Published on October 7, 2022 by Simon Wright
Are you an artist, photographer, or other creative that is wondering how to best showcase your works on your WordPress website? If so, stay with us because we will show you some of the best WordPress portfolio plugins currently available. Best of all, there are both free and premium ones to choose from, so whether you are a newbie trying to get yourself known, or someone with years of experience who is trying to keep up with the demands of the digital age, you’ll be sure to find a plugin suitable for you.
There are plenty of reasons why you should consider using a WordPress portfolio plugin, including:
Given that images (and videos) are notorious for eating bandwidth and slowing sites down, it’s essential that you carefully choose a reliable hosting provider for your WordPress portfolio website.
WP Bolt offers a range of cost-effective plans for reliable hosting. What’s more, WP Bolt hosts sites on virtual private servers (VPS) instead of shared ones, so your site will be fast and reliable. Moreover, it won’t suffer from problems caused by ‘neighboring’ websites on shared servers draining resources.
If you haven’t already, please check out our article, ‘Shared Hosting vs. WordPress Hosting: Which Should You Choose?’
So, let’s now look at five good WordPress portfolio plugins. All have been hand-picked to ensure they are up-to-date and compatible with WordPress version 6.0 (the latest one).
Please note this list is not in any order of preference, and we believe that whichever one you choose, the result will be an excellent portfolio website.
Portfolio Filter Gallery kicks off our list of the best WordPress portfolio plugins. This is a great starting point for creating a portfolio website, as it makes embedding eye-catching image galleries into your content child’s play.
Even the free version of Portfolio Filter Gallery has many useful features that are perfect for those new to creating portfolio websites. For example, you get:
While those features make this plugin perfect for hobbyists or small businesses such as freelance photographers, more serious users may want to upgrade to the Premium version. For a very reasonable $29 one-time payment for a single site, you will have a much larger toolkit at your disposal, including features like:
Incidentally, other Portfolio Filter Gallery Premium plans are available, including Premium (Business License), which costs $99 and covers up to five websites, and Premium (Developer License) at $149 for a maximum of ten domains.
According to the WordPress plugin directory, there are currently over 20k active downloads of the free version of Portfolio Filter Gallery in operation. What’s more, users have scored it a very respectable 4.8/5.0 stars.
Read More About Portfolio Filter Gallery
Smart Slider 3 simplifies the task of adding image sliders to your WordPress portfolio. A free version of the plugin is available, offering a surprising amount of functionality. However, you will find the best features in the paid versions; Standard and Premium.
The free version of Smart Slider 3 includes goodies like:
We believe that is an excellent feature set for a free plugin. However, upgrading to the Standard version adds even more tools for just $49. That price covers a lifetime subscription for a single domain and includes advanced features such as:
The Premium plan costs $99 to $249 depending on how many domains you need to cover (between three and ten.) In most respects, Premium is identical to Standard, the main difference being it comes with premium support. Click here to view the features included with each Smart Slider 3 plan.
Smart Slider 3 is a popular portfolio plugin, having over 900k active downloads from the WordPress plugin directory alone. Users have rated it 4.9/5.0 stars.
Read More About Smart Slider 3
Modula Image Gallery is a neat plugin for displaying your images in a gallery irrespective of the device used to view them. That means they will be presented at their best, whether the viewer uses a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop machine.
While a free, scaled-down version of Modula Image Gallery is available, the paid Pro version has a nifty trick up its sleeve – it allows you to place watermarks on images to discourage people from stealing them.
The Pro version is available in four levels. The ‘Starter’ package costs $39 annually for one domain, ‘Trio’ is $69 for three, and ‘Business’ is $99 for up to five websites.
While the Starter and Trio plans are good value, we recommend investing a few extra Dollars for the Business plan because that adds a bundle of handy additional tools, such as:
Modula Image Gallery has more than 100k active downloads. Moreover, users have rated it a very healthy 4.7/5.0 stars.
Read More About Modula Image Gallery
Visual Portfolio is slightly different from the other WordPress portfolio plugins we have listed because it is open source. That means the code is fully accessible, so if you are tech-savvy, you can deeply customize it to suit your precise needs.
However, don’t worry if you are not a coding expert, as Visual Portfolio includes many useful features even in its free form that will allow you to create a great-looking portfolio website. So, for zero Dollars, you can expect to find:
Please note that list is not exhaustive!
If all those features aren’t enough for you, then upgrades to Visual Portfolio Pro start from $39 per year for one domain. Investing in Pro adds even more tools to an already extensive toolkit, including:
We think you’ll agree that Visual Portfolio Pro offers lots of bang for your buck, while the free version is excellent, too.
According to WordPress, over 60k active downloads of the free version of Visual Portfolio are in operation, and a 4.8/5.0-star rating shows that users love it.
Read More About Visual Portfolio
Internet users adore sliders and carousels as they add interactivity to a website. They are a proven way of keeping people engaged for longer. The MetaSlider WordPress plugin allows you to easily add attractive galleries with such features to create an interactive online portfolio.
Like Modula Image Gallery, a free version of MetaSlider is available, but it is somewhat basic. Instead, we suggest purchasing one of the annual plans for the many benefits those bring, including:
For a single-domain license, MetaSlider currently costs $39.50 per year. Between two and five sites, the price rises to $49.50, while unlimited domains cost $99.50.
Over 700k downloads of the free version of MetaSlider alone are active. Moreover, users have rated this plugin 4.7/5.0 stars, so it is clearly a popular choice for creating a portfolio in WordPress.
Read More About MetaSlider
Now we have whetted your appetite for portfolios, here are some suggestions for other types of plugins to further optimize your website and promote your business:
We all hate slow websites. Unfortunately, like video and audio, images are notoriously bandwidth-hungry, and sites with lots of pictures are inherently slow. One way to improve things is to use a plugin such as ShortPixel to optimize your images so that page performance is not compromised unnecessarily.
Virtually everyone uses social media, which makes it a powerful medium for getting your work in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Therefore, it makes sense to use a plugin like Social Media Share Buttons to add buttons to your website for visitors to share your images on their social media pages easily.
While having a fantastic portfolio that shouts your artistic talents is great, what if prospective clients wish to commission you through the website? Fear not, as this is easy to do using an appointment scheduling plugin such as Simply Schedule Appointments.
Equally important is a means for prospective customers to contact you with questions and other inquiries, in which case a good contact form plugin, such as WPForms, will be a Godsend.
If you plan on selling your works digitally through your website for instant download, a plugin such as Easy Digital Downloads will make your life much easier.
We have shown you several of the best WordPress portfolio plugins currently available for artists, photographers, and other creatives. Irrespective of which you choose, not only will you be able to display your works at their absolute best, but also the appearance of your WordPress site will improve significantly. Furthermore, by using features like image sliders and carousels, you will introduce a level of interactivity into your site that visitors will love.
And finally, don’t forget to check out WP Bolt for fast, reliable VPS hosting that is perfect for WordPress-based portfolio sites.
I’m a former construction industry professional who came out of the writer’s closet and am now totally comfortable with my creative side. My pronouns are smart, creative, witty, and dependable. I have written content in a number of niches including WordPress, plus I’m a blogger and affiliate marketer. If you’d like to know more about how I can help you, please head over to my website.
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