The best WordPress mobile plugins

With the arrival of the mobile first approach to web design, re­spon­sive design is becoming more and more important. Luckily, special mobile plugins for WordPress make it possible for you to optimize your site for mobile devices is just a few steps. We take a look at some of the best WordPress mobile plugins.

Over 43% of all websites are built with WordPress, and many of them have seen better days — at least when it comes to tech­no­log­i­cal advances. You probably know sites like this: The font is way too small, the menu can only be navigated with two-finger zoom, and images spill out of the viewport of your smart­phone. The problem is that com­plete­ly re­design­ing a website with a re­spon­sive theme requires a lot of time and money.

To keep up with the demand created by mobile first, there are a number of mobile-friendly WordPress plugins for making your website re­spon­sive without changing the theme. And even better: This kind of website op­ti­miza­tion makes WordPress faster and improves your mobile SEO. Otherwise, if you’re creating a brand new WordPress site, you can choose a theme with re­spon­sive design from the start.

To see what’s at stake, take a look at the following example of a test site in WordPress version 5.9 with the theme Twenty Eleven made by WordPress.org.

This theme can hardly be called re­spon­sive. The images are scaled for mobile, but the text isn’t and, most im­por­tant­ly, neither is the menu. These problems are easily solved with a mobile plugin for WordPress. We tested some plugins to see what kind of results they produced when viewing a WordPress website on a smart­phone. Below we show you the results and discuss the various settings each plugin offers.

*Price rating based on the premium version for one website. **As a package with numerous extras.

WP Mobile Menu is an easy-to-use plugin that was updated with the release of WordPress 5.9.

This plugin adds a menu to the header of your WordPress site, which contains the title of your website and the hamburger menu button. The existing menu from the theme Twenty Eleven is also still displayed. WP Mobile Menu supports two further sub-menus. The new menu is sticky, meaning that it stays visible at the top of the page even when you scroll. When clicked on, the menu expands over the content of the site.

The seven menu items in the admin interface of WP Mobile Menu each contain pos­si­bil­i­ties for cus­tomiza­tion, including:

• Inserting in­di­vid­u­al­ized header text and/or logos instead of the au­to­mat­i­cal­ly inserted website title
• Cus­tomiz­able overlay
• Inserting a back­ground image for the menu
• Turning off the display of certain elements when the mobile menu is active
• Use of Google Fonts
• In­di­vid­u­al­ized menu design, e.g. choosing from five different designs for the hamburger button
• Two display modes for the menu: over the content or pushing out the content

In the paid version of the plugin, you can de­ac­ti­vate the menu for certain pages or choose different menu looks for different pages. It also comes with footer menus, ad­di­tion­al display modes for the menu, and access to 2,000 icons from various libraries.

This WordPress mobile plugins comes with a re­spon­sive, user-friendly admin interface.

The Max Mega Menu admin panel comes with the following features in the free version:

• Create hor­i­zon­tal mega menu elements with up to three levels
• In­di­vid­ual settings for each menu level, including the nav­i­ga­tion arrow
• Arrange elements with drag and drop (partially)
• Save menu designs as in­di­vid­ual themes
• Cus­tomized styling with CSS/SCSS
• Export and import of your own menu themes in JSON or PHP
• Easy access to doc­u­men­ta­tion

Some features require HTML or CSS knowledge, e.g. if you want to properly use the “z-index”.

The pro version comes with sticky, tabbed, accordion, and vertical menus, 600 menu icons, 200 Google Fonts, menu badges for increased vis­i­bil­i­ty, and support for WooCom­merce and Easy Digital Downloads.

The WordPress mobile plugins WPtouch adds a light­weight mobile theme to your existing site. It’s user friendly, and the elements that are only available in the pro version are specially marked.

Of all the WordPress mobile plugins tested here, this one makes the most no­tice­able visual changes to the site. The biggest dif­fer­ence from the other plugins we’ve described is the use of the cus­tomiz­er to adapt the mobile design. When you click “Change to mobile theme”, you’ll be able to see and adjust the mobile version of the site. The de­vel­op­ers based their work on Google’s rec­om­men­da­tions for efficient user ex­pe­ri­ence and created a very light­weight plugin. The new mobile site has a clear structure and the text blocks are much more readable.

The free version of the plugin comes with the following features:

• Choose from up to six devices/browsers for the mobile site to be optimized for
• Adapt the mobile version in the cus­tomiz­er
• Menu can be activated as a drop down or as pushing the content out of the frame
• Customize the position of the hamburger button
• Choose your own colors for the back­ground, header, menu, links, and headings
• Admin panel available in 23 languages
• Does not affect the original theme when shown on desktop or other WordPress settings

The pro version is rather expensive and can be purchased as a one-year sub­scrip­tion. It comes with premium support, ad­di­tion­al mobile themes, ad in­te­gra­tion, the “related posts” feature, and the use of jQuery.

AMP for WP is a project led by Google. This WordPress mobile plugin im­ple­ments Google’s guide­lines for better search engine vis­i­bil­i­ty and higher speeds for WordPress sites. This sup­pos­ed­ly helps boost the website’s ranking in Google search results.

The existing website is improved with a hamburger button in the header and more readable text blocks. When the default settings are on, the site runs no­tice­able faster, the menu takes up the whole screen when activated, and sub-menus open and close perfectly. The search bar is also in­te­grat­ed into the menu overlay.

Con­fig­u­ra­tion is divided into sections for beginners and experts and leads you through self-ex­plana­to­ry menu items in the admin panel. The result is equally im­pres­sive. There’s also extensive online doc­u­men­ta­tion.

This re­spon­sive plugin for WordPress comes with an immense range of features for making your site mobile friendly. The free version comes with four themes and over 300 possible con­fig­u­ra­tions, according to the de­vel­op­ers. Under “Ex­ten­sions” in the admin panel, you can purchase ad­di­tion­al features. Free features include:

• Support for page builders
• Automatic removal of unused CSS
• Support for Google Fonts, even for local use
• Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with various SEO tools
• Support for Google Tag Manager, Adsense (AMP-AD), Analytics Support, and ad­di­tion­al tools for analysis
• Possible to have different content for mobile and desktop
• “Related posts” feature
• Improved adap­ta­tion of images
• Embed YouTube videos, Vimeo, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook videos
• Integrate twelve new social media channels
• Set up the AMP version as a homepage and/or priority page
• Conforms with GDPR

Paid features include:

• Certain forms of ad admin
• Support for special contact forms
• Email opt in for newslet­ters
• Supports multiple languages with WPML, Polylang, and WeGlot
• Connect with e-commerce
• Templates for call-to-action elements
• Over 45 ad­di­tion­al features from the AMP world

By the way: AMP for WP is different from the open-source project AMP. The latter has taken up the task of building websites with sig­nif­i­cant­ly less code in order to improve their speed. You can read more about it in our guide on AMP plugins for WordPress. The WordPress mobile plugin AMP for WP partially takes up these tasks. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it takes into account WordPress SEO tips, coming from Google itself.