This is the third post we are writing about social media plugins, enhancements and/or tools. It is in our bid to answer questions and give tips to users that have contacted us (one time or the other) about the best social sharing plugins for WordPress.
We recently switched from AddThis to social warfare and SocialFans respectively. This is because we needed something more intuitive and user-friendly. These two seems to offer that at the moment and that very effectively.
Today’s post will feature more of social media sharing plugins that makes it easy for your readers to share your contents on the popular social media platforms.
We’ll advice you read the later part of our post on Social Media Icons [here] to see social media automation tools that lets you post to your fan pages automatically.
Top 6 Best Premium Social Media Plugins for WordPress
We’ll begin our list by mapping out the best six (6) premium social media sharing plugins that works flawlessly in improving your organic traffic and social media presence.
They were carefully described to help you choose the best social media plugin for your website, blog and/or forum hosted on the WordPress platform.
1. Social Warfare
Social Warfare plugin is an optimized social media plugin that’s optimized for speed and conversion.
It is very scalable, responsive and customizable. Th intuitive design is owing greatly to the amount of time, experience and high level of professionalism the developers put into making the tool.
Bit.ly URL shortening API is integrated with it, making it very easy for your readers to share a shortened version of your content to their twitter followers.
Twitter mention, Twitter cards and Twitter “click to tweet” are the other great twitter features that complements the social warfare plugin’s awesomeness.
Frame buster, analytics and share recovery is the other great features I love about the social warfare utility plugin.
While the frame buster makes it impossible for greedy content curation websites to steal your social mentions and social signals, the share recovery function is the ultimate, as it lets you preserver your social shares count irrespective of change from http to https, change of domain name and/or change of permalink structure.
It is priced at $29 and do come with a year subscription that entitles one to free technical support and plugin updates.
2. Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress
Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress plugin was introduced to us recently and so far, we are 97% satisfied with the result we’re getting from it.
It lets you capture leads, add events-triggered actions to embedded videos, display share buttons with multiple templates, display Facebook comments, display post share counts and lots of premium features.
With Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress plugin, you can display the most shared posts as widget, generate shortURL for your domain as well as track the most viewed content on your website.
The plugin is sold for $19 and comes with free updates and 6 months developer support.
[Full Features & Purchase Link]
3. Simple Share Buttons Plus
The Simple Share Buttons Plus plugin is very unique in that it has support for WhatsApp, social counts, custom twitter text, custom twitter hashtags, cached share counts (for faster loading), minimum share count and mobile-friendly share buttons.
Simple Share Buttons Plus plugin integrates well with most themes and allows mobile-specific social media buttons such as WhatsApp and buffer app.
The plugin is priced at $10 and comes with a full year free support and updates. The developer is easily reachable for support and offers refund for unsatisfied customers. You can explore the full features of the simple share buttons plus plugin from their official website linked below.
4. Ultimate Social Deux
Ultimate Social Deux plugin is a premium social media plugin that’s worth every cent spent on it. It features premium templates, analytics, share counts and mobile responsiveness.
Ultimate Social Deux social media tool for WordPress is fast, supports shortcodes and AJAX send mailfeature to mention but a few.
It is really awesome and integrates well with several custom themes and plugins to deliver speed and awesomeness to your readers.
When speed, viral contents, social media presence and quality referral/organic traffic is your concern, then Ultimate social deux plugin is the unrivaled answer.
It is sold for $ at the Envato scripts store (codecanyon.net) and comes with free updates and six months developer’s support.
[Details & Store Link]
5. Social Fans Counter
Social Fans counter social media plugin for WordPress does something a bit different from the three options above, it lets you share your social media fans alongside the number of followers in your blog’s sidebar, top and/or footer widget areas.
It is a premium plugin and features more than 25 popular social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, twitter and Linkedin.
It is compatible with all WordPress themes and plugins and is sold for $17 at the Envato Market. Social Fans counter plugin is great for social media promotion and works flawlessly on mobile devices.
[Details & Store Link]
6. Monarch
We saved the king for those that are patient enough to read through the list, monarch social media plugin is a top-notched tool to increase social media share and referral traffic.
Monarch social media plugin is created by Elegant Themes and offers great features that encourages users to share your contents on the popular social networks. Some of the mouth-watering features are :-
- Multiple button placement locations
- Floating sidebar
- Media hover social buttons (on images and videos)
- Automatic social sharing pop-ups
- Automatic social buttons fly-ins
- Time, action and/or activities triggered social buttons
- and lots more
Monarch should be picked as the unrivaled solution for encouraging social share by your readers. It is pricey as it distributed alongside an Elegant themes’ membership account.
Top 10 Best Free Social Media Plugins for WordPress
Here come the free options for adding a decent enough social media sharing buttons to WordPress. These social media tools works flawlessly with all WordPress themes and custom plugins.
1. JetPack
Jetpack is no mean name among self hosted WordPress software users as it tends to bring on the awesomeness of wordpress.com to wordpress.org users.
There are many interesting modules that’s packed with the jetpack plugin among which is the “Publicize feature that lets you publish to all your social media accounts at once ” and the “Sharing feature that lets your readers share your contents on the popular social media platforms”.
Jetpack social media plugin module is fast and light on your server as the bunch of work is done on their world class servers. You can install a copy from your WordPress dashboard or download and install manually from the WordPress repository.
2. Simple Share Buttons Adder
Simple Share Buttons Adder is another social media tool to beat in the WordPress plugin’s repository. It is practically intuitive, flexible, scalable and supports lazy loading for the icon images.
With the Simple Share Buttons Adder social media plugin, you can choose to show counters as well as display only the buttons that your readers are most likely to share.
It is available free at the WordPress Plugin repository.
3. Share Buttons by AddToAny
Share Buttons by AddToAny is fast and highly customizable, its standalone social media scripts was righteously featured in our last update about the top 10 social media sharing icons for all website.
With the AddToAny social media buttons, your readers can share your post on Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Google, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and well over 100 more sharing and social bookmarking websites.
It features :-
- Social media share counters
- Floating share buttons
- Smart Menu and universal share button
- Analytics and custom placement locations
It is compatible with the latest WordPress software version and works flawlessly with WooCommerce, Simple:press, bbpress and even with custom WordPress templates.
It supports WhatsApp, Baidu and goes free at the WordPress plugins directory.
4. Floating Social Media Icon
Floating Social Media Icon is highly rated WordPress plugin that lets your readers share your content across the popular social media platforms.
It is packed with advanced options and customization panel to help you create an environment that encourages your readers to share your contents on social networks and social bookmarking websites.
Floating social media icon plugin is developed and supported by Acurax Technologies, who are no mean Name in the WordPress plugins directory.
5. Floating Social Bar
Floating Social Bar plugin for WordPress is developed and maintained by Syed Balkhi (owner of wpbeginner.com), who knows so much about WordPress than come up with something below par.
His social media plugin rocks! And its aimed at helping you increase your social media shares by encouraging your website users to share your content to their social media fans and/or colleagues.
Floating Social Bar is extremely fast and does not add an extra load to your website, this way, your website speed isn’t impacted negatively by it.
6. Simple Social Icons
Simple Social Icons is a free social media tool for WordPress websites designed with a Genesis Framework/child theme.
It is fast, simple, intuitive and supports only the most popular social networks, this is in a bid to make sharing fun, faster and very much rewarding.
If your blog/website is built with a genesis theme and needs a simple, free, beautiful and intuitive social media plugin that doesn’t impact your website’s load time negatively, then, simple social icons for WordPress is the answer.
7. Mashshare
Mashshare social media plugin for WordPress is righteously promoted as a social media tool that helps your website’s social media presence and search engine optimization (SEO).
It is really beautiful and can route your website for increased social shares and bookmarks within few days of activating it.
It is mobile responsive and supports WhatsApp and other useful social media platforms.
8. Ultimate Social Media Icons PLUS
Ultimate Social Media Icons PLUS is one of the best social media plugins for WordPress. It is 100% free and offers features that most other free plugins do not have.
The design is premium. The buttons work with a touch of brilliancy and supports RSS, instagram and YouTube. It is compatible with latest WordPress version, themes and plugins.
9. WP Social Sharing
WP Social Sharing is mobile responsive and lets your readers share your post, pages and products to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest and Google+.
It is also a light weighted plugin and uses CSS in the place of image, thereby making your websites load faster. WP Social Sharing plugin supports WordPress shortcode and works flawlessly with all WordPress templates.
10. Simple Share Buttons Light
Simple Share Buttons Light is a faster version of Simple Share Buttons Adder. If you can’t ever imagine yourself sacrificing your website response time and/or speed for some fancy buttons, then, Simple Share Buttons Light plugin is what you need.
It lets your users share post and pages without adding any extra load to your website. You can download a copy from here or pick from one of its alternatives below.
Your Turn
We have shared the top best social media tools for you as a blogger, internet marketer and/or website owner. Some of the good plugins didn’t make the list because we are restricted to only about 16 of those.
There are other great social media plugins we left out such as :-
- Social Media Feather – lightweight social media sharing and follow buttons
- Free Tools to grow your Email List, Social Sharing and Analytics
and host of others.
Feel free to ask questions as well as list other social media tools you think are really awesome.
Hello, nice article! I would like to introduce you to a free push notification service. Truepush is a free web push notification service with easy WordPress, API, and Shopify integration. More than 30,000 brands service and save up to $600 per month on push notifications.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I have used the monarch plugin for the last two years and I am quite satisfied with it. Ultimate Social Deux is also to take note of. Others I came to know while reading this article. Though I wonder which one do you think is the best among the free plugins?
Hello friends, first of all thanks for sharing this very informative post, but I am looking for a free social media sharing plugin for my wallpapers site. please share some plugins which user can use for wallpaper sharing, I will be thankful to you for great help. Regards – Subash Kumar Sarker
Hi Subash,
You can use the free social media sharing plugin from addthis.com
Hello friends, first of all thanks for sharing this very informative post, but I am looking for a free social media sharing plugin for my wallpapers site. please share some plugins which user can use for wallpaper sharing, I will be thankful to you for great help. Regards – Alveena
Hey Obasi,
thanks for that nice and helpful acticle. I also love use plugins like Easy Social Share Buttons or Social Warfare. Another great Plugin I miss on your list is Blog2Social https://wordpress.org/plugins/blog2social/. For active sharing of blog posts, the Blog2Social plugin provides powerful options for auto-posting, scheduling and cross-promoting your posts across the various social media. The option to customize the social media post with individual texts and comments helps that the posts don’t look automatic.
Hey guys! I’d love to recommend you the coolest Social media plugin I’ve ever used for my website! Check it out: https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-builder/
No love for SumoMe? Pretty much every list like this I’ve come across has mentioned them as a top contender.. And the fact that they have a free version that you can try out before shelling out $$ for the Pro version is an added bonus!
Thanks for adding SumoMe to the List Zander,
SumoMe is a social media sharing tool we have used a lot, it can easily pass as one of the most effective tools to increase subscribers base and social media interaction.
But as it is with our list, We feature only tools we have used or are using and can confirm it works great for the purpose it’s being mentioned. Most times we have used SumoMe social interaction tool/service is on non-WordPress websites, hence our featuring it a-top our list of best free social media sharing tools for all websites.
Very contradicting statement from you. Second para contradicts what you wrote in first para
Sorry about that Jay,
I mean to say that- We’ve only used their services on custom HTML pages and never the WordPress plugin. Since this post is featuring the Social Media plugins we’ve used on WordPress and can confirm they really offer the best value for clients, it couldn’t make the cut.
We’ll try out their plugin on our future projects and would welcome honest review from users of it as well. Once again Jay, I do appreciate your contribution.
Hello.
Thanks for sharing nice list of social plugins. I would like to know about the fastest social sharing plugin with Whatsapp included. Thanks for the info. :_
Social warfare is blazing fast as it uses sprite CSS as against heavy images. It also comes with whatsapp option and makes sure that the button would only show up on devices with mobile user-agent.
The number two in our list is also light but displays the whatsapp button on PC and mobile without the option to turn it off for PC users.
Hi Obasi,
Thanks. I recently bought Easy Social Share and Simple Share plugins. But the first one is very complicated with large number of settings and also causing slowing of WordPress dashboard. The second one is not that good, with support also bad.
So do you still go with Social Warfare?
Sure thing that Palla,
Social Warfare is really worth its salt, and the version 2 is coming with lots of amazing features. The frame-buster and Whatsapp button auto-hide for PC users makes it pretty much a complete tool for social media interaction.
Their support staff are responsive, so is their money-back guarantee promise.
One more cool plugin missing in this list: https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-builder/
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your opinion on the List Natasha,
Do have a lovely week ahead.