A well-maintained WordPress database is fundamental for ensuring website performance, security, and overall user experience. At WPBeginner, we understand the need for proactive database management and have used different database plugins over the years to perform this function on our websites.
For this guide, we have carefully chosen these plugins based on their features, usability, and reputation within the WordPress community.
Whether your primary concern is optimizing database size, managing website migrations, or safeguarding your data, we will explore solutions that cater to your specific needs.
By implementing a suitable database plugin, you can significantly enhance your website’s performance, minimize the risk of data corruption, and ultimately ensure a smooth and efficient experience for your visitors.
If you are in a hurry, then take a quick look at our expert picks to make a decision:
| # | Plugins | Best For | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Duplicator | All in one solution | $49.50/yr + Free |
| 🥈 | WP-DBManager | Database optimization | Free |
| 🥉 | WPForms | Saving form data in WordPress database | $49.50/yr + Free |
| 4 | Search & Replace Everything | Running a search and replace in your database | Free |
| 5 | WP-Sweep | Cleaning WordPress database | Free |
Why Use a WordPress Database Plugin?
WordPress stores a lot of information in your database, from comments to posts, user information, plugin data, and more.
Over time, your database can become cluttered, which can slow down your website and even cause WordPress errors. WordPress database plugins can help optimize and clean up your database to make sure your site is as fast as possible.
Other WordPress database plugins can help you store and display data, back up your database to keep your site safe, and more.
How We Test And Review WordPress Database Plugins?
To give our readers the best recommendations, we tested the most popular database plugins on real websites. When doing that, we particularly focused on the following criteria.
Ease of Use: We have added plugins that are easy to navigate for beginners and come with extensive documentation in case a user needs help.
Features: For this showcase, we have listed plugins that allow easy database management, file deletion, backup creation, and more.
Reliability: We have only included the tools that we have tested ourselves on real websites.
Why Trust WPBeginner?
WPBeginner has a team of experts with 16+ years of experience in WordPress, SEO, online marketing, hosting, and more.
We thoroughly test and extensively review each plugin in the list to give you the best recommendations. For details, see our editorial process.
With that said, let’s show you some of the best WordPress database plugins you can use with your site.
1. Duplicator Pro
Duplicator Pro is the best WordPress backup plugin, used by over 1.5 million websites.
It allows you to create a complete backup of your WordPress website and store it safely in the cloud or on your computer. You can choose to back up your entire WordPress site and databases or select specific website files.
You can back up your site and databases to Dropbox, Amazon S3, FTP, Google Drive, and other cloud storage providers.
The premium version comes with scheduled backups, advanced features to migrate and clone websites, custom search and replace, multisite support, and more. There’s also a free version of Duplicator that you can use to get started.
For more details, see our guide on how to back up your WordPress site with Duplicator.
Alternative: We also recommend UpdraftPlus as a database and backup solution.
2. WP-DBManager
WP-DBManager is an all-in-one tool for WordPress database optimization. The plugin is very feature-rich, but it’s still beginner-friendly.
It lets you optimize your databases, repair and restore databases, create database backups, and delete database backups you’ve created.
Plus, once you configure the initial settings, it will run in the background, so your WordPress database will always be optimized.
3. WPForms
WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress used by over 6 million websites.
It lets you easily create any kind of form for your WordPress website, like contact forms, order forms, user registration forms, and more.
There’s a library of over 1300+ templates you can use to get started, and every template can be completely customized with the drag-and-drop builder.
When a user submits a form on your site, all form data is automatically saved in your WordPress database.
WPForms then takes this data and makes it easy to view within your WordPress dashboard. You can see all the contact data, field labels, number of entries, and more. It’s essentially a front-end database of your contact list.
To learn more, see our guide on how to save contact form data in the WordPress database.
You can connect your WordPress forms to Google Sheets or any other email marketing service as well to help improve your workflows and save time.
4. Search & Replace Everything
Search & Replace Everything by WPCode is a useful plugin that can help with moving WordPress to a new domain and various other quick find & replace tasks.
When you’re migrating a website, you usually need to make changes to the database, URLs, media files, and more.
This plugin makes it easy to run a search and replace in your WordPress database. It also has advanced controls, so you can select specific tables, see what fields will be replaced before running the plugin, and more.
Plus, it supports large websites with tons of data so you don’t have to worry about slowing down or crashing your site.
The free version comes with all of the find and replace features you need. However, there is a premium version with more advanced features.
For more information, you can see our Search & Replace Everything announcement.
Alternative: Better Search Replace
5. WP-Sweep
WP-Sweep is a WordPress database plugin that makes it easy to clean up your WordPress database and improve your WordPress performance and speed.
It lets you easily clean up areas like your post metadata, comments, post revisions, uninstalled plugins, and more.
There’s a user-friendly settings screen that lets you choose which areas of your database to clean up with a single click.
The plugin also uses the WordPress delete function to remove database data, which helps to ensure there’s no accidental data loss.
6. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is a relational database plugin and the most advanced WordPress form builder on the market.
With this plugin, you can upload and collect data through front-end forms. Then, you can display that data on your website in a variety of different ways.
The Formidable Views addon available on the Plus plan lets you display data in a grid, table, calendar, and other formats. This is useful for creating a job board, showing real estate listings, displaying registered users, and more.
All data submitted through the forms you create with the plugin automatically goes to your WordPress database. Then, you can use the backend interface to sort, filter, and search through your data.
You can also allow users to upload images, blog posts, and other forms of data.
Formidable Forms lets you create a frontend database for WordPress with their advanced Views addon.
For more details, you can see our guide on how to create a searchable database in WordPress.
7. Easy Username Updater
Easy Username Updater is a free plugin that makes it easy to change your WordPress username.
WordPress makes it easy to change your full name from your user profile. But, if you want to change your username, then you’ll need to use a tool like phpMyAdmin to make changes to your database.
This plugin simplifies the process and lets you simply change your username and the usernames of other users right from your WordPress admin panel.
To learn more, see our guide on how to change your WordPress username.
8. JetPack Backup (VaultPress)
JetPack Backup is a popular WordPress backup plugin by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It was initially launched as VaultPress but has been relaunched and redesigned as Jetpack Backup.
The plugin offers daily automated backups without slowing down your website. These backups also include a full WordPress database backup.
This backup solution is also geared towards WooCommerce store owners, so your order and customer data are always safe.
Beyond backups, you can restore your entire site to a previous version with a single click.
9. TablePress
TablePress is one of the best WordPress table plugins you can use to display your data.
The plugin makes it easy to create beautiful tables without writing any code. There are unique features that make your tables more interactive, like pagination, filtering, sorting, and more.
You can import and export existing tables in CSV, Excel, HTML, and JSON format. This makes it easy to migrate your tables from another table plugin.
TablePress stores all of the table data in your WordPress database.
For more details, see our guide on how to add tables in WordPress posts and pages.
10. SearchWP
SearchWP is the best WordPress search plugin and makes it easy to improve WordPress search.
The plugin gives you complete control over your website search algorithm, so you can choose how you want content to rank in your WordPress search results.
It creates its own custom WordPress database to store and maintain its own search index.
This means you get access to your search data so you can improve your content and create a better user experience.
For more details, see our guide on how to use multiple search forms in WordPress.
11. Advanced WordPress Reset
Advanced WordPress Reset lets you reset and restore your WordPress database to its original status like a fresh WordPress install.
You can also reset specific areas of your WordPress site, such as cleaning up the uploads folder, deleting all comments, removing all plugins, etc.
This is a really powerful plugin that’s often used by developers and freelancers when building staging websites or testing. It’s not something you want to use on a live website.
12. wpDataTables
wpDataTables is a premium table plugin that makes it easy to add visually stunning tables to WordPress.
The plugin has an easy-to-use table builder, so you can create feature-rich tables without writing any code.
It’s equipped with features that let you add star ratings, style different cells, add shortcodes, and much more.
It also has unique features that prevent deleting tables in the WordPress database and can connect your tables to multiple WordPress databases.
Final Thoughts on WordPress Database Plugins
While the above list contains the most popular use cases of WordPress database plugins, it’s important to emphasize that almost all WordPress plugins interact with the database.
So, it’s really impossible to create the best WordPress database plugin list without fully understanding the use case.
Here are some other bonus WordPress plugins that interact with the database:
- AIOSEO – best WordPress SEO plugin used by over 3 million sites. It stores your website’s SEO data in the WordPress database, including all 404 errors and other useful insights.
- SeedProd – best drag & drop website builder for WordPress. It lets you create custom WordPress themes without any code, and all data is stored in the database.
- HubSpot – one of the best WordPress CRM software that helps you create a contact database in WordPress. It works well with WPForms.
- MonsterInsights – the best WordPress analytics plugin that brings your Google Analytics data inside your WordPress dashboard.
- MemberPress – allows you to create a members-only area and sell courses in WordPress. It lets you store a member’s directory in the WordPress database.
- AffiliateWP – best WordPress affiliates plugin that allows you to create and manage a partner referral program in the WordPress database and dashboard.
- Sugar Calendar – simple and lightweight event management system allowing you to use your WordPress database as a calendar solution.
- WP Mail SMTP – stores a log of all emails sent by your WordPress site in a database so you can ensure emails are actually getting delivered to your customers.
That’s just a quick list of bonus plugins that interact with the WordPress database that you may want to use.
Related Guides to WordPress Database Plugins
- How to Repair WordPress Database (6 Easy Methods)
- How to Easily Find and Replace Text in Your WordPress Database
- Where Does WordPress Store Images on Your Site?
- How to Reset Your WordPress Database to Default Settings
- How to Change the WordPress Database Prefix to Improve Security
- Which WordPress Files Should You Backup? (+ How to Do It)
- How to Add a Custom Database Error Page in WordPress
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Olaf
The Search and Replace plugin is top-notch. It’s incredibly helpful during migrations. It’s not that I don’t know how to work with a database or handle everything in phpMyAdmin, but sometimes it’s time-consuming. This plugin can replace needed items in the database remarkably quickly. It’s great for one-time use as well as for longer-term tasks. For me, it’s definitely something worthwhile to have in your plugin portfolio and to know how to use. It can save a lot of time and effort.
kzain
I’ve been struggling to optimize my WordPress database, and this article has given me the perfect solutions. I appreciate the clear explanations, pros, and cons of each plugin. Your expertise and dedication to helping WordPress users like me are truly appreciated. I’ve already found the perfect plugin to boost my site’s performance
Moinuddin Waheed
having a clean and optimized database is a must to have better control over the overall functiong of the websites.
I have used updraft plus for database management but not sure how to have control over it.
like cleaning the revisions, deleting unwanted usage of the database and having a clean and intuitive interface.
I will explore duplicator pro to see the controls that I can have on my database.
Jiří Vaněk
I use and can recommend the Sweep plugin to everyone. I primarily use it for easily deleting revisions. Since I use Elementor on my website and have a relatively large number of articles, this plugin saves me from deleting revisions through phpMyAdmin. It’s a fantastic plugin for optimizing the database, and I highly recommend it as well.
WPBeginner Support
Thank you for sharing your recommendation from our list
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