As a blogger, the question of the best WordPress menu plugins always comes up. Making your navigation user-friendly is a key to converting and retaining visitors, so it’s an important question to answer. But what are the best WordPress menu plugins?
Best WordPress menu plugins are those that can manage menus and navigation in an easy way. But to pick the best one, you must compare several WordPress navigation plugins for your website.
In this post, I’d like to share with you the Best 10 WordPress Navigation & Menu plugins to improve and enhance the navigation experience on your WordPress sites. Have fun!
Originally Published Mar 23 2019, updated Mar 20 2023
1. Max Mega Menu
Total downloads: 400,000+
Five Star Ratings: 560+
This menu feature for bloggers automatically converts all of your existing menus into a mega menu format. This ensures that you can have an easily accessible menu for your blog that’s touch-friendly and available on any potential device. You can use the mega style menu with almost any theme and have customizable touches if you want to start a Woocommerce store, expand the pages of your blog or adding new features.
Features (Free Version)
- Builds upon the standard WordPress menus system.
- Supports multiple menu locations each with their own configuration.
- Drag and Drop Mega Menu builder.
- Display WordPress Widgets in your menu.
- Customise the styling of your menus using a built in theme editor.
- Supports Flyout (traditional) or Mega Menu sub menu styles.
- Hover, Hover Intent or Click event to open sub menus.
- Fade, Fade Up, Slide Up or Slide sub menu transitions.
- Add icons to menu items.
- Menu item options including Hide Text, Disable Link, Hide on Mobile etc.
- Align menu items to the left or right of the menu bar.
- Align sub menus to left or right of parent menu item.
2. Sticky Menu & Sticky Header
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 600+
The WP Sticky Menu (or Sticky Header) On Scroll plugin allows you to make any element on your pages “sticky” as soon as it hits the top of the page when you scroll down. Although this is commonly used to keep menus at the top of your page to create floating menus, the plugin allows you to make any element sticky. Make a sticky header, sticky menu, sticky widget (fixed widget), sticky logo, sticky call to action or a floating menu.
Features:
- Any element can stick: although common use is for navigation menus, or header the plugin will let you pick any unique element with a name, class or ID to stick at the top of the page once you scroll past it. Use it for sticky widget, sticky sidebar, sticky header, sticky menu, sticky header, sticky call-to-action box, sticky banner ad, etc.
- Positioning from top: optionally, you can add any amount of space between the sticky element and the top of the page, so that the element is not always stuck at the “ceiling” of the page.
- Enable for certain screen sizes only: optionally, you can set a minimum and/or maximum screen size where the stickiness should work. This can be handy if you have a responsive site and you don’t want your element to be sticky on smaller screens, for example.
- Enable only on some pages: sometimes you don’t want the element to be sticky on the entire site.
- Push-up element: optionally, you can pick any other element lower on the page that will push the sticky element up again (for example a sidebar widget).
- Admin Bar aware: checks if the current user has an Admin Toolbar at the top of the page. If it has, the sticky element will not obscure it (or be obscured by it).
- Z-index: in case there are other elements on the page that obscure or peek through your sticky element, you can add a Z-index easily.
- Legacy Mode: in 2.0, a new method of making things sticky was introduced. In Legacy Mode, the old method will be used.
- Dynamic Mode: some issues that frequently appear in responsive themes have been address by adding a Dynamic Mode (Legacy Mode only).
- Debug Mode: find out possible reasons why your element doesn’t stick by switching on Debug Mode, and error messages will appear in your browser’s console.
3. Responsive Menu
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 440+
Responsive Menu is a WordPress plugin that allows you to convert your current theme site navigation into a mobile-friendly, W3C compliant responsive design in seconds.
Main features:
- Change every text, background and border colour
- Set the fonts, font sizes and text alignment you want to use
- Set which side and where you want the button to show
- Set which side the menu appears from (left, right, top or bottom)
- Use background image for the menu
- Choice of menu animations (slide over the top or push the content)
- Choice of which Menu to use
- Choice of screen size at which the menu will be shown
- Choice of CSS elements to hide when menu is showing
- Choice of Sub-menu depth to display down to
- Choice of Animation Types & Speeds for the Menu & Button
- Integrated search (fully customisable)
- Ability to disable and re-order the different components
- Ability to fix the button to the top or to let it scroll with the page
- Ability to upload logos, sub-arrow images etc.
- Ability to include Scripts externally, minified and in footer
- Ability to import and export options in a click of a button
- Ability to add custom HTML components
- Ability to choose custom menu triggers
- WPML/Polylang Support
- RTL Support
- Plus much, much more!
4. WP Mobile Menu
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 240+
A mobile-friendly menu plugin for WordPress, features background images, custom styling, CSS3 transitions, and much more.
Features:
- 3 Depth Menu Level
- Naked Header
- Overlay Mask when the menu is opened
- Logo/Text Branding
- Background image for the menus
- Naked Header
- Hide specific elements when the Mobile Menu is visible(theme menus, or any html element)
- Google Fonts
- Customize the styling of your mobile menus
5. WP Responsive Menu
Total downloads: 50,000+
Five Star Ratings: 90+
A mobile-friendly, nice-looking responsive menu system for WordPress plugin. Supports custom open positions: top/bottom/left/right. Custom logo is supported as well.
6. Float menu – awesome floating side menu
Total downloads: 30,000+
Five Star Ratings: 20+
A free WordPress plugin to create and place a unique floating menu on your website. The extension allows users to get access to the functions of the panel regardless of its position on the resource. The menu moves along with the scrolling of the page and always remains invisible.
The Float Menu extension will create a convenient floating menu for your site. The panel does not take up much of the screen space and is always available to the user. Connecting the tool to a web resource will provide an opportunity to increase its usability and attractiveness. The menu is easily customizable for different site themes.
Features:
- create unlimited menu;
- 2 positions to display the panel: left or right on the page;
- add and customize labels of the buttons;
- edit indents between the menu items;
- square shape of the buttons;
- more than 1600+ Font Awesome 5 icons;
- select the color for each icon;
- insert any links;
- open a link in a new window;
- set the background color for the button.
7. WordPress Mega Menu – QuadMenu
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 220+
QuadMenu is a WordPress plugin designed to create responsive and customizable mega menus for your WordPress website. This powerful and flexible plugin allows you to create stunning navigation menus with ease, featuring a drag-and-drop interface and a wide range of customization options.
Features:
- Automatic and manual menu integration
- Build extending the standard WordPress Menu system
- Supports multiple menu locations
- Drag and Drop admin builder
- Display WordPress Widgets in your menu
- Support for child themes
- Unlimited Menu Themes
- Vertical Mega Menu
- Horizontal Mega Menu
- Offcanvas Mega Menu
- Sticky Menu
- Click or use the hoverIntent plugin to open links
- Align links options
- Float dropdown menus options
- Customizable breakpoint for menu collapse
- Show or hide items depending on the screen size
- Support for Font Awesome icons
- Google Fonts
- Dropdown animations
- Support for Visual Composer
- Mega Menu
- Icons Menu
- Search Menu
- Cart Menu
8. WP Mega Menu
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 210+
A WordPress plugin to create rich and stunning navigation menus for your website. Make menu themes, and customize the styles using drag-and-drop tools. Beautify the menu items with custom colors, fonts, and attributes. Use Mega Menu to build a navigation menu beyond imagination.
Features:
- Drag and drop menu builder panel.
- Widgets in menu.
- Multiple themes/skins option.
- Export/import themes
- Branding in logo
- Social icons
- Search bar in menu
- Menu labelling/badge, ex: hot, new, etc.
- Dashicons and Font Awesome icon support
- Stretch menu
- Responsive support
- Mobile menu support
- Menu background image
- Unlimited colors
- Google Fonts
- Unlimited options
9. ShiftNav – Responsive Mobile Menu
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 60+
This plugin allows you to create a touch-enabled and highly customizable mobile navigation menu, ensuring a seamless browsing experience for your mobile visitors.
Features:
- Native App-Style Menus
- Automatic Integration
- Light & Dark Skins
- Works with the WordPress 3 Menu System
- Touch-enabled
- CSS3 Transitions produce smooth animations on mobile devices
- Configurable
10. Advanced Sidebar Menu
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 30+
A WordPress plugin designed to help you create and manage customizable sidebar menus for your website. It simplifies the process of organizing and displaying your site’s content in a structured and user-friendly manner.
Features:
- Page and Category widgets.
- Page and Category blocks.
- Option to display or not display the highest level parent page or category.
- Option to display the menu when there is only the highest level parent.
- Ability to order pages by (date, title, page order).
- Exclude pages or categories by entering a comma separated list of ids.
- Option to always display child pages or categories.
- Option to select the levels of pages or categories to display when always display child is used.
- Option to display or not display categories on single posts.
- Ability to display each single post’s category in a new widget/block or in same list.
Conclusion:
Better navigation on your site can lead to more engagement and better conversion rates, too. That’s why we’ve put together this list of our 10 favorite menu plugins for WordPress sites.
Hopefully, you’ll find one that fits your unique needs and preferences as a blogger and improves the usability of your site too.
