Divi Resources
Recommended tools that just work, period.
With over ten years of WordPress experience and working with the Divi theme since it was originally launched in 2013, we’ve tested A LOT of website tools and WordPress plugins. We also support our own Divi plugins, and in doing so have an advantage of troubleshooting even more of these tools on our customers’ sites.
We’ve made and learned from our own mistakes as well as the mistakes our customers have made on their sites. It would be a gross understatement to say that we’ve gained a wealth of knowledge in the process. Rather than keep this knowledge to ourselves, we thought it was only right that we pass it along to you and the rest of our customers.
Below are all of our most recommended and time-saving tools for keeping your Divi website running like a well-oiled machine.
* It’s important to note that some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that we could earn a commission (at no cost to you) if you click on the link and purchase the product. Please trust that every single product below is one we have tested and used ourselves and highly recommend. In fact, many of the products below are not affiliates or have competing products that offer higher commission. We have not and will never include any product in the list below if we do not believe 100% that it is the best of its kind. In fact, if you can recommend a better product or have had a bad experience with any of the products below please share that with us.
SiteGround
We recently switched from Inmotion Hosting’s VPS hosting to SiteGround’s Cloud Hosting and I can’t say enough about SiteGround. They are notorious for excellent support but after experiencing it firsthand, we’re completely blown away.
We’ve submitted three support tickets and initiated two support chats and never waited more than five minutes for either. In each response, the tech seemed knowledgeable and was very helpful.
It’s a little early to say too much about the hosting itself, but so far it seems to be performing much better than our VPS on Inmotion. This website is hosted on that server so you can judge for yourself 🙂
Divi Theme
Our entire business model is based around the Divi theme by Elegant Themes. We would be remiss if we didn’t include it in our list!!!
Divi is a great example of how far WordPress has come since the early days. It’s not perfect. And it’s not for everyone. But it would be difficult to find another WordPress theme that offers the same feature list, functionality and value as Divi.
Easy Digital Downloads
Easy Digital Downloads is a must-have plugin if you’re planning to sell digital products (images, audio files, video files, eBooks, PDFs, WordPress plugins, etc.)
WooCommerce is great if you need to sell physical products. You can also sell digital products with WooCommerce, but it’s not a pleasant experience (trust us, we’ve tried).
Easy Digital Downloads is free and full of great features that make selling digital goods as simple as possible. They also offer a HUGE library of free and paid extensions that expand the functionality of the core plugin.
Throw in excellent support and reliability and this plug is a no-brainer.
MemberMouse
If you’re looking for a polished membership plugin, look no further than MemberMouse. Membership sites are difficult because each site can have a wide range of specific needs depending on the type of membership. But MemberMouse does a great job of balancing a large number of features without complicating the setup like other membership plugins.
It’s also very affordable at less than $20/month for sites with 1,000 members or less. If you’re just getting started, this is an excellent plugin to build your membership site on.
Gravity Forms
Every website needs a contact form that is reliable, has built-in spam control, and easily integrates with popular email marketing services like MailChimp, Aweber, and Constant Contact. Gravity Forms does all of this and much more.
There are free options available including the built-in contact form module in Divi and ContactForm7. But free isn’t always the best option. For something as important as receiving emails from potential customers or signing visitors up to email newsletters, you need something reliable.
The Gravity Forms plugin is as reliable as they get.
UpdraftPlus
Bad things happen to good people (and bad people), including server crashes and hacked websites. It would be a shame to put in countless hours of work on your website only to lose it all with no backup to recover from.
Updraft Plus is THE BEST WORDPRESS BACKUP PLUGIN available hands down. And it’s 100% free! It just works every time. No errors. No timeouts. No aborted backups. No worries.
The free version of the plugin lets you schedule backups to auto run and send backups to Dropbox or other platforms. And it’s easy to set up even for beginners. In this case, free is the best choice.