We love WordPress because it provides us what we need. Large collection of free and premium themes, plugins and the most important is it’s very easy to manage WordPress site. I am going to discuss Gallery Plugins. Mostly all websites are using the gallery to display portfolio, events at their companies, photos of team members, photography gallery and many more. The WordPress offers amazing gallery plugins, so you don’t need to develop custom gallery pages. Just install the plugin and create outstanding galleries. Yeah… But from large sets of Gallery Plugins, it’s difficult to choose the best Gallery Plugin.
Few factors while choosing the Gallery Plugin
- Number of installs: Always check the number of installs before using any plugin, you can get the idea about the popularity of that plugin by checking the number of downloads.
- Customers Reviews & Ratings: Have a look at ratings and customer reviews. You will get the idea that the plugin has succeeded to delight its customer or not.
- Last Updated date of Plugin: Must check the last updated date of the plugin which you are going to use. Never install outdated plugins. If developers are frequently releasing the new version of the plugin it means they are enthusiastic to provide feature rich and bug-free plugin.
- Speed: Speed is the very important thing when you are selecting the WordPress gallery plugins. It’s not only affecting SEO but also affects the user experience of your website. The wpbeginners has performed the speed test on 3 WordPress Gallery Plugins Envira Gallery, Foo Gallery and NextGEN. And here are the results.
[Image Credit: wpbeginner.com]
You can also perform the test before finalizing the Gallery Plugin. And always check the page speed after the development of the Gallery or Portfolio page of your website. - Ease of Use: Creating the Gallery or Portfolio is not same as adding the single image in the post. There are many settings like a layout, thumbnails, columns, animations, lightbox and many more. So, use the plugin which is less complex and easy to use.
Here is the list...
Best WordPress Gallery Plugins
I have sorted the list based on Number of Active Installs.
1. NextGEN Gallery
Active Installs: 1+ Million
The NextGEN Gallery is the most famous and widely used WordPress plugin. It has a 3.2 star rating on wordpress.org. You can easily add images to gallery from the media library, a server folder or from your computer. You can set up albums which are a group of galleries which helpful if you need to group galleries together. You can select various layouts for displaying the galleries and the plugin adds the button in the visual editor for adding the galleries. It’s simple and easy to use WordPress gallery plugins. And another advantage is this plugin is under active development, so you will get regular updated version of the plugin.
2. Gallery
Active Installs: 2,00,000+
It’s a Plugin developed by Web Dorado, the plugin with second highest active installs and has a 4.6 star rating on wordpress.org. It adds a “Photo Gallery” option in the WordPress dashboard. You can add and manage galleries from there. It provides multiple galley views, unlimited quantity of photos, unlimited albums & galleries, supports all types of images, photo gallery widgets, 100% responsive and many others. The galleries can be combined to make a single gallery. The pro version provides additional views like masonry and mosaic view, slideshow and lightbox, social sharing and many others.
3. Gallery by BestWebSoft
Active Installs: 90,000+
It is easy to use gallery plugin with 3.7 ratings. You can add unlimited albums, description of each album, featured image as an album cover, captions & alter text to images, sorting order for images and much more.
You can add a gallery to your page using a shortcode.
4. Image Gallery
Active Installs: 50,000+
It is an amazing gallery plugin with 4.4 star rating. Like NextGEN it’s also under active development. The free version provides 6 different gallery views, widget integration, unlimited photos, unlimited galleries and it’s fully responsive. The pro version allows you to design customization and lightbox customization.
4a. Huge IT portfolio gallery
Active Installs: 40,000+
It’s the perfect plugin for the portfolio. The yet another great plugin by Huge IT. It provides 7 different gallery views, unlimited photos & galleries, videos, title & description of the portfolio gallery, gallery shortcode and many more.
5. WP Photo Alum Plus
Active Installs: 50,000+
Another WordPress gallery plugin with 3.9 star rating. Like above all plugins, it also permits you to create unlimited galleries and albums. You can also mix the photos and videos; control the size of photos, add water marks and also supports WP supercache.
6. Grand Flagallery
Active Installs: 40,000+
It’s a multipurpose gallery with 3.3 star rating. You can create a photo gallery, video gallery and music album & banner. It provides powerful admin side functionalities to manage the galleries. It’s also fully responsive.
7. Gallery Bank
Active Installs: 30,000+
The awesome gallery plugin to create stunning galleries with 4.4 star rating. Using this plugin, you can create beautiful image galleries, but you can create up to 3 albums with free standard version. The pro version allows you to create unlimited galleries, albums with awesome layouts. This plugin also has powerful admin functionalities to fully control albums and galleries.
8. Foo Gallery
Active Installs: 30,000+
The plugin with highest star ratings on wordpress.org; it’s 4.9. It really gives a rich look to your galleries and albums.
9. Envira Gallery
Active Installs: 30,000+
It’s the lite version of gallery plugin by Envira with 4.3 star rating. It includes the entire gallery features which are mentioned in other plugins. The most important feature is the fast loading of galleries.
10. Gmedia Gallery
Active Installs: 20,000+
It is also multipurpose gallery like Grand gallery. It has a 4.2 star rating in wordpress. It also provides beautiful gallery layouts and full control to manage galleries and albums. It allows you to upload unlimited images in each gallery and unlimited customization.
11. Photospace Gallery
Active Installs: 8,000+
It’s the last plugin on my list but it is also a good one. It has 4.5 star ratings. The plugin takes the benefit of the built-in feature of WP by automatically applying the plugin to the default gallery shortcode.
Wrapping Up
All these plugins are awesome. Just analyze your requirements and find the best one from this list. If you got the best plugin which is not on this list, let us know by commenting the name of the plugin. May be it helps someone to find perfect gallery plugin.
About Author:Anjana Ratadiya works as an SEO Professional at Guru Technolabs - WordPress Development Company. She is a crazy reader, good listener and passionate about SEO, Digital Marketing, WordPress and PHP.