[pmlnr]

For my personal site, I've left WP behind about 3 years ago. I had to go back last month, trying to build something instead of a Wix site for a school, and the experience was terrifying: after adding one of the events plugin, within 5 minutes I started getting spam registration. All plugins have ugly admin interface "extras" and are very pushy to buy them.

The WordPress of 2007, which I loved very much, has nothing to do with this monster of 2019.

[skilled]

I share a similar sentiment. Since about 2-3 years ago, most WordPress plugins are marketed bloatware that messes up the entire dashboard UI. And don't get me started on plugins that don't let you close their notifications unless you do "some thing".

It really is a shame, because frankly speaking - most of these plugins are utter trash anyway.

[pmlnr]

I've tried out a massive amount of gutenberg block plugins; whichever added a new line in the admin menu instead of adding it into a submenu of settings, deserves immediate deletion.

[dhimes]

On the plus side, you can see the code and turn those off. So if you think of the plugins as a starting point it's not so bad.