I’m doing a survey of 8 popular social login plugins for WordPress, including WordPress Social Login, Social Login, Social, LoginRadius, Users Ultra, WP-OAuth and Social Connect.
Whether you’re interested in a free light-weight plugin, a premium (paid) plugin, or a subscription-based plugin whose experts will custom tailor their solution to your needs, then you’ve come to the right spot.
The following is a table of results, as of this writing in November, 2014. Some of the info required investigation of the plugin’s source code.
| WordPress Social Login | Social Login | Social | LoginRadius | Users Ultra | WP-OAuth | Janrain Social Login | Social Connect | |
| PLUGIN OVERVIEW | ||||||||
| Developer: | Miled | Claude Schlesser / OneAll | Alex King / Crowd Favorite / MailChimp | LoginRadius | Users Ultra | Perry Butler | Byron / Janrain | Rodrigo Primo |
| Rating: | 4.1 (135 reviews) | 3.9 (235 reviews) | 3.4 (108 reviews) | 3.4 (113 reviews) | 4.8 (129 reviews) | 5.0 (2 reviews) | 3.5 (78 reviews) | 4.2 (110 reviews) |
| Requires WP version: | 3.0+ | 3.0+ | 3.8+ | 3.4+ | 3.0.1+ | 4.0+ | 3.5+ | 3.0+ |
| Total number of downloads: | 153,977 | 328,353 | 362,033 | 256,620 | 59,000 | 710 | 133,147 | 86,697 |
| Number of downloads over 1 week: | 2,216 (+1.4%) | 1,677 (+0.5%) | 4,227 (+1.2%) | 2,354 (+0.9%) | 3,132 (+5.3%) | 207 (+34.3%) | 47 (+0.03%) | 232 (+0.26%) |
| Last updated: | 9 days ago | 29 days ago | 331 days ago | 20 days ago | Today | Today | 90 days ago | 68 days ago |
| Cost: | Free | Freemium or $8-$158 monthly | Free | Freemium or $150-$450 monthly | Freemium or $50-$160 yearly | Free | Freemium or $10-$2,250 monthly | Free |
| PLUGIN FEATURES AND LIMITATIONS | ||||||||
| Social login included with free version: | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Number of providers: | 25+ | 25+ | 2 | 25+ | 5 | 8 | 30+ | 5 |
| White label / unbranded: | Yes | Requires paid plan | Yes | Requires paid plan | Yes | Yes | Requires paid plan | Yes |
| Login / registration limits: | No | >2,500 users requires paid plan | No | No | No | No | >2,500 users requires paid plan | No |
| Site / domain usage limits: | No | No | No | No | Paid plans allow usage on 1 site or unlimited sites | No | No | No |
| Creates (registers) new WordPress user accounts automatically: | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (Paid plan) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Link third-party providers to WordPress user accounts: | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (Paid plan) | Yes | Yes | No |
| Works with existing user accounts: | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Provides login widgets or shortcodes: | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (Paid plan) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Import friends, contacts, etc. from third-party providers: | Yes | No | No | No | Yes (Paid plan) | No | Yes | No |
| Social commenting: | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Social sharing: | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| Includes login and registration tracking / stats: | No | No | No | No | Yes (Paid plan) | No | No | No |
| Customize where users are redirected after login/logout: | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Compatible with WordPress Multisite: | Yes (Paid plan) | |||||||
| Compatible with BuddyPress: | Yes | |||||||
| Compatible with bbPress: | Yes | |||||||
| Compatible with Theme My Login: | ||||||||
| PLUGIN TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY | ||||||||
| Authentication method: | OAuth | OAuth | OAuth | OAuth | OAuth, OpenID | OAuth, OpenID Connect | OAuth | OAuth, OpenID |
| Users are authenticated through a proxy, middleman, single integration point or online service that sits between the WordPress site and the third-party providers: | No | Yes, OneAll | Yes, MailChimp | Yes, LoginRadius | No | No | Yes, Janrain Engage | No |
| Identifies authenticated users via their permanent unique user identifier: | Yes, with email address | No, identifies via email address | No, identifies via username | No, identifies via email address | Yes, with email address | Yes | Yes | No, identifies via email address |
| Requests and/or stores private or sensitive user info from the third-party: | Yes, the user’s email address | Yes, the user’s email address, avatar, full name, etc. | Yes, the user’s username | Yes, the user’s email address | Yes, the user’s email address | No | No | Yes, the user’s email address |
| An open-source library included with the plugin handles authentication: | Yes, HybridAuth | No | No | Yes, LoginRadius PHP SDK | Yes, Google API PHP Client, LightOpenID, Twitter OAuth, etc. | No | No | Yes, Facebook PHP SDK, LightOpenID |
| Uses an outdated or deprecated technology / library: | No | No | No | No | Yes, LightOpenID | No | No | Yes, LightOpenID |
| Calls third-party provider APIs that are secured with SSL via insecure (non-SSL) URLs: | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Educates users/admins about good security practices when using the plugin: | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Includes one or more settings related to security: | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Warns admins when configuration changes may affect security: | No | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Installs with and defaults to a secure configuration: | No | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Mentions SSL / HTTPS at all: | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Recommends the WordPress site to use an SSL certificate: | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Requires the WordPress site to use an SSL certificate: | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| SSL features are enabled by default: | No | Yes | N/A | N/A | N/A | Yes | N/A | N/A |
| Performs SSL host verification: | No | No | N/A | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Performs SSL peer verification: | No | No | N/A | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Performance overhead – tested with P3 Performance Profiler (lower is better): | 84%, 0.0362 sec | 52%, 0.0107 sec | 77%, 0.0354 sec | 89%, 0.0705 sec | 95%, 0.1087 sec | 51%, 0.0114 sec | 89%, 0.048 sec | 77%, 0.0212 sec |
Performance Overhead
I used P3 Plugin Profiler to gather these results. In the table above, I tested one plugin at a time and recorded the performance overhead. In the following graphs, I tested with all plugins enabled at the same time. The system used for testing was a typical consumer grade PC with Intel Quad Core Q9400, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 SP1.
Conclusion
Since I’m trying to provide high quality information for my readers, while at the same time promoting my own plugin (WP-OAuth) as a viable option, I’ll let the results of this study speak for itself as to which plugin you should choose.
Would you like to see something added to the table, or did you find this data to be inaccurate? Let me know in the comments!
Glass Ocean is Perry Butler's personal website. Perry is a professional IT Manager and Software Engineer. He also likes producing music and inventing new things.
Your plugin is great man! Love it, the only thing which unfortunately has become a deal breaker for me (and others it seems) is that it auto suggests a username. I get where you’re coming from trying to keep privacy of users, but if we want users to sign up or login via social media, 99% of the time we want to make it easier for them, and also get their details from the network. I’m running a community website and “user61” just wont work unfortunately. I’ve tried the others and theyre allr really heavy. So if you had to add the feature to pull profile picture, name and email from facebook that would make your plugin the best in the market.
I understand William, that is the very next feature on my list. Everyone has requested it. I thought that allowing the users to change their nicknames would be good enough, but it sounds like that’s not the case. Your last sentence is definitely a motivator 😀
Hi Perry,
thanks for the time and energy .
what about
Super Socializer : https://wordpress.org/plugins/super-socializer/
seems to be a great value
could you add it to your table or in your complete test
I found it very complete and simple, free,
before I got your post, and during hours of testing and searching best plugin.
Wiliam is pretty right
thank you
cheers