What is Gratis?
Gratis is a free, open-source WordPress plugin suite that replaces over $3,000/year worth of premium plugins with production-quality, GPL-licensed alternatives. Every plugin in the suite is designed to work standalone or together, with shared architecture patterns and WordPress coding standards compliance.
Suite Overview
The Gratis suite covers every major WordPress need:
- Performance: Full-stack caching (Redis, Nginx FastCGI, OPcache), CDN integration
- Security: WAF, login protection, 2FA, file integrity monitoring
- SEO: Meta tags, Open Graph, structured data, XML sitemaps
- Marketing: Analytics, popups, social sharing, email
- Content: Form builder, page builder, tables, media management
- Commerce: WooCommerce enhancements, invoicing, affiliate tracking
- Management: CRM, project boards, booking, events, LMS
- Developer Tools: Debug bar, staging, migrations, WP-CLI helpers
Installation
Install the Gratis Installer plugin first — it provides a single dashboard to activate and manage all suite plugins:
- Download gratis-installer from GitHub or the WordPress plugin directory
- Upload to
wp-content/plugins/gratis-installer/ - Activate from Plugins → Installed Plugins
- Go to the Gratis Installer dashboard to activate individual plugins
Requirements
- WordPress 6.0 or later
- PHP 8.1 or later
- MySQL 8.0 / MariaDB 10.6 or later (recommended)
- Redis (optional, for object caching)
Philosophy
Every Gratis plugin follows these principles:
- Free forever: GPL-2.0-or-later, no premium tiers, no upsells
- Privacy-first: No external tracking, no phone-home, your data stays yours
- WordPress-native: Uses core APIs (Settings API, CPTs, REST, block editor)
- Standards-compliant: Passes PHPCS WordPress-Extra, PHP 8.1+ strict
- Lightweight: No jQuery dependency, minimal frontend JS, server-side rendering