There are over 40,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin repository and there are only a few of these we disallow. By no means are we suggesting that all of these disallowed plugins are bad plugins.
Some of them can be very good. However, the main focus of the platform is to ensure the scalability of our customers. These plugins have proven to counteract that goal.
As for insecure plugins, we work with the plugin developers to find a fix, if one can be found then we’ll happily allow it to be used once the issue has been fixed.
These plugins and classes of plugins have been shown to clash with the solutions that are part of our service.
Related Posts Plugins
Almost all “Related Posts” plugins suffer from the same problems regarding MySQL, indexing, and search. These issues serve to make the plugins themselves very database intensive and so are disallowed.
- Dynamic Related Posts
- SEO Auto Links & Related Posts
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
- Similar Posts
- Contextual Related Posts
There are dedicated services which allow you to offload related post functionality to their servers. If you’re interested in providing related posts on your site, it is advised that you look into one of the services listed below instead.
- Bibblio Related Posts
- Jetpack Related Posts
- Related Posts for WordPress
- Outbrain
Duplicate Behavior Plugins
Like the caching and backup plugins, the following plugins also duplicate things that we already do for you in a more efficient, scalable, and configurable manner.
- No Revisions
- WordFence
- Bad Behavior
Server & MySQL Plugins
Here’s a class of plugins that we disallow simply because they either cause a high load on our servers or create an unnatural number of MySQL queries.
- Broken Link Checker
- MyReviewPlugin
- LinkMan
- Fuzzy SEO Booster
- WP PostViews
- Tweet Blender
Backup Plugins
We already take regular nightly backups of your site(s). These are done in an efficient, automated manner and the data is kept securely outside of your WordPress install. We make these backups available for you to rollback to (or download) whenever you’d like.
If you feel more secure with a secondary, off-site backup, we permit and recommend VaultPress.
The following backup plugins are disallowed:
- WP DB Backup
- WP DB Manager
- BackupWordPress
- VersionPress
Email Plugins
Just because you are able to send emails with WordPress, it doesn’t always mean you should. We want our customers to experience the same best-in-class experience with email as we provide with web hosting, so we recommend using a 3rd party service.
Specialist services like MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber and others offer complete email solutions for your business and will provide you with optimal results.
If your domain’s email provider offers its own SMTP server, you are welcome to configure that as your outgoing server. Be sure to check with your email provider about their bulk mail, opt-in mail, and anti-spam policies before doing so.
We have disallowed the following email plugin, as it allows you to send email blasts with WordPress.
- WP Mailing List
Broken Link Checker Plugins
If you used the Broken Link Checker plugin and wish we hadn’t banned it, we recommend that you use one of the following tools to check your site for broken links. They are not plugins and will, therefore, have no effect on your server performance.
- Broken Link Checker
Miscellaneous Plugins
Other plugins that we’ve decided to proactively remove include:
- Hello Dolly!
- WP phpMyAdmin
- Sweet Captcha
- EWWW Image Optimizer
Additional Scripts
Some frequently used scripts are known to contain vulnerabilities and insecurities. Our platform scans the files system periodically to identify and either patch or remove these scripts.
- TimThumb
- Uploadify
Complete List
These are the files and folders that we search for when we scan for disallowed plugins. You can compare this against your “wp-content/plugins/” directory to check for conflicts. If you find any we recommend you remove these as soon as possible or they will be removed by us after we provide notification that you have 7 days before we action the removal.
adminer async-google-analytics backup backup-scheduler backupwordpress backwpup bad-behavior broken-link-checker content-molecules contextual-related-posts duplicator dynamic-related-posts ewww-image-optimizer ezpz-one-click-backup file-commander fuzzy-seo-booster gd-system-plugin gd-system-plugin.php google-xml-sitemaps-with-multisite-support hc-custom-wp-admin-url hcs.php hello.php jr-referrer jumpple missed-schedule no-revisions ozh-who-sees-ads pipdig-power-pack portable-phpmyadmin quick-cache quick-cache-pro recommend-a-friend seo-alrp si-captcha-for-wordpress similar-posts spamreferrerblock ssclassic sspro super-post superslider sweetcaptcha-revolutionary-free-captcha-service text-passwords the-codetree-backup toolspack ToolsPack tweet-blender versionpress w3-total-cache wordfence wordpress-gzip-compression wp-cache wp-database-optimizer wp-db-backup wp-dbmanager wp-engine-snapshot wp-file-cache wp-mailinglist wp-phpmyadmin wp-postviews wp-slimstat wp-super-cache wp-symposium-alerts wpengine-migrate wpengine-migrate.tar.gz wpengine-migrate.zip wpengine-snapshot wpengine-snapshot.tar.gz wponlinebackup yet-another-featured-posts-plugin yet-another-related-posts-plugin