Looking for a perfect gallery plugin for your WordPress website? Check out this helpful review.
They say that one picture is worth a thousand words. That is especially true when it comes to online experience. It is impossible to imagine a modern website without visuals.
If you are a WordPress website owner, though, you certainly know how limited the CMS’s default image organization and presentation capabilities are. One way to extend those is to install a plugin that will allow you to create custom image galleries and albums, manage your collections efficiently, and present your photos and videos in the most engaging way.
The official WordPress plugins repository is abundant with gallery plugins to suit every taste and wallet. How to choose one that will give you the value you are looking for? To help you out, we have prepared a review of 6 popular and less known but noteworthy solutions that you may give a shot this year.
The plugins in the collection below share many features while differing in others. Thus, when exploring their capabilities, select the tools that offer the most important functionality for your particular project. Some features you might want to look out for include:
.. and others.
Let’s get going.
Nextend
900,000+
We will begin by reviewing one of the best WordPress photo gallery plugins that can boast just short of 1 million active installations – Smart Slider 3 from Nextend.
No matter what WordPress theme you have installed, you can use this versatile plugin to create search engine friendly, fully responsive, and easily adjustable image sliders.
Working with Smart Slider is not much different from working with a usual page builder. You can put layers one atop another, define how many columns or rows the slider will have, and so on.
The plugin allows you to configure all the minute details that you want: typography, style, arrangement of elements, etc. You can also optimize your sliders for any device or screen resolution.
To make the creative process even more straightforward, the developer offers a number of awesome pre-built templates to pick from.
Use various media
Want to create a slider with YouTube videos? WordPress posts? Images? Photos? Just make your choice.
Take advantage of the layered approach
Create layers using an image, text, button, YouTube or Vimeo videos, etc.
Choose from several animation options
Switch from slide to slide using vertical, horizontal, or fade animation.
Pick from a range of slider controls
Those include Bullet, Arrow, Autoplay, Bar, Shadow, and Thumbnail.
Choose any template slider
With a paid license, you have the entire slider template collection at your disposal (120+).
Enjoy a wide selection of background animations
There are more than 54 animations available to users with a paid license.
Use a background video
Make your website more engaging and attention grabbing.
Animate the text
That includes words, paragraphs, and even individual characters.
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
The vendor offers two paid license types (one-time payment) with the same feature set except for the Premium priority support (unavailable under the Standard license) and the number of sites where you can install the plugin:
Imagely
600,000+
Here is another wonderful tool that we can confidently put into the category of the best gallery plugins for WordPress. With over 600,000 active installations, it is not only a great choice for creating simple galleries but can also satisfy the strictest requirements of everyone who works with images professionally such as photographers.
The plugin provides convenient image organization capabilities. In particular, users can import metadata, batch upload photos, put galleries together into albums, sort or delete photos, modify thumbnails, and perform other essential tasks.
You can choose from among multiple gallery and album styles with a lot of customization options. Change the size of your photos, select transitions, and so on.
You can also use the plugin right from the standard WordPress block editor Gutenberg by adding the NextGEN Gallery block to your content. Great feature, right? Let’s take a look at some others.
Three gallery styles
Imagebrowser, slideshow, thumbnail.
Two album styles
Compact and extended
Varied photo management capabilities
Batch upload photos, import metadata, sort photos, etc.
Gutenberg support
Add the NexGET Gallery block to your content right within the block editor.
Hover icons and Pro Lightbox
Let your visitors comment on specific photos and forward them to their friends on social media.
20+ gallery styles
Take advantage of more than 20 beautiful gallery styles such as Masonry and Mosaic. Pick from a bunch of lightboxes.
Even more gallery management capabilities
With a premium plan, you have hundreds of options to organize your lightboxes, labels, displays, and so on.
A variety of extensions
The NextGEN Pro WordPress photo gallery plugin comes with some very useful extensions, including:
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
The vendor offers four premium plans that differ in their feature sets and number of sites where customers can install the plugin:
200,000+
The plugin allows you to add a beautiful gallery to your website in as fast as 60 seconds through a set of readily available templates. If you want to move a few steps further and set up the gallery the way you see it in your mind’s eye, take advantage of some premium features and settings.
FooGallery has been created with SEO and performance optimization in mind. The lazy image loading mechanism that the plugin uses makes photo galleries render on the screen (including Retina screens) in the blink of an eye. The faster is the loading speed, the more chances that you rank higher on Google.
To see how the gallery you are adding will look “out in the wild,” use the live preview feature. A Gutenberg fan? Add the specifically designed FooGallery Block.
As the majority of similar plugins do, FooGallery offers both free and premium features. Here are some of the most notable ones.
A collection of 7 pre-made templates
Those include Masonry Gallery with images of alternating heights, Simple Portfolio, Carousel Gallery, and more.
Search engine optimization
The plugin provides alt and title attributes for all of the images in a gallery, integrates Yoast SEO sitemap and AIOSEO sitemap plugins, etc.
Performance enhancement
FooGallery has several lazy loading options, straightforward pagination feature, optimized content layout shifts, and other performance optimization tools.
A host of customization options
Play around with the thumbnail spacing, alignment, and size for the best effect. Pick from among an array of loading icons. Change the border size, add shadows, make corners rounded, and so on.
3 additional responsive gallery templates (PRO Starter Plan)
Fine-grained filtering (PRO Expert Plan)
Filter your galleries in all sorts of ways using Media Tags & Categories and multi-level filtering.
Bullet-proof image protection (PRO Commerce Plan)
Make sure no one steals your unique images by using no right-click protection and photo watermarking.
Integrate your galleries with WooCommerce without effort (PRO Commerce Plan)
There are so many things you can do for your WooCommerce online store with FooGallery, from showing product information in Lightbox and filtering using WooCommerce product categories to displaying sales ribbons for products on sale.
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
Apart from the free version, FooPlugins offers three premium plans with progressively sophisticated sets of features:
30,000+
Installing The Portfolio – Image Gallery Plugin by A WP Life on your WordPress website will allow you to cover every possible task related to creating and fine-tuning photo galleries.
You don’t have to be a tech guru to set up and configure the plugin to your maximum convenience. Besides, it is entirely responsive, meaning that you can target the widest viewing audience regardless of the device or platform they use, from MacBook to an Android smartphone and everything in between.
The developer also specifically emphasizes that it is “the first portfolio plugin for a separate category page.”
The plugin comes in two flavors – free and premium – with each offering its own set of features. Let’s take a bird’s eye view of those.
Multiple column layout
Create a portfolio with 2 or 3 columns, increasing or decreasing the space between them as you see fit.
Portfolio title options
You can apply several options to gallery titles, choosing to display them in a unique way, with a background, etc.
Masonry layouts
Want to present your galleries “the Pinterest style”? With the Image Gallery plugin, creating masonry layouts with images of varied heights is a child’s play.
Bootstrap Lightbox
This feature allows a user to enlarge images in your portfolio on click.
Unlimited number of filters
The plugin provides you with a separate category page so that you can add filters to your galleries without having to use the WordPress categories.
More than one layout
Give your page two layouts at once. The first one is a minimal type layout. The other gives a more attractive look to your site. Stick to this arrangement on as many pages as you like.
Additional hover effects
Premium plan subscribers have three more hover effects to choose from, all with exciting, smooth transitions:
Easy image uploads
Using the default WordPress media uploader, you can upload a whole bunch of images at once, including cropped ones.
The abundance of features and ease of use makes the Image Gallery Plugin one of the best WordPress gallery plugins that you can give a shot in 2023.
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
The Premium plan is currently sold at $39. For that money you get many features unavailable under the free plan, such as:
20,000+
Another WordPress gallery plugin that you can use to create and fine-tune your galleries without breaking your back. It is responsive and allows you to add any number of images you want, write comments, make categories and albums, and use a wide range of other free or premium features.
With the Gallery by BesWebSoft, you can either present your entire portfolio or put together a collection of separate images for a specific business scenario.
Select albums layout
Rows or columns
Define your preferred image sorting order
Add in any number
Upload images from the WordPress media library
Add descriptions to the albums you create
Change gallery layout
Crop images
Activate lightbox helper
Show image description
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
You can upgrade to the Gallery Pro, choosing one of the following plans:
10,000+
There are many scenarios when you might want to show before-after photos to your website visitors such as before-after renovation, for example. The handy BEAF plugin allows you to create before after WordPress photo sliders or galleries quickly and easily.
What’s even better is that the developer puts no cap on how many sliders like those you can add to your WordPress website – even for free plan users! Those who purchase a premium plan can enjoy a wide range of advanced features as well.
Choose how you arrange your photos within a slider
You can either place your images horizontally or vertically.
Change the descriptive text and its background
Use the Option panel to change the text that describes your before-after photos and pick a background for the label.
Generate a shortcode
After publishing your slider, use the generated shortcode to re-use it in another section or on another page.
Activate sliders on hover
No need to click the Next or Previous button. Just hover the mouse over the slider to see the before or after photo.
More preview styles
Subscribe to a premium plan and get 10 extra preview styles.
Multiple-column filterable galleries
Create a 2-column, 3-column, or 4-column before-after gallery that you can filter.
Not only 2-photo sliders
Don’t limit yourself to 2 photos per slider. With a premium plan you can add another, third photo to get your message across even more vividly.
Custom dimensions and arrangement
Go beyond the standard slider size and arrangement. Set your own width and height.
For more on the plugin’s free and pro features, visit this page.
The vendor offers three premium plans that extend the feature set available to free version users:
We hope that our review will help you pick a plugin to meet your exact image presentation needs. However, even the best WordPress gallery plugins may turn out to be a rather poor solution for your specific project.
Besides, using plugins poses certain risks that may impact the security and performance of your website. Here are some of the most conspicuous ones:
There are also subscription fees to pay for using premium plugins, which may be quite steep at times.
Thus, if you know exactly what you need, you might want to consider an alternative solution: professional WordPress development services. Here are the main reasons to take this path:
The best part is that all the help you need is just a click away. The talented WordPress development team at GetDevDone has all that it takes to make your website lightning-fast, feature-rich, and awesome-looking. In particular, our offering includes:
Feel free to contact us anytime for the best client experience you have ever had.
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