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Companion Sitemap Generator – Simple, Smart, and SEO-Ready

By Papin Schipper

Site Structure & Navigation / Sitemaps & Site Structure

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Companion Sitemap Generator – Simple, Smart, and SEO-Ready Review - In-Depth Analysis

Create clean, complete, and up-to-date sitemaps for your WordPress website automatically. This plugin generates both XML and HTML sitemaps to enhance site visibility.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7/10

User Rating

4.7/5 (based on 55+ reviews)

Active Installations

6,000+

Update Frequency

Outstanding It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

6.53 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Create clean, complete, and up-to-date sitemaps for your WordPress website — automatically. Companion Sitemap Generator helps search engines and visitors explore your site with ease by generating both XML and HTML sitemaps, no coding required.

Whether you run a blog, portfolio, or e-commerce store, this plugin ensures that every important page stays visible and discoverable.

Features include an automatic XML Sitemap that is always up-to-date and optimized for search engines including Google and Bing. It also provides a user-friendly HTML Sitemap to help visitors explore your site. You can control content by including or excluding specific posts, pages, categories, taxonomies, or custom post types.

With multilingual support and full compatibility with Polylang and other translation plugins, this plugin is versatile. It includes a built-in Robots.txt Manager to edit crawling rules right inside WordPress, requiring no FTP. The plugin is lightweight and fast, ensuring minimal performance impact without unnecessary scripts or bloat.

Companion Sitemap Generator works immediately with zero configuration needed, making it perfect for site owners, agencies, and developers. It is actively maintained and fully compatible with the latest WordPress releases.

Comparing to Alternatives

Companion Sitemap Generator is a popular choice among sitemap plugins, offering a simple and SEO-friendly solution. It competes with several other HTML sitemap plugins that provide similar functionality with varying features and user experiences.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly rated for ease of use and quick setup.
Works well with multilingual plugins like Polylang.
Includes convenient features like .htaccess file editor.
Generates SEO-friendly sitemaps automatically.
Lean and efficient with minimal bloat.

Weaknesses

Settings menu can be confusing for some users.
Sitemap does not always update automatically after changes.
Known security vulnerabilities fixed only in recent updates.
Some features like 'Additional Pages' tab have had issues after updates.

User Sentiment Analysis

The plugin enjoys a strong positive reception with 94.5% of ratings being 4 or 5 stars, reflecting user satisfaction with its functionality and ease of use. However, a small portion of users report issues mainly related to recent updates and multilingual support.

Positive highlights

"Excellent! Overzichtelijk, netjes, klaar in een paar minuten!" - Supje
"It works :) Only downside: Settings menu is a bit confusing and the sitemap doesn‘t automatically update when changes are made." - dylanwettstein
"Lol, only this plugin work for me correctly with polylang to create single Multilanguage multisite sitemap without any dances." - greenlis
"An excellent plugin – lean and efficient, and easy to configure. The .htaccess file editor is most convenient." - Anthony Butler

Common complaints

'Additional Pages' tab disappeared after latest update causing empty pages.
Multilanguage support issues causing tags and categories not to display.
Plugin performance lags reported by some users.

Weaknesses

Some confusion in settings interface.
Sitemap updates are not always automatic.
Past security vulnerabilities have been reported and fixed.

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users seeking a straightforward, SEO-ready sitemap generator that integrates well with multilingual setups and offers quick configuration.

Not ideal for

Users who require advanced automatic sitemap updating or who are concerned about past security vulnerabilities might want to consider alternatives or ensure they use the latest plugin version.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version provides a fully functional sitemap generator with support for multilingual sites and basic customization options.

Final Verdict

Companion Sitemap Generator is a highly rated and efficient plugin that delivers simple and SEO-friendly sitemap generation, especially praised for its compatibility with multilingual plugins. Its ease of use and useful features like the .htaccess editor make it a strong choice for many WordPress users.

However, users should be aware of some past issues with the 'Additional Pages' feature and the plugin's history of security vulnerabilities, which have been addressed in recent updates. Those needing automatic sitemap updates or advanced features may want to explore alternatives. Overall, it offers excellent value as a free solution.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Companion Sitemap Generator – Simple, Smart, and SEO-Ready plugin.

Sitemap

XML sitemap

SEO

Screenshots

FAQ

A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages and posts your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. A sitemap tells the search engine which pages you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these pages: for example, when the page was last updated, how often the page is changed, and any alternate language versions of a page.