9 Best WordPress Image Gallery Plugins For 2024 (Comparison)
If a picture is worth a thousand words, an image gallery is worth a lot more.
But regardless of how many words your photos have to say, they won’t matter if you don’t present them in a way that appeals to your visitors or prospects.
In this post, we’re comparing the best WordPress image gallery plugins. So, you’ll be able to organize your works to engage with your audience, and turn them into possible customers.
TLDR:
- Choose Modula if you want the best all-round WordPress image gallery plugin.
- Choose Envira Gallery if you want a solid image gallery plugin that integrates with WooCommerce.
- Choose NextGEN Gallery if your goal is to sell your photos and other artwork from your website.
- Choose Photo Gallery by 10Web if you want a simple free WordPress image gallery plugin.
What is the best WordPress image gallery plugin?
#1 – Modula
Modula is a popular WordPress image gallery plugin that makes it easy to shine the spotlight on your art.
Whether you want to create galleries for your images or videos – this plugin has you covered.
Using its drag-and-drop builder, you can organize which media file you want to display in your gallery.
You can also choose from different gallery layouts per device to help make browsing your content much easier.
This WordPress gallery plugin keeps your work secure and prevents people from stealing your work by using its right-click and password-protect extensions.
Finally, Modula’s SpeedUp feature compresses your image file sizes without compromising their quality and serves them from a CDN.
This way, your galleries don’t slow down your page’s loading time, thus keeping prospects from leaving your site.
Pricing:
The Modula image gallery has a free version that gives you access to its most basic features.
But professionals would benefit more by using its PRO version starting at $34 per year for one site. There are four plans to choose from, each of which gives you access to a different number of supporting sites and advanced features.
All plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re unhappy with the image gallery plugin.
#2 – Envira Gallery
Envira Gallery is another great WordPress image gallery plugin that comes with a bunch of useful features.
Aside from its drag-and-drop builder, the image gallery plugin’s selection of pre-made templates takes the guesswork away from creating beautiful galleries. Within minutes, just pick a template, add your images, customize its appearance, and publish the gallery!
You can also sell your photos from your WordPress site using the native WooCommerce integration of Envira Gallery. Therefore, instead of just getting clients for your services, you can sell your work as well to maximize your profits!
In relation, the Photo Proofing addon lets people choose the size and quantity of the images they want to order from you.
Videographers can get in on the fun using the plugin’s Videos addon. This allows them to showcase their self-hosted videos, as well as those uploaded to Youtube, Vimeo, and others, in their video galleries.
Pricing:
You can choose from Envira Gallery’s four paid tiers starting at $29 per year.
Each plan differs from the number of supported sites and features it offers. The higher the price, the more supported sites and features you get.
You can, however, have unlimited galleries for your website regardless of your plan.
All plans are annual subscriptions except for the Lifetime plan at $299.
#3 – NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin for those who want to sell their art.
First, you can display your images in different gallery layouts such as mosaic, masonry, blog style, film strip, and more.
When people click on any image from the gallery, you can make the pricelist appear so they know how much each is worth.
You can accept payment using the Stripe or Paypal gateways from within the WordPress gallery plugin. This way, you won’t need another plugin to process the payments from customers.
Its Auto Tax Calculation feature computes for the accurate sales tax to help keep your business compliant with state tax laws.
If you work with clients, NextGEN Gallery’s Pro Proofing feature allows them to choose and submit proofs from your gallery.
Pricing:
NextGEN Gallery is available in four paid plans starting at $24 per year.
The first three plans (Starter, Plus, and Pro) offer different supported sites and features. The higher the plans, the more sites the image gallery plugin supports and features you can use.
The fourth plan is a Lifetime deal ($280 one-time payment). Users can access all the plugin’s features on unlimited sites, making this plugin ideal for agencies and small businesses.
#4 – Photo Gallery by 10Web
If you’re looking for a gallery plugin that hands you the reins for better customization with a few clicks, Photo Gallery by 10Web is a solid option.
Choose from 10 premium gallery views and 15 lightbox transition effects to create beautiful and responsive galleries that will compel your prospective clients.
You have the option to tag images to help people find the right image across multiple galleries. From here, you can feature this on your WordPress sidebar aside or use the slideshow and gallery widgets to display your works.
This photo gallery plugin also automatically optimizes newly uploaded or existing images in your media folder. Choose among different compression modes images to ensure that the images in your galleries load fast.
You can even keep track of the changes made in your galleries and create backups to your files and restore them without compromising your site’s performance.
Pricing:
The free version of this WordPress photo gallery plugin limits you to only five gallery and album views, two non-customizable themes, one lightbox effect, and three gallery widgets.
There are two paid plans to choose from. The Basic plan costs $30 for one website. Aside from more gallery views, widgets, lightboxes, you get access to user commenting and rating, Pinterest integration, and role management.
The Pro version ($60 for five websites) grants you access to its image optimization and backup features.
#5 – Gmedia Photo Gallery
The Gmedia Photo Gallery lets you choose from 10+ pre-made templates so you can just worry about adding the images and publishing your gallery.
You can even save the gallery settings as module presets so you can build grid galleries faster.
All galleries you will create using this WordPress plugin are responsive and mobile-friendly. This way, you can be sure that the images will look great when viewed on any device.
You can display related galleries on your blog posts according to the Post tags. People can also search for media items in your gallery from WordPress search.
Both help get more people to see your image collections on your website.
Pricing:
The amount you must pay for Gmedia Gallery Premium depends on the number of licenses you want to purchase. For one site, you must shell out $29.99. The price per site goes down if you purchase more licenses.
Each license gives you access to all the tool’s features. This way, you don’t have to get a higher plan just to unlock its premium features.
#6 – Jetpack
While not just a WordPress gallery plugin, Jetpack lets you create a gallery or two to showcase photos on your site.
You can provide people with an excellent way to view your images via galleries, full-screen slideshows, and carousels.
Jetpack also comes with starter and premium themes to match your profession, whether you’re a photographer, designer, or others. This way, you can establish consistent branding on your website across the board.
If you use Google Photos for storing your work, you can connect it with this WordPress plugin so you can manage your media files from Google Photos.
More importantly, all images are uploaded to the Jetpack content delivery network. As a result, users can load your photos at blazing-fast speeds and view them at high resolutions.
To help improve your site speed, its lazy loading feature allows you to only load images once visitors scroll on them on the page. Therefore, you encourage people to keep browsing your page and its images.
Pricing:
All Jetpack features related to building a gallery are free. It comes with the ability to display portfolios and testimonials, site accelerator, fast video hosting via VideoPress, and others.
The paid plans for this premium plugin include security, backup, and scan features to help keep your site safe from online threats.
#7 – WP Photo Album Plus
WP Photo Album Plus is another great WordPress photo gallery plugin that lets you create albums and slideshows instead of image galleries to showcase your images or videos.
This plugin gives you full control over the display sizes, links from any image type, and metadata such as EXIF, IPTC, and others.
From the album, you can give users the ability to upload their content in it and comment on existing ones that you can moderate before publishing.
You can also set up a rating system so visitors can rate the photos from best to least good.
From here, you can emphasize photos with the best rating and most comments on each album.
To optimize your images and improve your WordPress site’s loading speed, upload them to your Cloudinary account and connect it with your plugin.
If you have a Fotomoto account, you can add its code onto the plugin so you can monetize from your work.
Pricing:
Completely free!
#8 – FooGallery
FooGallery is perhaps the sleekest among the image gallery plugins in this list.
The premium version comes with 9 stunning gallery templates to help you create your WordPress image gallery right out of the box.
To help people find content across your different galleries much easier, you can organize them according to tags and categories.
Doing so allows you to also implement multi-level filtering in the frontend, which is arguably the plugin’s best feature.
People can just click on tabs in your gallery that represent a tag or categories so they can view content in each at the same time.
If you’re hosting content from other sources, i.e. server folders, Instagram, Adobe Lightroom, etc., you can create dynamic galleries to compile them in a single gallery on your website.
For those who know their way around HTML, they can create custom captions for each image on a gallery. The captions will appear when users hover the mouse cursor over the image.
Pricing:
FooGallery’s paid version is available in three plans starting at $59/year for one site, premium support, and all its PRO features.
Each plan varies in the number of supported sites. The more sites the plan supports, the more expensive it is.
#9 – Everest Gallery
Everest Gallery perhaps has the largest selection of gallery layouts (over 30) and hover animation (35) to choose from. This allows you to mix and match the best layout and animation for the content in your gallery so you can impress people with your presentation.
There are also pre-designed layouts for filters and paginations to help build your galleries without writing a single line of code.
But if you want to customize the look and feel of your galleries using CSS, there’s an option that allows you to add your own.
Aside from photos and videos, you can include mixed media in your galleries such as audio, Instagram, and posts. This helps you create more dynamic galleries to showcase for your audience.
When organizing the media in your galleries, you can drag and drop them according to your desired order so you can put your best foot forward.
Finally, you can configure the number of columns for grid and masonry layouts when viewed on different devices. This helps you make your galleries look more appealing on desktop, tablet, or mobile.
Pricing:
The paid version of the plugin costs $21. You receive all advanced features for a single site.
If you want to use the plugin for more than a site, you must purchase another license.
Which WordPress gallery plugin is for you?
Among the WordPress gallery plugins mentioned above, Modula is arguably the best suited for most use-cases. It’s security functionality such as watermarking helps to protect your images.
You can use its password-protect extension to allow clients to view your work and close deals from there.
Its built-in image optimization features also help improve the viewing experience of your galleries by loading the images faster than any other gallery plugin.
Similar to Modula, Envira Gallery makes creating image galleries a breeze too.
But aside from showcasing your work to attract clients, this plugin has features that help you sell your work from your website thanks to it’s WooCommerce integration. However, if you don’t plan to sell your photos from your website, that might not be too useful.
If selling your photos and other artwork from your website is your primary goal, NextGEN Gallery is ideal.
Unlike Envira Gallery, you can accept payments from different gateways, showcase price lists, and proof images from this plugin.
NextGEN Gallery plugin has built-in features that render the use of another e-commerce plugin unnecessary.
Related reading:
- 9 Photography Blogging Tips Every Photographer Should Know.
- How To Add A Photo Gallery To Your WordPress Website.
- How To Start A Photography Blog: The Definitive Guide.
- The Best WordPress Video Gallery Plugins: YouTube Galleries Made Easy.
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