Stuart Neal
Director of Operations at Nextgen Marketing
We have worked with Vitalli and his team for well over a year now and will continue to do so in the future.
Having the confidence in an agency that allowed us to scale up and down development resources, as and when needed, has really made a positive difference to our agency.
Home / Blog / WordPress / Industry Report – Most popular plugins for wordpress agencies in 2026
Today I got to read the report by WP Umbrella – one of the big player in WordPress Maintenance area. It’s a Saas that helps agencies automate maintenance for clients and while we don’t use them for our clients – the data based on 80 000 wordpress clients that are under maintenance plans in different agencies – is kind of report I always would love to read:
This report was a kind where some data was more interesting and surprising than I thought
Below you can see top-10 most used plugins by agencies
1. Yoast: 46%2. Elementor: 40% (Pro: 35%)3. Wordfence: 30%4. Advanced Custom Fields PRO: 28%5. Redirection: 25%6. WP Rocket: 24%7. Classic Editor: 23%8. Gravity Forms: 21%9. Rank Math SEO: 20%10. Contact Form 7: 20%
As you see – most popular plugin is not a page builder, but SEO plugin. It’s because WordPress is an amazing tool for SEO, and this was a primary reason we built our website with WordPress last year.
By default, for 8 years wordpress comes with Gutenberg but agencies ( Codelibry included ) still prefer classic editor.
Here is how I explain this inside my agency:
So, for the workflow where design comes first, I see why it makes sense to use the classic editor and for the blog – Gutenberg wins easily.
I also still think FSE experience for clients is too much flexibility and Don’t really like ACF Gutenberg experience.
The ACF and ACF PRO were and still remain the main choice for agencies. Even when the ACF Fork is free, agencies still pay for an agency-wide license and use this plugin for clients.
Honestly, we stick with ACF PRO as well. Maybe to support ACF as a victim in that situation, plus the agency license is quite affordable when you calculate the cost per use on each client website.
When there are 2 solutions: one if free and another is premium – agencies tend to pick premium
Aurellio Volle – the founder of WP Umbrella says
When a client is footing the bill, agencies buy the tool with a support contract.”
For me, this makes sense; however – I am still on CF7 usage in most cases. Maybe we just have the good solutions and use case for it – but I don’t like over-page-built form plugins.
This mini-market report really shows a couple of interesting things that are going on in agencies that build with WordPress for their clients. These are not good or bad facts. Just something you may consider in your development activities.
