10 Best WordPress Community Plugins for 2022

Regardless of the type of website you own and run, you’re constantly on the lookout for ways to retain as well as engage your visitors. This is where the WordPress community plugin comes in.

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Quality content goes a long way, however, forming a community around your website can take you a step further and make your goals achievable. Including community functionality in your website can be an exceptional approach to developing a long-lasting relationship with your users, thus, making your site a success.

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Fortunately, WordPress makes it pretty simple to implement. With the help of the ever-growing options of WordPress community plugins available, adding community functionality to your site now can be seamless and efficient.

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In this article, you’ll discover which WordPress community plugin you can use to add community functionality to your site and how effective they can be to your community site!

Choosing WordPress Best Community Plugin in 2022

Testing plugins is necessary to determine whether you will enjoy the user experience and how it appears on the frontend of your site. This is especially true for communities and forums, where you'll need to manage the community and make the forum attractive so people will want to visit again.

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The top WordPress community plugins, most of which are free, are listed here. We hand-picked all of the WordPress community builder plugins on the list based on their active installations, ratings, and updates.

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As a result, you can look over each plugin and select the one that best suits your website.

1. bbPress
2. BuddyPress
3. Youzify
4. UserPro
5. Ultimate Memberships Pro
6. Community by PeepSo
7. wpForo Forums
8. WP Symposium Pro
9. Ultra Community
10. AtomChat

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1. bbPress

Although among the oldest WordPress Community plugins, bbPress is still running strong. It is a top favorite WordPress community builder among WordPress users for creating a forum-enabled site. It has a lightweight build and an unbloated interface.

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This plugin performs as expected, and it includes basic customization capabilities such as color adjustments, keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to use a visual editor when users are writing.

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Because the bbPress plugin is absolutely free, you won't have to worry about any unexpected upsells when you visit the website.

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By adding bbPress, your community website can have features such as:

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• Over 200 extensions: You can choose from over 200 extensions to enhance your forum.

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• Advanced features: Basic user avatar support, attachments, social sharing, breadcrumbs, and more are among the extensions available.

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• It's compatible with all well-known themes and won't slow down your website.

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• Akismet support: So you don’t see any spam going through your forums.

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• Robust infrastructure: This plugin allows you to sort comments and responses in a blog or post. On the website, users can flag and report unwanted content.

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bbPress Price: Free-to-use plugin

2. BuddyPress

BuddyPress is an easy-to-use, open-source WordPress community plugin. This plugin is loaded with features and extensions that empower you to run a social online community site that is robust and unique.

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With this plugin installed, you can enable your community of users to interact and socialize with one another on an online platform and truly make them feel connected.

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BuddyPress has some simple but out of the box features which truly help you transform your WordPress community website:

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• Lets users send direct messages to each other
• Helps create friends lists and add or remove friends
• Create groups and join groups
• Answer questions in the forum or create forum threads
• Sign up for email notifications
• BuddyPress User Blog - This feature allows your users to create and share their blogs on their profiles
• BuddyBoss Wall - Something similar to a Facebook wall, with this feature you can enable your users to write on each other’s wall

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BuddyPress Price - Free

3. Youzify

Youzify is a highly customizable and WordPress best community plugin that allows your users the opportunity to create a custom profile or page according to their likes. This feature-laden WordPress community builder plugin allows your website to produce a unique user experience which translates into your community site becoming a social hotspot and you achieving substantial community engagement.

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Youzify includes all features all necessary features needed for building a great community website:

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• Highly Responsive Design
• MyCred, MailChimp, Giphy, Mailster, bbPress Integrations
• Powerful Admin Panel with color schemes, custom profile widgets, social network icons, profile structures, and much more
• Secure Memberships with social login, advanced Captcha, secure password reset, limited login attempts
• Monetize with Ads, Donations, Sponsors, or charge a subscription fee
• Ajax Admin Panel

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Youzify Price: $60 for Lifetime Youzify Pro

4. UserPro

UserPro is a simple-to-use all-in-one WordPress community plugin that helps complete your community website. The plugin offers features such as building front-end user profiles, registration, and login for WordPress as well as content restriction, verified accounts, and user badges amongst others.

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By adding UserPro, your community website can have features such as:

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• Enabling Social connect and instant profile sync via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bkontakt, LinkedIn, and Instagram
• Custom Redirection after login/registration
• You can give each registration form an automatically assigned user role
• MailChimp Integration - Link UserPro fields with MailChimp list fields for advanced email forms
• WooCommerce Sync - This allows you to manage the WooCommerce Shipping and Billing fields directly in UserPro forms and extend the WooCommerce checkout page with custom fields added by UserPro.
• SVG Avatars Generator Integration - For unique user avatars
• BuddyPress Integration - UserPro allows you to synchronize UserPro profiles with BuddyPress profiles
• You can also choose to display online users on the website and also their profile pictures
• Display users by specific role
• Admin can block/unblock user accounts

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UserPro Price: $39 for a single site

5. Ultimate Memberships Pro

Ultimate Memberships Pro is a must-have for community sites that are subscription-based and give access to content and plans based on membership levels.

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This plugin allows you to monetize your website by providing you with paid and free membership levels as well as subscription packages that allow you to restrict visible content as per the membership fee paid.

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The plugin also comes packed with some other desirable features such as:

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• Sale of Subscriptions via WooCommerce
• Restriction of pages and URLs
• Restriction of Keywords
• Dashboard Statistics
• Responsive Design that looks beautiful on any type of design
• Payment Gateways such as PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2CheckOut, Braintree, Payza, Bank Transfer integrated
• Drip Content - UMPro allows you to release content at regular intervals, with settings for when each item becomes available based on subscription time or level
• The plugin also locks and unlocks content based on subscription level
• UMPro is integrated with 9 email marketing platforms for ease of marketing reach
• Social Login with sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, VKontakte, Tumblr integrated
• Custom Redirects
• GDPR Compliant

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Ultimate Memberships Pro: Price: $59/1-site

6. Community by PeepSo

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Community by PeepSo allows you to create a variety of communities on top of your WordPress site, including memberships, registration platforms, user profiles, and social networks in the style of Facebook.

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It's a lightweight plugin that allows you to quickly and easily integrate online communities into your WordPress website. Furthermore, it's quite user-friendly, similar to Facebook, so you'll have a social network for WordPress in a matter of seconds.

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PeepSo has a contemporary appearance and comes with a variety of design tools that allow you to personalize the look and feel of your community. It lets you employ widgets to display user profile photographs, rich media, and friends lists, for example.

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Features

• Users can follow each other on social media, create cover photographs and avatars, reply to each other's posts, pin posts, schedule posts, and so on.

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• PeepSo includes a hashtags widget that displays a cloud of the most often used hashtags in posts.
• A dashboard providing an overview of your community will be available to you.

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• With blogging features, it offers built-in community SEO and OG (Open Graph meta tag) settings.

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• It offers BadgeOS is a plugin that allows users to earn badges, points, and other rewards for participating in community activities.

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• You may also award points to your user for the most active participation in the community.

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• Your users can also create poll questions that others can vote on.

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Community by PeepSo Price: Free

7. wpForo Forums

The greatest WordPress forum plugin is wpForo Forums. A full-featured yet simple and light forum solution. Modern and responsive forum layouts and styles are included. This WordPress best community plugin includes everything you'll need to build a professional and efficient community. A powerful and attractive forum with a variety of features.

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For those who like a more current design than bbPress, we recommend the WPForo Forum plugin. The colors appear to be brighter, the threads are well-organized, and it is pretty simple to follow even for new users. To get you started, there are a few layouts available, all of which are modern and responsive.

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Features:

• Antispam and Akismet are both built into the forum plugin, so you can combat some of the spam that plagues boards.

• It has a more modern forum design than bbPress and some of its competitors.
• Users can cast votes and respond to questions.
• The profile system is quite sophisticated, including member ratings and badges for establishing credibility.
• A drag-and-drop editor controls the forum administration system. As a result, you won't have to fiddle with any switches or codes.
• Users can subscribe to specific topics and receive updates as they are updated.

• WPForo Forum comes with three different layouts: one with an extended forum, one with a condensed forum, and one with a question-and-answer format.
• Other plugins are constantly being developed to be compatible with WPForo Forum. There's one plugin for advanced attachments and another for blog publishing, for example.

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wpForo Forums Price: Basic FREE, addons cost between $11 and $95

8. WP Symposium Pro

The WP Symposium Pro Social Network Plugin, like BuddyPress, converts your WordPress website into an online community. This includes a full forum and activity wall, as well as various other features seen only on social media sites like Facebook. Users visit your website after the app has been installed and create profiles. They have control over such profiles and can add friends with whoever they want to speak to.

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Users get email alerts as soon as any action is taken. So, whenever you liked anything on a friend's page or sent them a message, they'd get a notification describing what you did.

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Because forums are so great for discussions like gaming, clubs, dating, and technology, it's occasionally a good idea to go beyond the conversational aspect and include more advanced social profiles.

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WP Symposium Pro's abundance of customization features is one of the things that makes it stand out. Shortcodes are commonly used to make creative modifications to a page, where you may modify things like colors, fonts, buttons, and more.

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WP Symposium has a lot more unique features than some of the other WordPress forum plugin options.

Features

• Selective sharing and YouTube video attachments, for example, are difficult to come by elsewhere.
• WP Symposium is one of the easiest forum plugins to edit thanks to shortcodes.

• Your forums' access and permissions can be fine-tuned.
• Custom fields are accessible, for forum posts and replies.
• You can like and dislike things, but you can also turn them off if you want.
• The plugin has a number of different style templates.

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WP Symposium Pro Price: Free

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9. Ultra Community

Ultra Community is one of the most in-demand WordPress community plugins which helps transform your regular website into a full-blown community site. The plugin comes packed with features that aid in community development and help nurture relationships amongst members.

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With the help of this plugin, you can create a responsive and functional community website without any deep programming knowledge.

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Some attractive features of this plugin are:

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• Customizable and Stunning User Profile
• Create and join user groups
• Create customizable login and registration forms
• Enable members to create custom wall posts
• Ultra Community provides an interactive front-end user login experience, complete with error handling and specific redirection options.
• You can either activate the plugin network-wide or on a single site on a WP Multisite.
• Create user roles and add permissions and capabilities to them
• Email notifications to users
• Translation Ready into German, Italian and Swedish

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Ulta Community Price: Free

10. AtomChat

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AtomChat is a chat plugin that enables your community members to converse with one another without redirecting them to another page.

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By installing this plugin on your website, you can easily add real-time chat functionality to your site and transform your online community into a truly social community!

Some extraordinary features of this plugin include:

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• Real-time text chat, video, and voice call

• Real-time translation with over 30 languages supported

• Collaborative features such as Screen sharing and whiteboard

• White Label Mobile Apps so that your members never miss a notification

• Monetize with ads and tiered access

• Customize your chat window with the Admin Panel

• 30+ Integrations

• GDPR Compliant

Price - $49/month

Wrapping up

So, we've assembled a list of the top WordPress community plugins to help you expand your community website. Whether you want to start a community blog or a forum, these plugins are the best choices. But, before you start, think about what kind of community you want to build, what kind of content you want to provide, and how that will bring value to it. Start an online community if you have something valuable to offer the users, not merely to fit in with the herd.

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Finally, consider aspects such as speed, versatility, and compatibility before making your final decision on the WordPress community plugin. The overall experience of visitors to your site will be determined by these elements.

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