Canva – The premiere online graphic design tool that even someone like me can create decent designs for my blog! Great for creating graphics for social media like Pinterest Pins.
Gimp – Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done
Adobe Photoshop: The best tool (Most expensive ) to create graphics. Runs about $250 a year but without question the best you can have. (Most users are fine with Gimp) 
optimization plugin and is a must-have for all word press sites. Widely considered the top of its class. Free and paid versions available
UpdraftPlus -WordPress Backup Plugin. All WordPress sites need a complete backup plugin. There are many that would serve you well but for ease of use and overall functionality, Updraft Plus is the choice here. 
Ad Inserter Pro– If you plan on running ads on your site this plugin will keep all your ads in tidy manageable location. Easily the best in class. 
Swift Performance Lite -All websites need a good caching plugin to help with their page load times. It was a close call but swift gets our recommendation here.
Grammarly–is an online grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection platform. Its free version is all you will need and it’s just an extension you add to your web browser. Can’t recommend this more highly!