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Pretty much every website uses images and WordPress photo gallery plugins make it easy to display those images in an attractive way.Try a free demo

But with so many options to choose from, it can be hard to dig through everything and find the plugin that offers just the right combination of features, aesthetics, and ease of use.

To help you find that plugin, we’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress photo gallery plugins, dissected their feature lists, and grabbed a representative screenshot so that you know what types of galleries each can create.

Ready to dive deep? Let’s go!Find the best way to display your WordPress images with this roundup of the best photo gallery plugins

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How to Choose the Best WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins

You have an overwhelming number of WordPress photo gallery plugins to choose from. Go to CodeCanyon, WordPress.org, or make a Google search and you’re still going to be looking at a long list, without much guidance on what you should go for.

Therefore, we compiled the best features to consider when looking through these WordPress photo gallery plugins. Everyone’s situation will be different, but try to pick out the most important features to you from the list below to narrow your search:

A collection of different gallery formats such as tiled, mosaic, and masonry.

Lightbox viewing, for users to get a larger version of the photos in your gallery.

Image sharing, through social media and other options like email.

Image commenting for creating a community and conversation behind your photos.

Support for both video and photos, with tools for linking to YouTube and Vimeo videos.

Linking options so that you can send people to descriptions of your portfolios or blog posts with more information.

Open graph access to integrate with third-party tools and customize the way the gallery looks.

Image protection for those who don’t want their photographs used without permission.

Ecommerce support to sell your photos through a WordPress website.

A digital download management system to compile the images and organize them into categories.

Animations and other effects to grab attention when users scroll over your photos.

Drag and drop builders for rapidly building a photo or video gallery without the need for complicated coding or settings.

Mobile-friendly galleries so that users can view your photos from tablets and phones.

Image optimization with lazy loading. This is essential if you plan on having lots of photos on your website. It’s bound to improve the speed of your site and make search engine happy.

Gallery templates to eliminate the need to start a gallery from scratch.

Customization tools so that you can match your branding, fonts, colors, and other elements with what your current website looks like.

The list could go on, but this is a good starting point for you to identify what’s most important to your business when it comes to finding a photo gallery plugin. Some companies won’t find any value in copyright protection, but others wouldn’t ever consider a WordPress gallery plugin without that functionality.

Therefore, keep all of these primary features in mind as you read through our in-depth gallery plugin evaluations below.

Best WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins in 2020

Modula

NextGEN Gallery

Envira Gallery

Gmedia Photo Gallery

Photo Gallery by 10Web

Jetpack

FooGallery

Photo Gallery by Supsystic

Justified Image Grid

Everest Gallery Lite

Image Gallery by Robo

Meow Gallery

Portfolio Gallery

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery

WordPress Photo Gallery Plugin by Gallery Bank

Photo Gallery by GT3

1. Modula

Modula is an extremely user-friendly WordPress gallery plugin from Macho Themes that helps you quickly create interesting photo and video galleries. With Modula’s range of flexible customization options, you can easily tweak your gallery to your liking.

Modula WordPress plugin

With Modula’s custom grid functionality, you can freely resize images within your gallery’s container, controlling their heights, widths, and aspect ratio.

And, all you need to do is switch a gallery from ‘creative gallery’ to ‘custom grid’ and start changing the dimensions of your images by clicking and dragging from the bottom right-hand corners of the images in your gallery.

If you decide to give Modula a try, you’ll quickly notice that the plugin was developed to cater to all WordPress users, regardless of experience. Their easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface and customization options make it possible to create a gallery that looks just like one of their demos in less than five minutes.

For more advanced users, Modula has an advanced customization section where it is possible for users to add CSS that can be applied to galleries separately. This, together with their well-written documentation contributes to what we believe is truly a great user experience.

A Typical Gallery Created by Modula Looks Like…

The free version of Modula is available on the official WordPress plugin repository and even includes their custom grid functionality. While you can play around with settings like margins, shadows, border radius, and more to alter how your galleries look, here’s a good idea of the style of galleries created by Modula Lite.

Modula WordPress Photo Gallery Plugin

Modula’s plans start at $39 for a single site, up to $129 for the Agency option with unlimited sites.

Reasons to Use Modula

It gives you the ability to design custom grids. All parts of the grid are customizable, with options to freely resize images within the gallery container.

Easily create a lightbox gallery with different included lightbox styles.

You can add image-entry animations (such as sliding and rotation). There are also over 40 built-in hover effects to grab attention and make your galleries look more appealing.

The plugin provides advanced tools for further customizing your gallery with CSS. This isn’t for beginners, but more advanced users will like the fact that they can tap into the custom code.

One of the premium extensions allows you to add videos to your galleries, all with simple links to the videos.

The plugin provides social media buttons so that your visitors share your photography with other people.

You get to choose from a wide range of grid formats, such as masonry, lightbox galleries, and regular square grids.

All galleries are ready to work on mobile devices.

Add GIFs to your galleries so that your entire grid is filled with moving images.

Generate albums to better organize your galleries and photos.

All customization is done through a drag and drop interface.

A “helper grid” comes with the plugin to give you an idea of where to place your images and show what the gallery looks like prior to publication.

Add filters to your gallery so that users can sift through your images and figure out which ones they like the most. This is particularly important for portfolio galleries.

The premium version of the plugin has a protection extension so that site visitors don’t have the ability to right-click and download your photos.

A watermark extension is available to further protect your photography.

A speed extension comes in handy for optimizing every single image that is added to your galleries.

Use shortcodes to insert your galleries anywhere on your website. For instance, you may think about dropping a gallery shortcode anywhere in a blog post or in the footer module.

Things to Consider Before Choosing Modula

Modula is mainly for grid galleries. That’s what it does best. It’s also true that the majority of features provided in the free version revolve around the grid galleries. If you’d like to unlock slideshows or other layouts, you’ll need to think about upgrading to one of the premium versions.

Price: Free + Paid plans start at $39 for a single-site license.

Reviews: 4.7 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org)

Active installations: 70,000+

PHP version: 5.6 or higher

2. NextGEN Gallery

By the numbers, NextGEN Gallery is one of the most popular WordPress photo gallery plugins on WordPress.org. It continues to receive over 1.5 million new downloads per year, along with great overall reviews. It’s developed by Imagely, photography experts who know the industry well.

NextGEN Gallery WordPress plugin

The free version of NextGEN Gallery provides two main gallery styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries) and two album styles (compact and extended), all of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more. You can then extend it with various premium bundles.

In addition to a variety of different gallery types, these premium versions also add more advanced features like:

ecommerce functionality to sell images.

Image protection (hotlink protection, watermarks, etc.).

Image deep linking for lightbox galleries.

A Typical Gallery Created by NextGEN Gallery Looks Like…

One of the draws of NextGEN Gallery is that it offers so many different types of galleries, so there’s no single typical gallery.

I’ll use the basic thumbnail gallery for this example because it’s included in the free version. And if you go with the Pro version, you have access to many more interesting templates:

NextGEN Gallery

Reasons to Use NextGEN Gallery

You can create albums of different galleries, which is helpful if you need to display lots of pictures.

You can create slideshow galleries, as well as many other gallery types depending on which version you have.

The premium versions offer advanced features like watermarks, deep image links, and more.

NextGEN Pro includes ecommerce functionality, which is helpful if you’re selling photography.

You can choose from compact and extended galleries in the free version. So, it’s basically a choice between a longer list of photos or a consolidated layout.

You receive unique alternatives to your regular, everyday grid galleries. Some of these options include thumbnail galleries, list albums, and blog style galleries.

Image sharing is possible through social media buttons and other options like sending through email.

Your website visitors can come to your gallery and make comments on the imagery. This isn’t a requirement, so you can turn the functionality on or off.

Sales tax is automatically generated when making photo sales.

Some of the payment gateways include Stripe and PayPal.

If selling gallery photos, you get tools for sending out coupons to your customers.

Print lab fulfillment is available if you’d like to partner with a reputable printer. This is usually what most photographers do, since it would be far too time-consuming and expensive to print your own photos.

A Lightroom plugin comes with the premium version for a rapid edit and publication process.

Things to Consider Before Choosing NextGEN Gallery

The free version used to be pretty basic, but they have been actively adding a lot more features. For example, the basic slideshow can show arrows and change the transition timing. Having said that, NextGEN is a professional level image gallery. We recommend it to anyone who can afford it. Try out the free version first, then consider upgrading if you’d like to protect images and offer additional gallery layouts. Just keep in mind that NextGEN Pro is one of the most expensive WordPress photo gallery plugins out there.

Price: Free. The cheapest premium bundle is NextGEN Plus at $79.

Reviews: 4.3 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org).

Active installations: 800,000+.

PHP version: 5.4 or higher.

3. Envira Gallery

Acquired by Nathan Singh in early 2018, Envira Gallery is another popular freemium gallery plugin. A free version is available. Some brands may find that the core plugin is all they need to make a beautiful gallery. However, many of the coolest features are reserved for the premium plugin galleries.

Envira Photo Gallery WordPress plugin

One of the draws of Envira Gallery is that, like Modula, the interface is designed to make it as easy as possible to quickly get up and running with a good-looking gallery in WordPress.

While the free version is nice for basic galleries, the various premium plans are where you get the bulk of the helpful features, which include:

Social sharing.

Video support.

Albums.

Watermarking.

Image deep linking.

WooCommerce support.

More.

A Typical Gallery Created by Envira Gallery Looks Like…

While Envira Gallery lets you create multiple types of galleries, here’s the result without touching any of the settings:

Envira Gallery

Reasons to Use Envira Gallery

The interface is well-designed and you get to create your galleries with the help of a drag and drop builder. There’s no need to mess with any code. You drop the images right into place and hit the Publish button.

The Pro versions give you access to a ton of features (though they can get pricey).

You can use videos in your galleries with the Pro versions.

Several helpful addons are provided, with support for WooCommerce, Proofing, Lightroom, and more.

Social media sharing buttons come standard.

You can link to your social media pages and reveal the photos from those pages in your galleries.

Quite a few templates are provided in the free version, cutting out the amount of time it would take to build a completely new gallery.

Assign tags and categories to your galleries for better organization.

Deeplinking is possible for sending users to more information about your photos.

All galleries created in Envira Gallery work well on mobile devices. The galleries and photographs snap into place depending on how large your screen is.

You can integrate with WooCommerce to start selling your photographs and collect payments through gateways like Stripe.

Envira Gallery is unique in that it includes Gutenberg blocks to drop your galleries anywhere on your website. Not many of the competitors have Gutenberg blocks.

The watermarking and password protection tools come in handy for when you’d like to completely block users from taking your photos and using them elsewhere.

You can automatically import images from places like Instagram and Pinterest.

The CSS styles are fully customizable if you have the experience to mess around with the custom coding.

Things to Consider Before Choosing Envira Gallery

Some people love Envira, while others would recommend never considering it. It’s one of those WordPress photo gallery plugins where you really have to test it out to discover if it’s right for you. If pricing is your main concern, I would recommend skipping Envira Gallery right off the bat.

Overall, if you have the money, the Envira Gallery features are rock solid. However, users who want free galleries should look elsewhere.

Price: Free. The basic premium version starts at $29 for a single-site license, but the full-featured Pro version costs $69.

Reviews: 4.8 out of 5 stars (WordPress.org)

Active installations: 100,000+

PHP version: 5.3 or higher

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