature

A feature branch may be made from the develop branch only. It must be merged back into the develop branch. Naming can be anything descriptive of the feature you’re working on.

When the work is ready for the next release it gets merged back into the develop branch where it waits for release time.

2. Release

Release branches are made from the develop branch and must merge back into both develop and main. You name a release branch with the release-x convention. In practice that usually means you’d name a branch with the release number you’re planning to use like this: release-2.2

You use a release branch as a way to do the final prep to release your software. This may include bumping the version number of files, making sure that your translations are done, or final code checks.

3. Hotfix

The hotfix branch is made from the main branch and is used to contain changes that need to be dealt with in the live application right away. This may be a bug that has to be fixed or a security issue that needs to be dealt with.

Once the problem is fixed and deployed to your main branch you’d tag your code with the proper version number.

The biggest reason that teams don’t use git-flow now is that the way we release software has changed. Instead of larger releases less often, you may release a change to an application a few times in a day. I know that I push work to my client’s sites many times a week as soon as it’s ready. We don’t do version numbers of the site, we just keep improving it.

Standard git-flow isn’t meant to accommodate this.

Github Flow

The second option that many people use is Github Flow.

The one big rule of Github Flow is that whatever code is on the main branch can be deployed at any time because it’s production-ready.

All branches are created off of the main branch with a descriptive name for whatever you’re doing.

Once you have your changes ready you create a pull request.

Pull requests tell others working on the same code that the work you’re doing is ready to be reviewed before those changes are merged into the main code.

Once you have a pull request submitted, the team you’re working with can review the changes and provide feedback. If the pull request is deemed ready to merge, then it’s merged into the main branch for your project.

One drawback to Github flow for a single developer or very small team is that the administration of a pull request can create extra overhead in managing the project. This is why I don’t use them in my work.

How I Use Git Workflows with Client Projects

In my client work, I’m usually the only one writing code daily for a project. My client may update WordPress plugins or change some CSS, but they don’t do any major coding work. That means if I went with Github flow I’d be reviewing my pull requests which only create extra management headaches. Let’s look at the system I use, which bears some resemblance to both git-flow and Github flow.

I have two main branches called main and staging. The main branch tracks with whatever code is currently running on the production site. The staging branch tracks with whatever is being tested on the staging site we use to test changes before we push them to the live site.

Every branch is created from the main branch. New features are given a name like this: feature/32-new-feature. In this context, the number 32 corresponds to the ticket number in our project management system and the words after it are a short description of what’s being worked on. Bug fixes get named similarly, bug/20-bug-name.

Every branch created gets merged into our staging branch first, and then once approved by the client or tested by myself gets merged into the master branch. That workflow may look like this.

In my projects, I have continuous deployment set up which means any time I push code to main it gets pushed to the live site automatically. The same process is set up for the staging branch.

If I was working with a team that could check my code in a pull request workflow, then I’d use this system because it works well in a team. For a developer mostly working on their own, it’s simply management overhead that’s going to slow down your workflow.

Advanced Git Commands I Use

Now that we have some idea of how we can use Git in a practical workflow, let’s take a look at more advanced commands that will be needed to make this happen. I use each of these commands at least a few times a week as I work with my customer’s code.

Even if you’re going to use a GUI application, (I mentioned some good ones in my last post on Git) it’s still important to have an understanding of what is happening in the background. Many times I’ve had to work via terminal to fix an issue that was created by a Git GUI application.

Adding Changes by Line

The one command that made Git usage via Terminal click for me was git add -p. Until I learned this command I used GUI applications because I’d make changes in my code but want to break up specific lines into different commits so that I could explain why I had made a change. To do this I used a GUI to select the lines, but git add -p walks you through an interactive interface to add changes in chunks.

I use this many times every day.

Track Remote Git Branch

If you’re pulling down an existing repository and have branches like main and staging that you need to keep track of but already exist, you need to tell your local versions of the branches to track those remote versions of the branch.

There are a few ways to do this.

Save Changes without Committing Them

Sometimes you’ll be in the middle of some work that’s not ready to be committed yet, but you need to save its state. That’s where git stash is useful. This command stashes changes away for you by removing the changes. You can get them back by using git stash pop. There are a few more commands to make stash useful, but those are the two I use regularly.

Pull a Specific Git Commit

Sometimes you need to pull a specific commit into your current work. With a clean HEAD (you haven’t made any changes yet) you can pull in a specific commit with git cherry-pick . You can find the full documentation on git cherry-pick here.

For each commit Git builds a long sequence of letters and numbers which is called a Git Object, and commonly referred to as a SHA. Since each commit gets one you can reference a commit with its SHA value. Read more about Git Objects.

Throw Away Changes You Don’t Need

At some point in any project, we’re going to make changes and then realize that it’s not working and we need to simply scrap them and start over. Instead of just trying to undo until we’re back where we want to be we can use the following Git command to remove any changes that have not been tracked yet.

The command above will reset your code back to the most recent commit on the branch you’re currently working on. We could also use a <#commitSHA> with this command to reset to a specific commit if we wanted to get back to a state before the latest commit. Maybe you’d use this to reset to the initial branch checkout because the entire branch worth of work isn’t something you want to keep, but you had already tracked some of the work.

To take it one step further, we can throw away any files or directories that have not been tracked in git yet with the git clean command.

git clean -fd: the flags f and d tell git to throw away files and directories that are untracked.

Remove Branches

Every week or two I look at the results of a git status command and find I have way too many branches to reasonably understand what’s going on in my repository. That means I can remove any branches that correspond to tickets that have been resolved with the following commands.

Use Version Control

While you may not be an expert at all the Git commands you’ll use, one important thing to remember is that you should be using version control. Even if you’re the only person working on a project, using Git and a Git workflow will help you keep your projects organized. You won’t need to press CTRL + Z until you’ve reset your work after writing code that didn’t work.

You’ll be able to trust your system and keep producing work for your projects.

Try Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

In need of hosting that’s optimized for WordPress? Check out Hostdedi’ fully managed WordPress hosting plans today.

When you’re building a site, regardless of its purpose, you focus on the things that matter like making it look great and work properly. Sometimes some of the most important facets slip under the radar.

When you load your site for the first time and a security warning pops up, you know you’ve forgotten a basic and crucial element: your SSL certificate.

Keep reading to learn how to install an SSL certificate on WordPress.

What Is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is a digital certificate that encrypts the connection between a browser and the server a site is hosted on. To put it simply, HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) is a set of rules used to transfer components of a website through the Internet.

The SSL certificate is actually the “s” in “https.” Without it, any information exchanged between your browser and the server would be visible to any and all points of contact between the two.

Additionally, it ensures that the information you’re receiving is actually coming from the website you’re visiting and the server it’s hosted on. Sites without SSL certificates installed could be malicious, and view sensitive data without your permission.

Related reading: A Beginner’s Guide to SSL >>

Can You Buy an SSL Certificate?

You can purchase SSL certificates from various Certificate Authorities (CAs) or their resellers. They also exist in various versions (from single-domain SSL certificates to multi-domain certificates) and with various pricing options.

To be able to buy an SSL certificate, you’ll need to create a CSR and private key. CSR (Certificate Signing Request) is an encrypted version of basic information about your website and its owner, including company name, country, state, etc.

Private key is the second part of the “key pair” that gets created alongside the CSR. It’s the most important component of the SSL certificate, as it authenticates your website to internet users. It helps encrypt the data transmitted to and from the site, as well as prevents others from impersonating your site.

Should you wish to explore our certificate pricing, we offer plenty of SSL options here at Hostdedi. There are also free versions of SSL certificates like cPanel’s AutoSSL or Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates.

Is It Important to Install An SSL Certificate in WordPress?

The long and short of it is that 85% of people won’t buy from an unsecure website. But there are plenty of reasons why it is important to install an SSL certificate on your WordPress website too. Here are a few.

• Visitors on your website know they’re getting authentic content you’ve shared.
• Visitors and members on your website will know the data they’re sharing with you won’t be intercepted.
• Visitors on your website won’t be scared away by secure connection warnings.

Overall, having an SSL certificate on your WordPress website makes visitors feel secure and confident in their experience.

How To Install An SSL Certificate on WordPress

If you haven’t installed a certificate yet, you should put your website into maintenance mode to prevent any potential visitors from being unnecessarily potentially scared off.

Once you’ve bought an SSL certificate, do NOT install it in WordPress. This might seem confusing because there are plugins that install SSL on your site — but bear in mind that WordPress is a content management system. Your SSL certificate doesn’t (and shouldn’t) cover just content. What you’re concerned about is securing your connection to the web server.

Once you have an SSL certificate, you need to retrieve the private key that was created with it. Installing your SSL certificate is fairly easy. It’s a couple of steps that include navigating around your admin or portal and clicking a few buttons.

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Hostdedi Plans

How you install SSL certificates actually depends on the type of a server or hosting plan your site uses. Below, you’ll find step by step instructions on how to install an SSL certificate on Hostdedi fully managed hosting plans.

How to Install an SSL Certificate on Non-Hostdedi Plans

If you’re not on a Hostdedi plan, here are some more guides on how to install an SSL certificate on your website.

Additional Concerns for SSL Certificates

Once you’ve installed your SSL certificate and your site is loading over the HTTPS protocol, there are some additional considerations.

Forcing a Secure Connection

Once you’ve learned how to install SSL on WordPress sites, you’ll want to make sure all the connections made to your site are secure. You can do so by adding one of the following snippets to the top of the .htaccess file for your website:

Mixed Content Errors

Sometimes when sites are created before the installation of the SSL certificate, links in the WordPress database will still contain the “http://” prefix.

Even though you forced secure connections, some images or external links will still get loaded over the non-secure protocol, causing broken padlocks or other warnings.

The easiest way to update those links would be to use a plugin (like Better Search Replace). If you’re familiar with WP cli, or the terminal in general, you might be more comfortable using wp search-replace command.

Pros of Implementing an SSL Certificate

There are many pros and cons of implementing SSL/HTTPS on your website. However, the benefits largely outweigh the disadvantages. Here are some of the top benefits:

• Trust — Visitors are more likely to get a sense of trust when seeing the padlock next to your site’s domain name in their browser’s address bar.
• Data validation — When a browser connects to the server through the HTTPS protocol, there’s a handshake process which validates that the data that was received is the same as the data that was sent.
• Data protection — Any sort of data exchanged through the secure connection will be encrypted and as such, it will be undecipherable to any third parties between the browser and the host server.
• SEO — Google rankings take HTTPS connections into account. As such, sites with SSL certificates installed on them that are forcing HTTPS connections will have higher rankings.

How To Renew Your SSL Certificate

If some time has passed since you learned how to install the SSL certificate, the deadline for SSL certificate renewal might be close. If you purchased an SSL certificate, your CA may have reminded you already.

If you’re sticking with the same type of SSL certificate, it’s quite possible they’ll be renewing it on their end using the same CSR. They will just provide you with an invoice and a new certificate which you’ll need to install again.

Otherwise, they’ll provide further instructions. If you’ve decided to go with the free version, such as Let’s Encrypt or AutoSSL, the renewal time will come much sooner, as these certificates are valid for only 90 days. However, renewals are usually handled automatically on the server side as long as your domain is pointed directly to the server it’s hosted on.

Consider WordPress Hosting With Hostdedi

There are many different WordPress hosting providers out there, as well as many certificate authorities and resellers you could get the SSL certificates from.

All Hostdedi hosting plans include free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. That means you don’t have to worry about cost, renewals, or installations — just one of the many benefits of fully managed hosting by Hostdedi.

Managed WordPress and WooCommerce plans are hosted on servers that are optimized exclusively for WordPress sites. Our outstanding support team is happy to assist you with SSL needs as well as the additional concerns you may have about ensuring your site’s security.

Check out our fully managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans to get started today.

Have you ever browsed through your favorite coffee shop’s website and as you check out with that new order of coffee, you end up getting a 504 error after a delay?

Or maybe you were browsing your favorite sports website and as you try to load the next page, it takes a while to load and comes back with a timeout error?

These situations are frustrating, and not what we expect when we look at a site. In both cases, the cause may be not having enough PHP workers allocated to a site. Without enough PHP workers, a site can’t process all site requests that come in if there are a higher number of them. It’s not a good situation, as site speed is incredibly important for converting visitors to sales leads and customers.

What is a PHP Worker?

What is a PHP worker? PHP workers build pages and handle requests that require backend processing on your site. PHP workers are directly responsible for generating HTML pages for your site visitors. Because of this, they determine how many uncached requests a website can process at any given time.

This is usually active tasks like an inventory check on a specific item or it could be something as complex as viewing and listing all prior orders for a customer. When a PHP worker is started, it remains persistent until processes are completed or certain conditions are met.

Think of PHP workers as a check-out line at a grocery store where each item that is to be scanned is a PHP process.

If you only have one PHP worker (one checkout line) then everything must go through that single checkout lane, and the cashier can only work through one order at the time. PHP workers can limit the number of concurrent, or simultaneous, transactions on a site. As previously mentioned, if you have only four PHP workers (four checkout lines) the site can only process four transactions at once.

The 2022 Essential Guide to WordPress Plugins >>

However, this does not mean that the fifth customer (PHP process) or beyond does not get processed. PHP processes are placed in a queue for the worker which means it processes the first request in line then moves onto the next PHP process in the queue. In other words, a long line forms and people start waiting.

Luckily, PHP workers process the information faster than grocery store cashiers. They work very quickly and can clear many and most processes within milliseconds. By having only a few additional PHP workers, you are able to have many more concurrent processes that can be run at one time, meaning more customer orders can be processed at once.

What Happens When You Have Too Few PHP Workers Per Site

Let’s say you have only two PHP workers on a site and you have several plugins and a heavy theme. Those two PHP workers will constantly be used only to process plugins and theme processes leaving a queue to build up immediately for new page requests from visitors to your site.

If you are running an ecommerce site on top of this, it will only increase the queue amount. Much like customers waiting in line, some PHP processes will abandon the line. Processes that are not written to abandon the line, or time out, and will sit and wait. Then, they will begin to put a much higher load on server resources. It’s like the checkout line is now wrapping around the block!

PHP processes on a WordPress website can be as simple as the submission of a contact form or a request to geolocate a visitor based upon their IP or zip code.

For eCommerce websites, this can look a little different. Items such as new orders being processed, carts, and customer logins would all utilize PHP workers. The products or descriptions will usually be cached so that generally would not require a PHP process for viewing. Having only three to five PHP workers means that you can only have that many simultaneous transactions on the website and that the PHP workers will process requests in the order they were triggered (just like a shopping line).

How To Lighten The Load For Your PHP Workers

A common problem area to start with for PHP workers is having too many plugins and heavy themes. You can generally help alleviate issues caused by a bloated website with these tips:

1. Add site caching with a plugin
2. Reduce external calls to remote sites
3. General site optimization

Site optimization can get complicated, especially with sites that experience heavier traffic which requires more attention to detail. Generally, the larger the site, the more efficient the site must be in the way it requests its styles, products, orders, and customers. This way, you utilize the PHP workers for general site functionality less and PHP workers can process what matters — your traffic — effectively.

Hostdedi plans come with enough concurrent users for even the largest of sites to manage traffic.

With Hostdedi, you already have 20 concurrent users as part of an XS plan. This increases in increments of 20 as you move up to the XXL plan (which has 120).

Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Performance Optimization >>

Other managed application platforms offer anywhere from two to four PHP workers in introductory offerings. Hostdedi Managed WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento hosting also have server-side caching built-in which helps minimize the use of PHP workers to process static content, allowing the PHP workers to process requests from the people who matter most: your customers.

Maintain a Faster Site with More PHP Workers

PHP workers can manage thousands of processes each, however; many factors come into play, including:

• How many exterior calls are they making?
• How many plugins are competing with inquiries to the database?

Additionally, adding PHP workers to a site will also increase the resource allocation being used from the server. The more PHP processes running, the more RAM and CPU allocations will be needed, thus creating heavier loads on the server and having as much optimization as possible can reduce that server load. PHP workers are key, but they are not magic, one-size-fits-all solution.

The more plugins (even inactive ones), the more PHP workers are utilized to process non-static requests. The same applies to heavily featured themes.

For this reason, it is always a good idea to use caching and a content delivery network (CDN) to help reduce the task load for PHP workers. This will optimize your site to process customer requests in the fastest manner possible.

Better is Built In With Fully Managed Hosting from Hostdedi

Improving your website’s performance starts with high-quality hosting. With Hostdedi Fully Managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting, you get:

• Automated scaling to keep your site fast during traffic surges.
• Automatically optimized images for fast loading times.
• Lightning fast load times thanks for our built-in CDN.
• And more!

See why users gave us a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on Trustpilot. Experience optimized hosting for your site. Check out our plans to get started today.

You’ve sold your creative items and crafts on Etsy for years. But now, it’s no longer viable. After all, sellers on Etsy doubled from 2.7 million in 2019 to nearly 4.4 million in 2020. With too many sellers, the competition levels are unsustainable for your business.

More often than not, such situations call for a fresh start. And in this scenario, the best course of action is to pivot away from Etsy and create your own store.

Read on to discover the benefits of running your own store and the best Etsy alternatives in the market.

Reasons Why Sellers Should Have Their Own Ecommerce Website

Running your own ecommerce store has its benefits. Let’s explore them.

1. Brand Ownership

Building your own website can give your brand a significant boost. With a website builder, you have the freedom to shape your business the way you see fit without the restrictions of Etsy, Artfire, Amazon Handmade, or any other third-party platforms. You get to own your identity and also have a custom domain name.

Unique branding helps you stand out from competitors on and off your website, which is more difficult if you only have an Etsy shop.

2. You Own the Customer

Unlike Etsy and Big Cartel, which control your customer accounts, payment, and contact information, having your own online store empowers you to capture them yourself.

As customers sign up to purchase handmade items from your website, you can request their phone numbers, email addresses, and credit card information. You can upsell, retarget, and remarket to them with that information. You can also charge membership fees for subscriptions and custom downloads.

3. Diversity

Your ecommerce website doesn’t have to replace your Etsy store. Instead, it can become your primary store as you use Etsy, Google Shopping, Bonanza, and eBay as alternative online marketplaces to make sales and scale your business.

Omni-market strategies and tools like Zibbet also help spread your risk and protect your business from unexpected shutdowns, especially from account suspensions.

4. Increased Marketing Opportunities

Unlike the limits of using paid ads on Etsy, you can market your handmade product listings to customers across social media and other platforms in different ways.

You simply get to open your business to new markets and sell unlimited products to a more diverse audience.

5. Reduced Cost Per Sale and Repeated Sales

Currently, Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee for all products uploaded to its website. You also incur a 6.5% transaction fee, amongst other fees. That often makes your items more expensive and sometimes inaccessible to customers.

Related reading: Bypass “Selling on Etsy Fees” with StoreBuilder >>

In contrast, if you own an ecommerce website, you reduce the costs you pay per sale, which leads to more sales and repeat customers. You can recover abandoned shopping carts too.

6. No Price Wars

Are you selling the same product as another crafter on Etsy? Two words: Price wars. And who’s to stop others from joining the fray?

Having your own online business website takes away the risk of price wars. You only need to focus on marketing your products to potential customers at an ideal price.

What To Look For in a Good Etsy Alternative

Are you looking for an alternative to your current Etsy store? Here are some key features to look out for.

Lower Ownership Cost

Consider the cost of ownership as you choose a new ecommerce platform. As a small business that deals with handmade goods, you want an economical option that beats the option of owning an Etsy storefront.

Most platforms charge a monthly fee and payment processing fees. Find out if these are feasible for your ecommerce store.

Integration Capabilities

Integrations improve the performance and functionality of your online store, giving you a one-stop solution. Would you like to plug your Etsy account into your online store? With integrations, you can do that.

Other essential integrations to look out for include payment providers like Stripe and PayPal. The more a platform can integrate with other tools, the better.

Appealing UI/UX

Does your online store have an appealing and user-friendly interface? Can your customer navigate pages on your ecommerce site easily? 73.1% of web designers believe non-responsive design increases your website bounce rate, and with good reason.

Related reading: 16 Best Ecommerce Website Examples & Tips for 2022 >>

The best Etsy alternatives offer excellent ecommerce UX that appeals to buyers and brings them back for more. Excellent SEO functionality is also something to look out for.

Scalability

Choose a solution that allows you to grow beyond your current capacity. Can your chosen sales channel handle a spike in visitors? Can it perform consistently without experiencing any crippling downtime?

Where possible, opt for high-quality cloud-based solutions with features that let you meet the demands of your growing business.

Security

Does your platform offer cutting-edge security? If you’re handling payments through your website, ensure the platform guarantees your customer base’s privacy and security.

Your ecommerce website should also be PCI compliant, use HTTPS, and have robust firewalls and multilayer security.

Best Etsy Alternatives

Here are three great Etsy alternatives:

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that scales your WP website into a fully functional ecommerce store.

All you need is web hosting for your WordPress site to get started. Although WooCommerce is technically free of charge, you can enhance its functionality with other plugins which aren’t free.

WooCommerce stores are often user-friendly to the customer, but they need some technical knowledge to build. Beginners can always opt for managed WooCommerce hosting and let an expert handle the nitty-gritty for you.

Magento

Magento is another excellent alternative to your Etsy store. It also comes in various formats, with the cheapest option being its open source version.

You can always opt for managed Magento hosting if you need to get to market fast. But unlike WooCommerce and Shopify, you’ll need some technical know-how to get the best out of Magento.

Magento is a dynamic, scalable, and customizable online shop platform capable of using multiple integrations, languages, and currencies.

Shopify

Shopify is another alternative to Etsy. It’s already a popular option among Etsy sellers, especially entrepreneurs and crafters looking to build large-scale solutions for their businesses.

However, for its dynamic functionality and easy-to-use interface, Shopify is expensive. Shopify also subtly penalizes you for not using Shopify Payments or Stripe by charging higher fees for other payment processors.

Related reading: WooCommerce vs Shopify: Key Differences and How to Choose >>

Wrapping Up — Etsy Alternatives: 6 Reasons To Launch Your Own Online Store

WooCommerce and Magento are two excellent alternatives for your next chapter as an Etsy seller. They offer excellent scalability at manageable costs, and you have complete control of your store all the time.

Ready to build your first online store? Get started with StoreBuilder by Hostdedi and take away the hassle of learning to code. It’s an online store builder with the best already built-in — and it comes powered by fully managed WooCommerce hosting.

Check out StoreBuilder to get started today.

There are many benefits of optimizing and compressing your WordPress website’s images. These include improving your site’s speed and performance — both important ranking factors for search engine optimization (SEO). Even more critically, learning how to compress image size in WordPress will improve your website’s user experience.

Let’s take a look at the 10 best WordPress image compression plugins that can speed up your website:

1. Smush

2. TinyPNG

3. EWWW Image Optimizer

4. Optimus

5. Optimole

6. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

7. WP Compress

8. Imsanity

9. Imagify

10. reSmush.it

1. Smush

Smush is one of the best image compression plugins available for WordPress. With this plugin, you can optimize all of your images and configure each site individually in a single click while saving backups of original images.

Using Smush, any new images you upload will be optimized automatically. You can reduce your image size up to 5 MB — individually or in bulk — without affecting the image’s quality.

Some of Smush’s other features include:

• Multiple styles.
• Image resizing.
• Automated optimization.
• Multisite compatibility.
• Compression software settings.
• Compatibility with WP All Import, WP Media Folder, WPML.

2. TinyPNG

TinyPNG is another great image compression plugin for WordPress that will make your website faster. The plugin empowers you to automatically compress all your images without compromising quality. This compression includes reducing or eliminating metadata and removing redundant data distracting artifacts.

Some of TinyPNG’s other features include the ability to:

• Compress existing images in your media library individually or in bulk.
• Choose the size of the image that you want to optimize.
• Set a maximum size for your original uploads, which will be automatically resized if they exceed it.
• Preserve essential metadata like copyright information, GPS location on JPEG files, and time and date.

Hostdedi’ Fully Managed WordPress and Fully Managed WooCommerce Hosting have partnered with TinyPNG to provide a fix for oversized images.

3. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer is another excellent option to compress images in WordPress. Once you enable EWWW Image Optimizer plugin, it will automatically compress any new or existing images on your website. EWWW Image Optimizer also offers no restrictions for speed or file size.

Some of EWWW Image Optimizer’s other features include:

• Perfect optimization.
• Premium compression.
• Bulk optimization.
• Auto-scaling.
• Lazy loading.

4. Optimus

Optimus is another popular plugin that can be used to compress images in WordPress. With this plugin, you can reduce image file sizes up to 70% without losing their quality.

Some of Optimus’ other features include:

• Automatic optimization of original and preview images.
• Compatibility with WordPress Multisite and WooCommerce.
• Support of WordPress Mobile Apps and Windows Live Writer.
• No code adjustment needed.

5. Optimole

Optimole is another great WordPress image compression plugin. It provides reliable image optimization and delivery for your site with automatic compression.

Note that Optimole will require quick account creation and API key setup and configuration. But with its full automation and wide variety of features, the plugin will help you clean up heavy images and bulky webpages.

Some of Optimole’s other features include:

• Format based optimization.
• Smart cropping.
• Quality downgrade for slower connections.
• Full support for page builders like Elementor.
• Support for Retina and WebP images.

6. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel Image Optimizer is another one of the best WordPress image compression plugins. The plugin empowers you to resize and compress both images and PDF files, and it also saves the original copies so you can restore them if needed.

ShortPixel Image Optimizer also lets you choose compression formats. Once you activate the plugin, it will start compressing images and store your original images in a separate folder.

Some of ShortPixel Image Optimizer’s other features include:

• Ability to compress any JPG, JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, PNG, and GIF files.
• Ability to convert any JPEG, PNG, or GIF to WebP or AVIF.
• Automatic conversion of PNG to JPG if it will result in a smaller image size.
• Optimization of thumbnails and featured images.

7. WP Compress

WP Compress is one of the most useful WordPress image optimization plugins. It enables you to automatically optimize your images based on incoming traffic to shrink file sizes and improve load times.

WP Compress will also adapt your images to be the right size for your user’s screen, with no visible quality difference between browsers.

Some of WP Compress’ other features include:

• CDN to serve images quickly to the user’s location.
• Prevention of over-compression.
• EXIF data preservation.

8. Imsanity

Imsanity is the perfect WordPress image compression plugin for blogs that don’t require original high-resolution images to be stored on their website. It’s also ideal if you don’t want to resize your images on your own before uploading them.

Imsanity will help you automatically resize large image files and choose the size and quality you want. You can also set the maximum width and height of your images, and the plugin will automatically resize any images that exceed those parameters.

Some of Imsanity’s other features include:

• Bulk resize feature for previously uploaded images.
• Conversion of unoptimized file types like BMP and PNG to JPG.

9. Imagify

Imagify is an advanced WordPress image compression plugin that helps you compress newly uploaded images, along with existing images in your WordPress media folder. This plugin also gives you the option to reverse the compression or choose another level of compression. It serves optimized and responsive images in all environments.

Imagify gives you access to three levels of image compression that provide flexibility in balancing image quality with image size:

1. Normal, which won’t alter image quality.

2. Aggressive, which has a small but negligible loss of quality.

3. Ultra, which is the strongest image compression method and uses a lossy algorithm (meaning it reduces file size by discarding less important information).

10. reSmush.it

reSmush.it is another popular option to compress images on WordPress sites. Using this plugin, you can exclude specific types of images from compression.

reSmush.it automatically compresses images up to 5MB on upload. It also provides a bulk optimization option for older images.

Some of reSmush.it’s other features include:

• Support for PNG, GIF and JPG files.
• Different optimization levels.
• File logging for developers.
• Optimized image statistics.
• Preservation of EXIF data during optimization.
• Ability not to preserve image backups.

Consider Hosting With Hostdedi

Hostdedi’ Fully Managed WordPress and Fully Managed WooCommerce Hosting have partnered with TinyPNG to provide a fix for oversized images. The Compress JPEG & PNG images plugin from TinyPNG is available to you at no additional cost! We make sites fast with premium image compression, a built-in CDN, and advanced caching.

Not a Hostdedi user yet? Check out our Fully Managed WordPress and Fully Managed WooCommerce hosting solutions. Have a question about our plans? Chat with an expert today.