A WordPress gallery plugin is a tool that allows you to create and display image and video galleries in visually appealing ways on your website. Although the default WordPress editor comes with a gallery block, it lacks many advanced features.
Gallery plugins can overcome these limitations by offering many advanced features, customization options, and interactive functionalities. They can showcase media content in an organized and engaging way that adds value for photographers, bloggers, portfolio sites, and eCommerce stores.
You’ll find a great collection of gallery plugins in various WordPress repositories. But which one is to choose? To help you out, in this blog post, I will list and discuss some of the best WordPress gallery plugins, explaining their key features. Let’s get started!
Best WordPress Gallery Plugins
There are different types of gallery plugins. Some are dedicatedly developed only to manage galleries, while many multipurpose plugins can also create galleries. In this section, I will discuss the best gallery plugins from both categories.
1. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery was first launched in the year 2007. Since then, it has been a go-to WordPress gallery plugin. Though there are many multiple-purpose gallery plugins online, NextGEN Gallery still has 400,000+ active users with 3,300+ five-star positive ratings, which not so many plugins have.
The plugin allows you to upload photos in bulk, import metadata, and create unlimited galleries. It supports various gallery styles, including slideshows, thumbnails, and image browsers, along with compact and extended album layouts. It natively works with the Gutenberg block editor.
You can even sell images and galleries with the plugin. It has integration with popular payment gateways. However, if your site is built with page builders, like Elementor, you can embed shortcodes to display the galleries created with the plugin.
Key features of NextGEN Gallery:
- eCommerce functionality for selling images and galleries
- Stripe and PayPal payment integration
- Print fulfillment with automated lab printing
- Image proofing for customer selection
- Auto tax calculation for sales
- Discount coupons for promotions
- 25+ animations for visual effects
- 84+ gallery themes for customization
- Watermarking for image protection
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2. Modula Image Gallery
Modula Image Gallery is another feature-rich plugin to create visually stunning image and video galleries without committing any errors. It’s absolutely beginner-friendly. Iust upload images, customize layouts and embed the gallery with a shortcode anywhere on your web post/page.
The Pro version of the plugin will open up more advanced functionalities like image commenting, proofing galleries, and Instagram integration. This makes it ideal for photographers and content creators. You can bulk edit images, apply filters for easy sorting, and create video galleries with YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted videos.
Key features of Modula Image Gallery:
- Content Galleries extension to generate galleries from posts or pages
- Bulk editing of multiple images at once
- Video gallery support with YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted videos
- Lightbox slideshow for enhanced user experience
- Gallery filters allow visitors to sort images
- Dynamic effects such as loading, hover, and zoom effects
- Watermarking to protect images
- Right-click protection to prevent image downloads
- Speed optimization with image resizing and CDN delivery
3. Envira Gallery
If you are looking for a drag-and-drop gallery builder plugin, you must try Envira Gallery. You can effortlessly upload images, rearrange them, and create beautiful galleries in just minutes with the plugin. Envira is fully responsive and optimized for speed to ensure a smooth experience both for users and web visitors.
Envira Gallery flawlessly works with the Gutenberg editor and all the popular page builders, like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi. It includes eCommerce capabilities, social media integration, image proofing, and more. You can use its readymade templates to get your galleries ready in the shortest possible time.
Key features of Envira Gallery:
- Drag & drop photo gallery builder
- Watermarking for image protection
- Deep linking for SEO-friendly galleries and images
- Image tags for organization and searchability
- Password protection for galleries
- EXIF metadata display (camera model, aperture, shutter speed, etc.)
- Dynamic galleries created from multiple sources
- Dropbox importer for easy photo importing from Dropbox
- NextGen Gallery importer for smooth migration
- Auto image compression for faster site performance
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4. Gmedia Photo Gallery
Gmedia Photo Gallery is a promising-versatile WordPress plugin to create image galleries and display photo slideshows. You can even play music on the website while displaying the slideshow. It offers comprehensive solutions for managing images, videos, audio files, albums, unlimited uploads, and playlists.
You can add tags to the files to organize your albums and media files in a better way. You can even import images from the WordPress Media Library, NextGEN Gallery, and Flagallery. The plugin offers an intuitive interface, drag-and-drop sorting, and easy file linking for seamless media management.
Key features of Gmedia Photo Gallery:
- Many gallery types (grid, masonry, slider, 3D cube, Pinterest-style, and more)
- Play music with WaveSurfer, a SoundCloud-like audio player
- Generate responsive galleries with just a few clicks
- Group files efficiently using tags and categories
- Apply advanced filtering options for personalized displays
- Display image metadata and geolocation details on maps
- Apply filters and enhance photos with the built-in image editor
- Set permissions for different user roles
- Allow users to comment on individual gallery items
5. Photo Gallery by 10Web
Photo Gallery by 10Web is another extremely popular WordPress gallery-builder plugin with 1250+ five-star ratings. It offers a variety of customizable layouts, including slideshow, masonry, thumbnail, and mosaic views, allowing you to display your media in visually appealing formats.
The plugin supports unlimited photos, galleries, and albums, with built-in image watermarking and right-click protection to safeguard your content. If you are looking for a solution to manage your huge media file collection, this plugin could be a viable option. Hence, this plugin is an ideal solution for media file-rich sites like photography blogs.
Key features of Photo Gallery by 10Web:
- Multiple gallery types (Slideshow, Masonry, Thumbnails, and Mosaic)
- Create and manage unlimited photos, galleries, and albums
- Includes 15 slideshow effects, social sharing, and full-width display
- Has four built-in widgets, including Slideshow and Gallery display options
- Image watermarking and right-click protection to prevent unauthorized use
- Social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr
- Extensive settings for galleries, thumbnails, watermarking, and slideshows
- Dynamic Tag Cloud widget for organizing and displaying image tags
- User role management for controlling access to gallery creation and editing
- Supports image and video content from YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and Flickr
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6. Ultimate Blocks
Like others, Ultimate Blocks isn’t a dedicated gallery-builder plugin. Rather, it’s a Gutenberg block plugin with 25+ custom blocks. Already, the plugin has gained enough traction among various users, especially content creators and marketers.
Among many blocks, it has an image gallery-builder block. You can adjust the image sizes, captions, and stylizations (like borders and shadows). You can also enable lightbox functionality for a full-screen viewing experience.
So, if you are planning to showcase your eCommerce product photos, traveling photos, service mockups, and testimonial photos, this plugin could be a great help for you.
Because you can utilize the other blocks (content filter, tabbed content, rating, review, call to action, button, styled box, etc.) of the plugin around the gallery block to make your visual content more meaningful. This can improve your SEO score as well.
Key features of the Image Gallery block of the Ultimate Blocks plugin:
- Create responsive and customizable image galleries effortlessly
- Upload multiple images and arrange them in grids or sliders
- Adjust image sizes for optimal display
- Add captions to images for better context and engagement
- Apply styling options like borders and shadows to match the site design
- Enable lightbox functionality for a full-screen viewing experience
- Ideal for portfolios, product showcases, and travel photo collections
- Keeps the website lightweight and SEO-optimized
Note: You cannot create video galleries with the Ultimate Blocks plugin. Only image galleries are possible to create.
7. Photo Gallery by Supsystic
Photo Gallery by Supsystic is also a promising plugin, although it doesn’t have as many active users as most other plugins in this post. It offers a variety of gallery types, including full-width, Polaroid, Video, Carousel, Masonry, Mosaic, and more.
You can enhance the galleries with custom attributes, filtering, personal caption effects, EXIF data, pagination, and more options. The plugin provides robust customization options like shadows, borders, captions, and icons for images, making each gallery unique and visually appealing.
Key features of Photo Gallery by Supsystic:
- Allows to add SEO-friendly title and description settings
- Helps create mobile-friendly galleries
- Watermark option to protect images and add branding
- CDN integration for faster image loading and optimized web performance
- Image compression to enhance site speed and user experience
- Ability to add images from FTP and social media platforms
- Support forum and direct contact for assistance and troubleshooting
Note: The plugin has an offer for you. By translating the plugin into another language according to their list, you can earn a free PRO version. I’m not sure how long this offer will last.
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8. Portfolio Gallery
Portfolio Gallery is a versatile gallery-builder plugin, highly suitable for portfolio websites. It includes a variety of useful features such as filter options for sorting your gallery, a responsive Bootstrap Lightbox, and multiple column layouts ranging from 1 to 4 columns.
Why this plugin is extremely suitable for portfolio websites is because you can create separate category pages for portfolio items. Besides, users and visitors can easy sort your works using the built-in filter and category options coming with the plugin.
You can display your previous works and portfolios both in images and videos in appealing layouts. The plugin offers multiple layouts so you have the flexbility to choose from that suits your desire.
Key features of Portfolio Gallery:
- Option to show numbering on images
- Display image title, label, or caption
- Create a beautiful gallery with grayscale images
- Showcase images in a Pinterest-style masonry layout
- Ability to apply multiple colors to filter buttons
- Create and manage unlimited portfolio filters and categories
- Option to adjust borders around images and galleries
- Option to link images to external projects or pages
- Button to load additional portfolio items
- 30 hover effects for images
- Optimized for search engine visibility
- 5 different lightbox popup styles are available
9. Meow Gallery
If you are looking for a simple gallery-builder plugin that can use like a pro immediately after installing it, you can try the Meow Gallery plugin. It’s designed for simplicity, speed, and responsiveness. It seamlessly works with the Gutenberg block editor.
It comes with many useful modern modern layouts like Tiles, Masonry, Justified, Square, and Cascade. As the plugin generates shortcodes for each galleries created, you can use easily embed them on any page builder, making it equally compatible for Gutenberg and page builders.
The Pro version of the plugin opens up some more additional advanced features like infinite/lazy loading, a Carousel/Slider layout, a Map layout, and various animations to enhance the user experience.
Key features of Meow Gallery:
- Creates responsive and retina-friendly design
- Offers popular layouts like Tiles, Masonry, Justified, Square, and Cascade
- Compatible with any WordPress theme or plugin
- Customizable lightbox options include the Lightbox feature
- Fully works with Photo Engine and Lightroom
- Allows linking images to external URLs via the Gallery Custom Links plugin
- Supports adding audio to images with the Audio Story Images plugin
- SEO-friendly, with image lists included in sitemaps
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10. Justified Gallery
Justified Gallery is another simple but useful gallery-builder plugin. This one also seamlessly integrates with the native WordPress gallery. It allows you to create galleries with a responsive layout. You can also build stunning image grids and the popular PhotoSwipe lightbox to display images attractively on various screen sizes, especially on mobile devices.
It supports you in adding image descriptions, which can be enabled or disabled via the settings page. You can adjust the gap width between images and the height of rows to customize the gallery’s appearance. For users with large galleries, the Pro version offers significant performance improvements.
Key features of Justified Gallery:
- Integrates natively with Gutenberg
- Works with page builders and classic editor via shortcodes
- Adapts to various screen sizes for mobile responsiveness
- Optimizes images based on screen size for faster load times
- Pro version speeds up gallery load times by up to 20x
Final Thoughts!
In this post, we’ve carefully selected and discussed the best WordPress gallery plugins available today, highlighting their key features. Now, it’s your turn to take the next step. Since all the plugins offer a free version, you have the perfect opportunity to explore and test them on your local host.
Experiment with different layouts, features, and customization options until you find the perfect fit for your website. We hope this guide helps you make an informed decision for enhancing the visual appeal and functionality of your website.