10 Best WordPress Social Sharing Plugins (Updated 2023)

Quick question: how many among you use WordPress?

Given it’s the most popular content management system for bloggers, at least half of you should have WordPress-powered sites.

The best thing about WordPress is the massive collection of plugins that let you integrate features in a flash.

In this post, I’ve rounded up the top WordPress plugins for something that every site must have.

I’m talking about social sharing buttons.

Let’s get going.

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Why You Need Social Media Sharing Buttons

Before we find the best social plugin for your WordPress site, allow me to address the “why” question.

Regardless of niche, below are three reasons why every blog needs a social media sharing integration:

Exponentially Increase Your Online Reach

Social media sharing buttons let you leverage the most effective marketing vehicles of all — your audience.

Think about it. Your readers most likely have hundreds, if not thousands, of social media followers.

A well-implemented WordPress social media widget will help you tap into your audience’s social reach to fuel brand growth.

Build Brand Authority

Who would you rather trust, a website you know nothing about or a close friend?

I thought so.

Having your content shared by someone allows you to “borrow” some of their credibility. In turn, whoever ends up reading your post will be more likely to trust you.

Furthermore, the best social share buttons for website properties often have share counters. This tracks the number of times a post is shared on certain networks — thus, elevating the page’s overall trustworthiness.

All these will undoubtedly have a positive impact on your sales and lead generation efforts.

Connect with Potential Influencers

If you’re planning a guest posting or influencer marketing campaign, social media buttons can help you find the right prospects.

It’s not rocket science. The wider your social media reach, the more chances you have of connecting with social media influencers and popular bloggers.

Social media shares can put everything on hyperdrive by enabling readers to do their part.

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The Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Social Sharing

Without further ado, here are the must-have social media sharing plugins for bloggers:

1. Social Snap

If I’m going to share a list of the best plugins, might as well start with the one I personally use.

Social Snap is a lightweight WordPress plugin that integrates professional sharing buttons in seconds.

It’s one of the social plugins for bloggers that you only have to install once and forget about. And after a few minutes with the plugin, I’m convinced that it’s perfect for my needs.

That’s why I didn’t hesitate when I finalized my Social Snap Pro subscription:

Social Snap features a handful of customization options. These make it easier to blend the plugin with any design scheme you have structured for your blog.

You can adjust the shape, color, and animation of every button. Best of all, none of your customization efforts will have any impact on your blog’s performance — as you can see on my site. 😉

Key Features

• Standard and Floating Share Buttons
• Fully Responsive Design
• Gutenberg-Friendly
• Click-To-Tweet Boxes
• Plugin Add-Ons
• Supports 30+ Social Media Networks with Pro Plan

Using Social Snap

Based on the introduction earlier, you should’ve guessed that Social Snap takes very little setup to use. As a matter of fact, the floating sidebar and inline buttons are already enabled by default after installing the plugin.

The settings pages mainly use radio buttons and checkboxes. This means even absolute beginners will have no problems making the most out of Social Snap right off the bat.

Another reason why I went with Social Snap is the “Social Followers” feature.

Basically, it allows you to showcase your social media statistics — specifically follower count across networks — on your blog. It also comes with useful “follow” buttons that can instantly turn blog readers into social media followers.

To use it, click ‘Social Followers’ from the main menu and click ‘Manage Networks.’

From there, you can set up your accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and a few other social networks.

Don’t worry — you don’t have to provide your full account credentials. Since Social Snap only needs to pull in the number of followers, your username and profile URL should suffice.

If you have the budget, Social Snap has a small collection of add-ons that’s definitely worth a look. I, for one, am particularly excited for the “Auto Poster” and the upcoming “Content Locker.”

Anyhow, Social Snap’s social sharing buttons do look great on any site layout. But for my taste, the floating sidebar works great since it doesn’t disrupt the user experience in any way.

Here’s what the finished product looks like on my site:

IMPORTANT: If you’re planning to purchase Social Snap Pro, don’t forget to use the coupon code “MasterBlogging” for a 20% discount!

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2. Social Pug

In a way, Social Pug is comparable to an actual pug — as in the dog breed.

Both come in lightweight, fun packages.

Social Pug is perhaps the easiest WordPress social media plugin to use. You’ll find out in a moment how, in two clicks, you can enable nice-looking, mobile-friendly sharing buttons on your blog.

Key Features:

• Incredibly Easy Configuration Process
• Decent Level of Customizability
• Plugin Extensions for Scalability
• Click-To-Tweet Extension
• Supports All Major Social Networks through “Social Networks Pack”

Using Social Pug

Ready to have your mind blown away by the easiest plugin ever?

Once installed, Social Pug can be accessed and activated straight from the WordPress dashboard.

On the “Toolkit” page, just click on the toggle for the type of social sharing buttons you want to use.

That’s it — your blog should now be armed with sharing buttons that can boost your social media presence.

Of course, each sharing button widget comes with its own settings page for customizability.

Although the options are completely different, they both have the same set of settings you can play with. You can change the sharing buttons’ arrangement, shape, spacing, share count display, and more.

However, it’s worth noting that Social Pug has a very limited number of supported social networks for free accounts. This is a major deal-breaker for new bloggers looking to use a WordPress share plugin free of charge.

To be fair, Social Pug’s pricing is completely reasonable. Their cheapest plan is only $29 for an entire year — well within reach of small website owners.

In any case, this is how Social Pug appears on an actual site:

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3. AddToAny Share Buttons

AddToAny Share Buttons is among the most popular social plugins for WordPress.

What makes AddToAny really impressive is the fact that it supports over 100 social media sites and apps. It does so through the “Universal Button,” which allows users to search for the site they want to share to.

AddToAny packs nine types of share buttons for your blog. Apart from the standard sharing buttons, you can also create floating share buttons, handy “follow” buttons, and custom share icons.

Key Features

• 100+ Social Networks and Apps Supported
• Use Standard Buttons, Floating Buttons, or Both
• Mobile-Responsive
• Customizable Icons, JavaScript, and CSS

Using AddToAny Share Buttons

After installing and activating the plugin, you can configure the plugin by going to ‘Settings’ and then clicking ‘AddToAny.’

You can switch between the “Standard” and “Floating” buttons configuration pages using the tabs above.

Don’t think too much about which style to use — you can always have both activated at once.

On the configuration page, you can adjust settings such as the positioning of buttons, displaying share counts, and so on.

AddToAny also allows custom icons, JavaScript, and CSS. Just scroll to the bottom of the configuration page and look for the appropriate tool.

Here’s a quick look at AddToAny’s standard sharing buttons in action:

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4. Sumo Share

Let’s leave the official WordPress plugin repository for a minute.

Sumo Share is a trusted plugin that installs a customizable, floating social media bar to any site. It features a unique “Smart” mode that switches up the available sharing options based on the current page being viewed.

Key Features

• 60+ Supported Sites and Services
• Intuitive Floating Social Buttons
• Mobile-Responsive
• Customizable Layout
• Image Sharer
• “Smart” Mode

Using Sumo Share

The Sumo team really thought the user experience through with their setup process.

You start by entering your website URL and account details during the sign-up stage.

You can then choose to either use the official Sumo plugin for your platform or install the script manually. If you want, you may also skip the integration and jump straight into the Sumo dashboard.

After integrating Sumo, head to ‘Share’ from the ‘Extras’ menu to configure the social sharing bar.

On the settings tab, you can manage the social networks and services you want to appear on your floating bar. Other features such as the “Smart” mode, sharing bar label, and buttons are can also be optimized here.

The rest of the settings, from widget placement to connected services, can be accessed by navigating to the right tab.

Before we move on to the next tool, I’d like to show you the Sumo Share “Display Rules” page. This is where you can fully control whereyou want the floating social media buttons to appear.

Once the configuration is complete, here’s how your social sharing buttons will look like:

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5. Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons

The name alone gives away what this next plugin is all about.

Created by UltimatelySocial, Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons is an all-in-one plugin that works exactly as advertised. It is a straightforward plugin that lets you integrate any social media sharing button you require in a jiffy.

Key Features

• 200+ Supported Social Media Platforms
• Ready-To-Use Design and Animation Options
• Standard and Floating Buttons
• Mobile-Responsive
• Customizable Pop-Up Forms

Using Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons

Just like any other plugin, all you must do is hunt down SMSB&SSI in the plugin repository and click ‘Install.’

Upon activation, you’ll immediately gain access to its core features. The ‘Ultimate Social Media Icons’ button from the main dashboard is pretty hard to miss.

I appreciate how the plugin breaks down the initialization process into easy-to-follow steps.

For the required steps, you simply choose which icons to use, specify what they do, and set their placements. There are also optional steps like enabling share counts, creating a pop-up form, and setting an animation.

The individual configuration pages are mostly radio buttons and checkboxes. This makes the learning curve of SMSB&SSI virtually non-existent.

For example, on the placement settings page, just choose how you want to present the sharing buttons and click ‘Save.’

Using the default settings, your social sharing buttons should look like this:

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6. Social Sharing for Everyone

Social Sharing for Everyone by WPBrigade is designed with the philosophy of complete flexibility.

That is, if you’re willing to pay for the premium version.

Still, free users can still utilize a host of customization options — from button styles to inline display settings.

Key Features

• Inline and Sidebar Sharing Buttons
• Pop-Ups, Fly-Ins, and On-Media Sharing Buttons
• Easy, Single-Page Configuration

Using Social Sharing for Everyone

Social Sharing for Everyone deserves credit for living up to its tagline: “Simple Social Buttons.”

All the essential stuff can be found and optimized in one page.

In the “Social Buttons” section, drag and drop the social media icons to rearrange them.

For free accounts, Social Sharing for Everyone offers only seven button styles under “Social Buttons Designs.” Fortunately, the pre-made designs are minimalistic and can fit in any site color palette.

As for the button placements, your options include inline, on-media, pop-up, fly-in, and sidebar. Again, all these settings can be adjusted from one page — so, configurations should be done in less than a minute.

Share counts, icon spacing, button alignment, and other display settings can be modified as well. For extra spice, Social Sharing for Everyone comes with a few animations that can get the audience’s attention.

Curious about the finished product?

Thankfully, I learned how to capture GIF animations in addition to static screenshots.

Take a gander at Social Sharing for Everyone with the “FadeIn” animation style:

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7. Easy Social Share Buttons

It’s only natural for well-funded bloggers to seek premium solutions instead of free WordPress plugins. And for those folks, I recommend Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress from AppsCreo.

Just like Sumo, you won’t find Easy Social Share Buttons in the official WordPress plugin repository. Instead, it can only be purchased and downloaded from the Envato Market — a trusted source of third-party resources for WordPress.

Key Features

• 50+ Supported Social Media Sites
• 55+ Professionally Designed Templates
• 30+ Animations and Automatic Design Positions
• Built-In Analytics Tools
• Live Chat Integration

Using Easy Social Share Buttons

As a pay-to-use plugin, it’s to be expected that Easy Social Share Buttons packs a ton of features. In turn, the developers saw it fit to include a “Quick Setup Wizard.”

This allows users to breeze through the initial configuration process and invest more of your time into meaningful blogging work.

If that’s not enough, there’s an “Automatic Setup” option baked in for the configuration of certain features.

It may take a few minutes before new users can get used to the plugin’s interface.

On the plus side, most settings utilize toggles and drop-down menus for user input. Some areas of the plugin also have mini-previews to help you choose the options you like on the first try.

This is most useful in the “Ready Made Styles” page.

Easy Social Share Buttons is also equipped with a built-in analytics tool. This can be used to gauge the performance of your social sharing strategy and fine-tune it over time.

Trust me — we’ve barely scratched the surface on the capabilities of Easy Social Share Buttons. The bad news is, discussing its every core feature requires its own, full-length article.

What I can do for you right now, however, is to show you what the social sharing buttons actually look like:

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8. Sassy Social Share

When looking for the best free social share plugin, you can’t go wrong with WordPress reviewers.

Sassy Social Share, despite its high number of active installations, manages to maintain an almost-perfect rating of five stars.

It’s secret?

A no-nonsense approach to social sharing without cutting corners.

Key Features

• 100+ Social Networks, Services, and Bookmarking Sites Supported
• High Level of Button Customization
• Standard Buttons, Floating Interface, Shortcode, and Widget Presentation
• Constantly Kept Fresh with New Add-Ons

Using Sassy Social Share

You may launch Sassy Social Share straight from the WordPress dashboard.

Sassy Social Share uses an old-school interface where related settings are sorted into tabs. This accomplishes one thing — making sure you find the features you need in no time.

The first order of business is to create themes for the standard and floating interface sets.

You should have no problem tweaking the settings to achieve the look you want. Not only are there mainly radio buttons and form fields, there’s also a live preview you can refer to.

Both standard and floating interfaces also have their own configuration pages. There, you can change aspects like the arrangement of buttons, sharing services, placements, and so on.

On the ‘Miscellaneous’ tab, there are also settings like URL shortening, share count refresh frequency, and plugin language. For those with some coding experience, you can also insert custom CSS codes for a more personalized look.

For the part you’ve been waiting for — the preview of Sassy Social Share:

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9. MashShare

Another highly-rated plugin from the WordPress depository would be MashShare.

Looking at its name and logo, you may suspect that it’s related to the popular online publication, Mashable.com.

Well, you’re not wrong.

You see, the developers of MashShare created the plugin to simulate the sharing buttons found on Mashable. At least, back in 2016 where the buttons are minimalistic and displayed a total share count to the left.

Key Features

• Useful, Most-Shared Posts Widget
• Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) Support
• Fast Share Buttons
• Plug-and-Play Installation
• Numerous Add-Ons

Using MashShare

If you read about Social Snap, then you already know how to use MashShare.

Put simply, you just need to install the plugin from the official repository, activate it, and you’re done.

You will be sent directly to the MashShare ‘Settings’ page from the main dashboard after the successful integration.

When it comes to customizations, Social Snap and MashShare are nothing alike.

In my time with the plugin, it bugged me that there’s no preview of your social sharing buttons during configuration. This made the entire design process dependent on trial and error.

By switching to the ‘Visual’ tab, you can modify settings like the button size, text alignment, and custom CSS styles. There are no pre-made templates you can just install in a single click — you’ll have to plan everything from scratch.

What I really like about MashShare, however, is that most of its key features are unlocked even for free users.

You can inject custom CSS, implement a “Subscribe” button, use the “Most-Shared Posts” widget — all without spending a single dime.

That reminds me, the Most-Shared Posts widget is my favorite feature of MashShare. As the name suggests, the widget shows users a list of your most popular content.

You can enable the Most-Shared Posts widget from the ‘Widgets’ page under ‘Appearance.’

Providing readers with quick links to your best content is a surefire way to reduce blog bounce rate. This leads to better overall user experience, longer average session duration, and higher search engine rankings.

Wait — if MashShare’s features are totally free, how do they make money?

With a MashShare Pro license, you get a total of 12 add-ons that can be used for unlimited websites.

These add-ons include a Google Analytics integration, a pop-up sharing form for video content, and additional social networks.

And now, before I reveal the last WordPress social media plugin, a snapshot of MashShare on an actual page:

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10. AccessPress Social Share

Let me be straight with you — the only reason I added AccessPress Social Share to this list are the themes.

It does have a couple of nice advantages here and there, like the user-friendly interface and share counts. But to be frank, none of those features aren’t anything the previous plugins don’t already have.

If you’re looking for the “oomph” factor that makes AccessPress Social Share stand out, it’s probably their designs.

Key Features

• 15 Beautifully-Designed Themes
• 20 Themes for Social Share Counters
• Drag-and-Drop User Interface
• Fully Responsive Design

Using AccessPress Social Share

With AccessPress Social Share, it’s not about the “how.” It’s more about “what” you get once the installation and configuration steps are finished.

Besides, there’s hardly any setup involved, anyway. You just activate the plugin, go to the ‘Display Settings’ tab, pick a display position and select a theme.

After saving your settings, you’re pretty much done with the configuration.

Of course, you may also configure settings like button placements and various display options. You can thank AccessPress’s design team for the clear-cut interface that makes these things easy to find.

To cap off this section and conclude this post, I’ll show you a screenshot of the sharing buttons.

By the way, did I tell you that each theme has its own animation?

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Conclusion

Did any of the WordPress social sharing plugin above get your attention?

Think I missed a plugin or two that deserves a mention?

Whatever it is, I’ll surely appreciate it if you share your thoughts in the comments below.

Stick around for more awesome blogging tips soon!