9 Best YouTube Video Gallery Plugins for WordPress

Do you want to add a YouTube video gallery on your WordPress website?

You can add YouTube videos to WordPress blog posts using the built-in Embed block. However, you can’t easily arrange these videos in a nice gallery layout.

In this article, we will share the best YouTube video gallery plugins for WordPress so you can show your videos in an organized and eye-catching way.

Best YouTube video gallery plugins for WordPress

1. Smash Balloon YouTube Feed Pro

The Smash Balloon YouTube gallery plugin

Smash Balloon YouTube Feed Pro is the best YouTube gallery plugin on the market.

This plugin allows you to hand-pick specific videos from your account, or automatically show all the latest videos from your YouTube channel. You can even combine multiple YouTube channels into a single feed.

A YouTube gallery, created using Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon has a ready-made gallery layout so you can organize your videos with the click of a button. After creating a gallery, you can control exactly how the videos look by choosing whether to show the YouTube description, title, comments, the total number of likes, and much more.

You can even encourage visitors to join your YouTube channel, by adding a ‘Subscribe’ button to the gallery.

By default, the gallery layout also has a ‘Load More’ button so visitors can scroll through your entire YouTube channel without leaving your website.

Customizing the YouTube gallery 'Load More' button

When a visitor clicks on a video, Smash Balloon will start playing it in an embedded video player. In this way, you can get more YouTube views and engagement without driving visitors away from your website.

By default, the player shows related videos when the playback finishes, or the visitor pauses the video. Smash Balloon lets you replace these suggested videos with a custom call to action, so you can promote a specific post, page, or even the most popular WooCommerce products from your online store.

You can also use Smash Balloon to embed YouTube playlists, favorites, and livestreams on your WordPress website.

The best part about Smash Balloon is that it doesn’t slow down your site. The plugin’s built-in YouTube caching feature will make sure your site always loads fast, which is great for SEO.

The other nice thing about Smash Balloon is that you can combine social content from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into a single social wall. If you’re serious about growing your online presence, then we highly recommend the Smash Balloon All Access Bundle, which gives you access to the social wall feature.

A social wall, created using Smash Balloon

Note: If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then there’s also a free version of the YouTube feed plugin. Although this plugin is missing the more advanced features, it still has everything you need to embed YouTube videos on your WordPress website.

Pricing: Smash Balloon YouTube Feed Pro licenses start at $49 per year. If you want to embed Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube content on your WordPress website, then you can grab the All Access Bundle for $299 per year.

2. Envira Gallery

The Envira Gallery YouTube plugin

Envira Gallery is generally known as the best WordPress photo gallery plugin.

However, there’s also an Envira Gallery Videos Addon that allows you to create a YouTube gallery. Simply enter the URL for each YouTube video and then specify the thumbnail that you want to show in the gallery. The Videos Addon will then fetch the video automatically.

After adding all your videos, Envira Gallery lets you fine-tune the playback experience. You can make the video autoplay, open it fullscreen by default, hide the playback controls, and much more.

Envira Gallery can also embed entire YouTube playlists, although you’ll need to get a YouTube API from the Google Cloud Console and then add it to the plugin’s settings first.

As well as YouTube, Envira Gallery supports other popular video hosting services such as Vimeo, Wistia, Twitch, VideoPress, and Dailymotion.

You can also embed Facebook videos in WordPress.

One major drawback is that Envira Gallery won’t automatically fetch new YouTube videos from your channel. If you want to update the gallery, then you’ll need to add each new video manually using its URL.

Pricing: To get Envira with the Video Gallery addon, you’ll need to either buy a Pro license ($89 per year) or a Lifetime license ($209).

3. YouTube Showcase

The YouTube Showcase gallery plugin

With the YouTube Showcase plugin, you can add a YouTube video gallery or grid to your WordPress website.

After activating the plugin, you can add any YouTube video to your site using the 11-digit alphanumeric video key shown at the end of the video’s URL.

To help visitors find what they’re looking for, YouTube Showcase lets you add categories and tags to your videos. These work in exactly the same way as the built-in WordPress categories and tags, so they’re very easy to use.

Once you’ve done that, you just need to add the plugin’s shortcode to any page, post, or widget-ready area. YouTube Showcase will then show all your videos in a nice gallery layout.

YouTube Showcase automatically adds a row of video thumbnails below the gallery, so visitors can easily move between the different videos. For visitors who are using a smartphone or tablet, YouTube Showcase replaces these thumbnails with more mobile-friendly ‘Prev’ and ‘Next’ icons.

The plugin uses pagination by default, so your gallery should load quickly no matter how many videos you add.

The default gallery layout should be a good fit for most websites. However, if you want to make changes then the plugin has a straightforward settings page.

While it isn’t as customizable as some of the other gallery plugins, YouTube Showcase does have a section where more advanced users can add custom CSS and custom JavaScript.

If you don’t like the gallery layout, then YouTube Showcase also has a video grid shortcode. This shows all your YouTube videos in a 4-column grid layout.

Pricing: You can download YouTube Showcase for free from the official WordPress repository.

4. YourChannel

The YourChannel WordPress gallery plugin for YouTube

YourChannel is one of the easiest ways to create a YouTube gallery. It allows visitors to look through your entire YouTube channel feed and watch any video without leaving your website.

YourChannel also comes with a built-in WordPress caching system, to help keep your website running smoothly.

To set up YourChannel, simply enter your YouTube username or channel ID. After that, the plugin will automatically fetch banner images, video thumbnails, your subscriber count, and your total number of views.

The plugin’s settings are straightforward and user-friendly, so you can create a beautiful-looking gallery simply by checking a few boxes and typing some numbers.

You can change how many videos YourChannel shows when the gallery page first loads, and set a maximum number of videos that visitors can scroll through. This is particularly useful for creating a mobile-friendly video gallery.

YourChannel also helps you stay GDPR compliant by showing an ‘Allow Cookies’ message when a visitor first clicks the ‘Play’ button. This message includes a link to your privacy policy.

When you’re happy with how the gallery looks, you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode provided by the plugin.

Pricing: Simply visit the WordPress repository and download the YourChannel plugin for free.

5. Photo Gallery by 10Web

The Photo Gallery for 10Web plugin for WordPress

According to our marketing statistics research, 70% of people visit YouTube on a smartphone or tablet. If you run an online store using a plugin such as WooCommerce, then you’ll be interested to learn that 90% of consumers watch videos on a mobile device.

With that in mind, you’ll want to make sure your YouTube gallery looks just as good on mobile, as it does on desktop. With Photo Gallery by 10Web, you can create a mobile responsive image and video gallery within minutes.

Despite the name, Photo Gallery supports all the best video hosting sites including Vimeo, Dailymotion, and YouTube. Simply copy the video’s URL, and Photo Gallery will add that video to your website.

After that, you can fine-tune how the gallery looks by choosing different layouts, switching between dark and light themes, adding pagination, and more. You’ll also have complete control over the content that appears in your gallery, including adding or removing the video title, description, tag box, and more.

Visitors can watch each video directly on your website, using the Photo Gallery lightbox popup. The lightbox comes with built-in social share buttons, which make it easy for visitors to share your videos on Facebook and Twitter. This can help you create a buzz on social media, get more engagement, and grow your social media following.

Pricing: You can download Photo Gallery for free from the official WordPress repository. If you need more advanced features, then there’s also a premium version of Photo Gallery.

6. Embed Plus for YouTube

The EmbedPlus gallery plugin for YouTube

Embed Plus for YouTube allows you to create a YouTube gallery using videos, playlists, shorts, and livestreams.

This plugin has a few unusual features, such as ‘Modest Branding’ which reduces the amount of YouTube branding in your video gallery.

Another unique feature is ‘facade mode,’ which aims to make your WordPress website faster by loading a lighter version of the video player initially, and then downloading the rest of the player when the visitor clicks a video.

To make your pages load even faster, Embed Plus can defer JavaScript while serving minified CSS and JavaScript.

Embed Plus can even convert non-HTTPs videos to HTTPS. Since Google uses HTTPS/SSL as a ranking factor in its search results, this can improve your search engine rankings.

For more on this topic, please see our complete guide on how to move WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS.

To keep people on your website for longer, Embed Plus can automatically play the next video in the gallery, which is particularly useful if you’re adding playlists to your WordPress blog.

This plugin has in-depth and detailed settings that cover several tabs. This gives you complete control over how the YouTube gallery looks and acts, but it can be confusing when you first activate the plugin.

Thankfully, Embed Plus has a built-in setup wizard that asks questions about the kind of gallery you want to create and then changes the default settings based on your answers.

Pricing: You can download Embed Plus YouTube for free from the official WordPress repository. If you need more advanced features then there’s also a Pro YouTube plugin.

7. Automatic YouTube Gallery

The Automatic YouTube Gallery plugin for WordPress

Automatic YouTube Gallery lets you create unlimited video galleries on your site. As the name suggests, this plugin automates most of the setup process so you can create a YouTube video gallery in minutes.

With this plugin, you can create a YouTube gallery using a channel ID, username, playlist, search terms, or even by entering specific video URLs. You can also embed live streams on your WordPress website.

After choosing your videos, Automatic YouTube Gallery lets you fine-tune how the gallery looks. This includes changing the number of columns in the gallery layout, changing the ratio, adding or removing the video titles, and more.

Automatic YouTube Gallery also has some settings to help keep visitors on your website for longer, such as autoplaying the next video and looping a single video. To make your YouTube gallery more accessible, you can also activate closed captions by default or change the language used by the video player’s interface.

With Automatic YouTube Gallery, you don’t have to worry about videos slowing down your site. The plugin has a caching feature that can reduce page loading times and boost your WordPress speed and performance.

This plugin is also fully compatible with WordPress multisite.

Pricing: You can download the Automatic YouTube Gallery plugin for free from the official WordPress repository.

8. All-in-One Video Gallery

The All in One Video Gallery WordPress plugin

You can use All-in-One Video Gallery to show videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Rumble, and more in an HTML5 video player.

Unlike other plugins that have their own editors, All-in-One Video Gallery integrates with the familiar WordPress page and post editor. It also has video categories and tags that work exactly the same as the built-in WordPress categories and tags.

With this in mind, it’s very easy to get started with the All-in-One Video Gallery.

After adding your videos, All-in-One Video Gallery lets you customize the player controls, playback options, and video quality levels. This plugin also aims to make your videos more accessible by supporting WebVTT subtitles and showing the subtitles automatically.

The plugin is GDPR compliant and will get the visitor’s consent before loading YouTube, Vimeo, or embedded videos from third-party websites. If you prefer, then you can also disable the plugin’s cookies for added privacy.

When you’re ready, you can either show all your videos in a single gallery or create different galleries using the plugin’s categories feature. This allows you to create lots of different galleries, with different content.

Another option is embedding the built-in All-in-One Video Gallery search form. This allows visitors to search through all your videos, to find exactly the content they’re looking for.

Pricing: You can download All-in-One Video Gallery for free from the WordPress repository.

9. Video Gallery – Total Soft

The Video Gallery WordPress plugin

Video Gallery by Total Soft can add an unlimited number of professionally-designed video galleries to your website. This plugin supports YouTube plus other major video platforms such as Vimeo and Wistia.

When building a gallery, you can choose between 16 different themes and 9 layouts. If your YouTube channel has lots of videos, then you can use pagination to spread the content across multiple pages.

This plugin puts a strong focus on gallery thumbnails. Every time you add a video to a gallery, you can replace the default YouTube thumbnail with an image of your choice.

After that, Video Gallery will play different hover effects when the visitor moves their mouse over the thumbnail. This includes some advanced hover effects that animate the video’s title, description, and other elements. In this way, your gallery can catch the visitor’s attention before it starts playing videos.

Video Gallery allows you to show videos from different online platforms, and even self-hosted videos, in the same gallery.

After building a gallery, you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode. Video Gallery also provides a code snippet that adds the gallery to your WordPress theme. For more information, please see our guide on how to easily add custom code in WordPress.

Pricing: You can download Video Gallery for free from the official WordPress repository.

What is the Best YouTube Video Gallery Plugin for WordPress?

If you’re looking for the easiest way to add a gallery to WordPress, then Smash Balloon Youtube Feed Pro is our top pick.

This plugin guides you through the process of connecting YouTube and WordPress and then makes it easy to build a professionally-designed gallery. It also lets you fine-tune every part of the gallery so it perfectly suits your WordPress theme.

When you’re happy with how the gallery looks, you can add it to any page, post, or widget-ready area using either a shortcode or the plugin’s Feeds for YouTube block.

Unlike some other plugins on the list, your Smash Balloon gallery will update automatically as you publish new videos to YouTube. This means visitors will always see the latest videos, and you don’t have to worry about updating your gallery manually.

While Smash Balloon YouTube Feed Pro is our top choice, it is a premium plugin. If you’re looking for a free YouTube gallery plugin, then you may want to take a look at Feeds for YouTube instead.

While this plugin is missing some of Smash Balloon’s advanced features, it still has everything you need to create a YouTube video gallery for your WordPress website.

This makes Feeds for YouTube our top pick for anyone who is just getting started, has a limited budget, or just wants to embed a small number of videos in their WordPress website.

We hope this article helped you choose the best YouTube gallery plugins for WordPress. You may also want to see our list of best drag-and-drop WordPress page builders to create custom designs and our tutorial on how to create an email newsletter to keep your visitors updated with your new videos.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Which is the Best WordPress Photo Gallery Plugin? (Performance + Quality Compared)

Are you looking for the best WordPress gallery plugin for your website?

There are so many WordPress photo gallery plugins available, but the problem is that most will either slow down your website, or they’re extremely difficult to use.

To help you pick the right solution, we have created a detailed comparison of the performance, features, and quality of the best WordPress photo gallery plugins.

Our goal is to help you find the WordPress photo and video gallery plugin, that is fast, easy to use, and has all the features you will need.

Best WordPress Gallery Plugins

Our Criteria for the Best WordPress Gallery Plugin

In our opinion, a perfect WordPress gallery plugin should be fast, easy to use, and have all the necessary features that you need to create beautiful galleries (such as lightboxes, image navigation, albums, pagination, etc).

The gallery plugin should offer a great user experience and help improve your image SEO as well.

4 Best WordPress Gallery Plugins

We have hand-picked the four most popular WordPress photo gallery plugins on the market.

In our comparison, we will look at the speed, features, ease of use, and reliability of these plugins:

Let’s get started with our comparison.

Speed

Speed is crucial when you are choosing a WordPress photo gallery plugin. Not only does it affect your WordPress SEO, but it also affects user experience on your site.

If you are using a gallery plugin for a portfolio or photography site, then you simply cannot afford to compromise on speed.

We ran a speed test for each of these plugins using the same images without modifying any default settings. Below are our results:

Gallery PluginPage Load TimeRequestsPage Size
Envira Gallery655 ms23988KB
Modula696 ms28948 KB
NextGEN867 ms351.0 MB
FooGallery917 ms27591 KB

As you can see in the above results, Envira Gallery came out as the fastest loading WordPress image gallery plugin. Modula came as a very close second with barely few milliseconds difference and with smaller page size.

The reason why Envira Gallery and Modula are so fast is that they are both well coded and highly optimized for speed. If performance and speed is your main concern (which it should be), then Modula and Envira Gallery are both great options.

Winner: It’s a tie between Envira Gallery and Modula

Ease of Use

Creating image galleries is not as simple as uploading a single image to your posts. You need to choose layouts, select columns, add thumbnail sizes, choose lightbox animations, etc.

Most beginners find the process quite overwhelming. The goal here is to find a WordPress photo gallery plugin that is both powerful and beginner friendly at the same time.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery follows and adheres to the WordPress coding standards and best practices. It provides a user interface that seamlessly blends into your WordPress admin area.

Creating a new gallery is quite simple and beginner friendly.

Envira Gallery user interface

Envira Gallery also comes with a Gutenberg block allowing you to easily add photo galleries into any WordPress post and page. You can also change gallery settings right from the post edit screen.

Gutenberg block for Envira Gallery

Classic editor users can use the shortcode or the button above the post editor to quickly add any gallery or album in your post/page.

Aside from that Envira Gallery also shows you the template tag that you can use it in your WordPress templates. This is particularly handy if you are developing a site for a client and want to include galleries straight into the theme.

Modula

Modula Gallery uses a similar approach to create new photo galleries. You can simply upload your files or select them from the media library to create a photo gallery.

Modula Gallery user interface

Below the images, you will find all gallery settings organized in tabs. From here you can change gallery style, theme, lightbox, and other settings.

To insert the gallery into WordPress posts and pages, you will need to copy the gallery shortcode and insert it using the Shortcode block in the Gutenberg editor.

There are no sidebar widgets or Gutenberg blocks at the moment to make it easier for users to insert Galleries.

FooGallery

FooGallery takes the similar approach as Envira Gallery and Modula. They use a simple user interface that looks and feels like WordPress.

FooGallery user interface

After uploading your photos, you can adjust the gallery settings in great details below the images.

FooGallery also makes it easy to insert photo galleries. You can use the built-in Gutenberg block, shortcode, or sidebar widget to display your photo galleries anywhere in WordPress. It also adds a button on top of the Classic Editor to select and insert galleries.

Unlike Envira Gallery, FooGallery does not show the template tag to insert your galleries into theme files or templates.

NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN is a little different than our other three contenders. It brings its own user interface, database tables, and separate folders to store your images. This is why NextGEN user interface looks a bit complicated in WordPress.

NextGen UI

It does offer a gallery wizard which can be helpful for beginners. However, it will take users some time to understand how to upload images and create a gallery. You may also find it a bit difficult to add the gallery into your post/page.

NextGen adds a Gutenberg block which allows you to create and add galleries from the post edit screen. For classic editor users, it adds a button to the post editor.

Winner: No clear winner. Envira, Modula, and Foo Gallery all offer easy to use interface.

Features

In order to create a beautiful photo gallery, you need functionality like lightboxes, full-screen mode, albums, pagination, navigation, slideshow, password protection, EXIF metadata, social media sharing, and more.

However it’s important to remember that too many features can slow down your site, so let’s take a look at how our contenders handle the balance in features and functionality.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is built with a mobile first approach. This means that it is fully responsive out of the box.

It allows you to easily choose thumbnail sizes, animations, gallery layouts, add meta tags for your images all from the single user interface.

Apart from the built-in features, there are loads of features that you can add by installing addons such as: gallery templates, social sharing, videos, password protection, image protection, albums, slideshow, Pinterest, image proofing, WooCommerce support, and more.

Envira Gallery features

Modula

Modula is the newest of all plugins on our list, so they do not have the advanced features. However the plugin does cover all the basic features you’ll want from a WordPress gallery plugin like lightbox popup, social sharing, custom styles, grid layouts, and more.

It comes with a custom grid feature which allows you to use simple drag and drop to create your own custom grid for galleries.

It also has a video addon for creating video galleries. However, Modula is lacking other features like albums, watermarking, proofing, and gallery templates.

Modula features

FooGallery

FooGallery comes with a lot of powerful features however it is not mobile responsive out of the box. You can select the responsive template to add a responsive photo gallery.

Another feature that we missed is the lightbox. You can install the free Foobox plugin to add lightbox functionality, but we felt that it should have been packaged with the core gallery plugin.

FooGallery also comes with extensions that you can install to add more features such as custom branding, cube effect, lightbox, and more.

FooGallery features

NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is the oldest of all four plugins, and it comes with an extensive list of features.

Many of the features that are available as addons in Envira and Foo, are available out of the box in NextGEN gallery. There are also premium addons with more features that you can install.

Most NextGen features require a certain level of familiarity with the plugin. Users will need some time to figure things out, reading the documentation, and posting questions in support forums.

Winner: Envira Gallery is the clear winner here with its extensive list of features that cover all the basics + advanced features for photographers, eCommerce websites, and portfolios. NextGEN is the close second with a matching set of features.

Compatability

WordPress provides you the freedom to move your site from one web host to another and even to different competitors.

We need to see if you can easily import/export and backup your photo gallery data.

Envira Gallery

Envira stores all your photo galleries as custom post types in the WordPress database. It stores your media files using the default WordPress media location. This means if you backup your WordPress site, then you will have all Envira Gallery data backed up.

Envira also allows you to import/export your individual galleries. This means that you can move a single gallery from one WordPress site to another.

Import / Export photo galleries using Envira Gallery

When you move your WordPress site, Envira will automatically detect it and will show you an option to fix the migration. All these features make Envira Gallery the most reliable photo gallery plugin for WordPress.

Modula

Modula also uses a custom WordPress content type to store your photo galleries. This means you can save your photo galleries with your WordPress backup and restore them when you restore WordPress site from backup.

Modula doesn’t allow you to import/export individual galleries.

FooGallery

Similar to Envira, FooGallery also stores your galleries as custom post types in the WordPress database. If you backup your WordPress site, then you will have a FooGallery data backup as well.

However, if you just want to export individual galleries, then there is no option for that because the plugin doesn’t come with an import/export feature.

NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN gallery does not come with import/export feature. Since it stores your data in separate database tables, this means you will need to configure your WordPress backup plugin to include those tables.

NextGEN also stores your images in a separate folder. If you want to create a backup for them, then you will need to download the folder separately to your computer.

Both Envira and FooGallery offer NextGen importers to make it easy for users to switch to their platform.

Winner: Enivra Gallery offers the most comprehensive set of tools to import/export your photo galleries.

Pricing

All four plugins have a free WordPress gallery version available in the WordPress plugin directory. All four of them have paid upgrades available with more features. The pricing of your photo gallery plugin will depend on which plan you want to use for any of these plugins. You can choose a plan based on the features you need after trying the free versions.

Winner: No clear winners here – the pricing of products will vary based on what features you need and plan that you select.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a simple and fast solution, then Envira Gallery and Modula Gallery are both great options for a WordPress gallery plugin.

If you need the advanced features and don’t mind a learning curve, then NextGen gallery is your best option.

We hope this article helped you pick the best WordPress gallery plugin for your website. You may also want to see our expert-pick of the must have WordPress plugins for all websites.

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