14 Best Social Media Widgets for WordPress in 2022

With social media playing such an important role at the top of the marketing funnel, every online business should give visitors a frictionless way to share website content on social media. Luckily for WordPress users, this is easy with a social media widget.

Social media widgets are plugins that allow visitors to share your site’s content to their social profiles, follow your company’s social media profile, and connect your WordPress site and social presence in other ways.

When done well, the right social media widget can boost engagement with your content across platforms, driving up your traffic from non-organic sources and potentially tapping into a new audience. Let’s check out 14 of the best WordPress social media widget plugins to get you started.

Best Social Media Widgets for WordPress

1. AddThis

What we like: With over 100,000 active installations, AddThis is one of the most popular ways to add social share buttons to WordPress websites, and it’s not hard to see why — this free plugin makes it easy to place clean, modern social buttons on any page.

AddThis allows for several types of buttons, including floating buttons (which stick to the side of the screen as users scroll), inline buttons (to incorporate them into your content), and expanding buttons (great for saving space on mobile).

Lastly, you can connect to over 200 social media platforms and even customize your buttons’ colors to fit your branding.

Pricing: Free.

2. AddToAny Share Buttons

What we like: AddToAny Share Buttons helps you boost social engagement by adding easy sharing buttons for sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and more. Buttons are placed either with a shortcode or a widget.

Your social buttons can be made to float or stay fixed depending on your preference, and you have the option to add a share counter to any button as well. There’s also the option to upload your own custom buttons instead of the built-in ones. The plugin is mobile-optimized, retina-ready, and compatible with other modern plugins.

Pricing: Free.

3. Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons

What we like: This freemium share buttons plugin offers 16 different button designs that you can connect to over 200 social media platforms. Buttons can be customized with animated effects to catch a visitor's attention and encourage them to share. You can also make your social counts visible on your buttons.

If pop-ups are your thing, the free version of this plugin also allows for pop-ups that appear and encourage visitors to follow your social media accounts or share your content.

There’s also a premium version of this plugin that supports additional social networks, better mobile optimization, more customization options and control over your pop-ups, and features that increase engagement, like letting users follow you on Facebook without leaving your website.

Pricing: Free; $29.98/year.

4. Easy Social Share Buttons

What we like: Easy Social Share Buttons is the top-selling social sharing plugin on CodeCanyon, offering a nearly unmatched amount of functionality and customization for your social sharing strategy. If you want a feature-rich premium option, this is the way to go.

Included in your purchase is compatibility with more than 50 social media sites, a huge range of design options, fine control over your buttons’ visual details, built-in analytics, and mobile-friendly design.

This plugin’s features even go beyond social sharing buttons and include commenting, bookmark buttons, email subscription buttons, click-to-tweet, an embeddable Instagram feed, print and email buttons, and integration with social media chat so, for example, users can send you a Facebook message from your site. And this is only scratching the surface of what Easy Social Share Buttons can do.

Pricing: $22.

5. Social Warfare

What we like: Social Warfare is another plugin that offers both a free version and a premium version, allowing you to test it out before upgrading. The plugin developers stress this tool’s speed, ensuring that your share buttons look great but won’t slow your page load times.

Social Warfare works with most popular social media platforms you’ll need, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It’s possible to place your share buttons as sticky, so they stay on the page and attach share counts to your buttons too.

If you pay for the premium version of Social Warfare, you have access to other social media platforms like Reddit and Tumblr, plus email buttons, Pinterest pins on your images, click-to-tweet, automatic link shortening, and access to more button designs.

Pricing: Free; $29 for use on one website.

6. AccessPress Social Share

What we like: This freemium plugin also gives you the ability to share your website content on popular social platforms. The free version isn’t as feature-rich as other premium options we’ve listed so far, but it will get the job done for beginner site owners looking for a codeless way to place social buttons on their site.

Included with your download are buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn Digg, and email sharing, as well as five button themes for quick customization. Buttons are mobile-friendly and placed with shortcodes.

AccessPress Social Share Premium gets you even more themes, more social media sites, pop-ups, widgets for placing your buttons, and share counts.

Pricing: Free; $16.

7. Simple Social Media Share Buttons

What we like: The Simple Social Media Share Buttons plugin balances ease-of-use with flexibility, with a solid set of features for a free tool. It lets site owners place social share buttons in the sidebar, above and below post content, or inline with content. Supported platforms include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.

There’s also a pro version that lets you customize button colors, add animation transitions to buttons, hide buttons on mobile, and display share counts next to buttons. Pro also unlocks pop-up and fly-in buttons.

Pricing: Free; $27/year for use on one website.

8. MashShare

What we like: MashShare is unique in that it does not rely on external scripts to load its social sharing buttons. Instead, everything is loaded from your servers, which in turn keeps load times down.

MashShare is also a modular plugin — much of its functionality comes from free and paid plugin add-ons for things like image sharing, Twitter hashtags, YouTube video sharing, sticky buttons, and Google Analytics integrations. Install the modules you need to avoid a bloated website.

Pricing: The core version of the plugin is free; Add-ons are free and paid. You can also purchase an add-ons bundle, starting at €39/per year for eight add-ons on one site.

9. Spotlight Social Media Feeds

What we like: An embedded Instagram feed is another fantastic way to bring website visitors into your social audience. If you want to embed an Instagram feed directly on your WordPress site, Spotlight Social Media Feeds is one of the best plugins for the task.

Setting up a feed is as simple as connecting your account, picking a template, and placing the feed with a block, widget, or shortcode. You can also connect multiple Instagram accounts to your feed and order posts by date or popularity. Feeds are responsive on mobile devices, crawlable by search engines, and accessible for users with disabilities and limitations.

The premium version of the plugin comes with more templates, the ability to add post captions and stories to your feed, filters for your feed, and shoppable Instagram feeds.

Pricing: Free; Premium version starts at $39.

10. Social Media Feather

What we like: For WordPress admins who want social button functionality without weighing down their website, Social Media Feather is an option worth trying. True to its name, this plugin is lightweight and helps you quickly add social sharing to all posts and pages, manually or automatically.

Social Media Feather works with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, and email to let visitors share your content across platforms, or follow you on those platforms. Buttons are placed with widgets or shortcodes. There’s also some customization available, but it’s limited compared to other options.

Pricing: Free.

11. Super Socializer

What we like: Super Socializer is a multipurpose social media WordPress plugin — it gives you social sharing, social login, and social comments options all in one place, all made easy for beginners.

As far as its buttons, you can set their shape and size, background and logo color, and make the layout horizontal, vertical, static, or floating. There are 24 networks you can use, from Facebook to Twitter to Discord, as well as other SaaS software like Dropbox.

Beyond social buttons, Super Socializer enables social login (with WooCommerce checkout compatibility) and social comments allowing users to comment on your website using their social media accounts. All of this is free, and there’s no need to sign up for anything to use the plugin.

Pricing: Free.

12. Social Stream for WordPress

What we like: Social Stream for WordPress is a premium social media feed plugin that, unlike Spotlight Social, allows for several different feeds. You can place feeds from Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and more, making it an excellent way to fill out your pages with content.

This plugin is packed with everything you need to customize and manage your feeds, including post filtering and moderation features, lightboxes for viewing individual posts, social counters, options to “like”/”favorite” posts right inside the feed, and the option to set a custom color scheme for the whole feed.

Pricing: $49.

13. Grow Social

What we like: Formerly Social Pug, Grow Social is another paid plugin that deserves attention. Thanks to regular updates, this plugin has been packed with all of the latest features.

The social buttons can float anywhere on your site, making each piece of content easily shareable. You can use the mobile sticky social share buttons, too. Create a custom set of social share buttons, and display them at just the right time. You can even add custom messages to your popups.

Pricing: $34.

14. WordPress to Buffer

What we like: WordPress to Buffer is a popular social media engagement platform that makes it easy to schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all of your accounts in one place. The WordPress to Buffer plugin will automatically send your website posts to your Buffer account for social media sharing.

Additionally, WordPress to Buffer Pro offers more flexible scheduling options, status messages when publishing or updating posts, and publish conditionally based on post tag or category.

Pricing: Free; Pro version starts at $39/year (or a one-time purchase of $199) for use on one site.

Social Media Widgets That Spread the Word

If you want visitors to share your WordPress posts and pages on social media, a social media widget for WordPress is an absolute must. Without writing any code, you can give visitors an easy way to promote your content for you. Plus, most of the plugins listed above have a free option, so you can try them out before you upgrade. It’s a win-win for you, your followers, and your budget.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.