Envira Gallery

Images are an essential part of most WordPress websites.

When writing Solution Center reviews, I always make sure to add as many screenshots as possible so readers can see the plugin in action. I also go beyond the user interface, and include screenshots of the end results – such as a completed form, a beautiful landing page, or a helpful Google Analytics report.

This helps readers decide whether the plugin is right for them. Plus, images just look nice! They break up plain text and can really catch the reader’s attention.

Want to get the most from your graphics (while avoiding common pitfalls like slow loading speeds and un-optimized images)? Then a gallery plugin is a must-have.

Don’t have time to test a ton of image plugins yourself? Don’t worry, I’ve done the hard work for you! In this detailed Envira Gallery review, I’m gong to see how it compares to some of the other image plugins I’ve tried over the years.

Is it the right slider plugin for you? Let’s find out, in this detailed Envira Gallery review.

Envira Gallery Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Struggling to display your images in a user-friendly and visually appealing way? We’ve all been there, so that’s try and find a solution.

Envira Gallery is a popular image gallery plugin for WordPress that promises to help you create beautiful photo galleries. It comes with an easy-to-use drag and drop builder, plus built-in themes so you can easily customize how your gallery looks.

I’ve tried a lot of gallery plugins, and some of them can really slow down your website. With that said, I was happy to see that Envira Gallery claims it’s optimized for web and server performance. If that’s true, then it means you can add high-resolution images to your WordPress website, without having to worry about its performance. That would be a big relief!

Visitors can also open each image in a lightbox window, which is a must-have if you want to show high-resolution or very detailed images.

If you want to sell images, photos, or artwork online, then Envira Gallery integrates with WooCommerce. It can even automatically create a WooCommerce product for every image you add to your galleries.

If you’re looking for a free gallery plugin, then you can download Gallery by Envira from the official WordPress repository.

This plugin lets you create an unlimited number of galleries, and then add them to your site using either a shortcode or the built-in Envira Gallery block. That’s pretty generous for a free plugin, making it a great choice for WordPress bloggers or even smaller websites.

However, if you want to unlock powerful features such as the option to protect your images with watermarks and passwords, then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.

Envira Gallery Review: Is it the Right Gallery Plugin for You?

Websites with high-quality images often see a significant boost in user engagement, which makes sense.

Websites that have lots of nice images immediately look more appealing, especially when compared to a site that’s just a wall of solid text (I know which kind of website I prefer!)

If you have lots of photos or images, then a WordPress gallery plugin can show them all in a nice layout. However, the problem is that some gallery plugins can slow down your website, which will hurt your SEO and the user experience. Other slider plugins are missing important features, so even if the plugin’s optimized for performance you may still struggle to properly display, promote, and sell images online.

That’s a lot of things to consider, so in this Envira Gallery review I’ll be doing the hard work for you! I’m going to start by deep-diving into Envira Gallery’s features, so you can decide whether it’s the right plugin for your WordPress blog or website.

1. Easy to Use

First things first: how easy is Envira Gallery to use?

To start, you can install and activate Envira Gallery, just like any WordPress plugin. Upon activation, I created my first gallery with just a few clicks.

After that, I simply typed in a title and selected the media files I wanted to display.

You can either upload files from your local computer, or select files that already exist in the WordPress media library.

With that done, I chose a gallery layout, template, and configured the gallery settings by selecting the different tabs.

At this point, I was happy with how my gallery was set up, so I clicked on the ‘Publish’ button – and that was it! The gallery was live on my website.

You can also create galleries directly inside the WordPress block editor, using the Envira Gallery block. Simply add this block to your content and you can build a gallery by uploading files, or selecting images from the WordPress media library.

This method doesn’t give you access to all the Envira Gallery settings. However, there are some basic settings in the right-hand menu, so I could edit the gallery’s margins, row height, and make other important changes.

This was a quick and easy way to create galleries on the fly. If you need to make more in-depth changes, then you can open the new gallery in the Envira Gallery editor at any point. This gives you access to the full range of settings and options, so you can fine-tune every part of the gallery.

2. Customize Your Gallery

Every site is different, so you’ll be happy to learn that Envira Gallery lets you customize how the gallery looks and acts. I had no problems fine-tuning it to perfectly fit my WordPress theme.

To start, you can choose between 5 different layouts.

You can also change the row height and margins, add a title and description, change the image size, add transition effects to the lightbox popup, and much more.

To make these changes, I simply selected different settings in the Envira Gallery editor, so at no point did I need to add custom code or navigate complex menus.

There’s also a Gallery Themes addon, which allows you to choose from pre-built templates.

In this way, you can quickly and easily style your galleries.

You can access even more options by installing some extra addons. For example, you can turn the gallery into a slideshow using the Slideshow addon.

You can also display EXIF data including camera model, aperture, and shutter speed, using the EXIF addon.

If you want to make your galleries more engaging, then you can even add music, sound effects, or narration using the Audio addon. This was a really fun addon to play around with!

Finally, if you’re a WordPress developer or a more advanced user, then you can add custom CSS and styles to your gallery, using the CSS addon.

3. Responsive and Mobile Friendly

Have you seen our internet usage statistics? According to them, mobile internet traffic accounts for almost 55% of total web traffic, so you need to make sure your galleries look good and load quickly on mobile devices.

With that in mind, I checked out a few galleries on my mobile phone and can confirm that Envira Gallery is responsive and mobile-friendly by default. If you’re not 100% happy with the default settings, then you can fine-tune how Envira Gallery displays your gallery on mobile devices.

To start, you can type in the exact dimensions you want to use, change the row height, and choose whether to show the caption and title on smartphones and tablets.

You can even completely disable the lightbox on mobile devices, while leaving it enabled for desktop users.

If you do choose to show the lightbox to mobile users, then you can change the width and height of the gallery thumbnails, add navigation arrows, choose whether to disable the lightbox when the user swipes up, and more.

In my experience, lightboxes don’t always look great, especially on smartphones. However, by tweaking these settings I managed to create a gallery and lightbox that worked perfectly on my mobile phone.

4. Built-in Lightboxes

Sometimes, you may want to show a bigger version of the images in your gallery. This is particularly important if your images have lots of detail, or you sell digital art or graphics.

Envira Gallery can show your images in a lightbox popup, which appears over the page or post. The rest of the page’s content is dimmed, so visitors can only interact with the lightbox window. That said, it’s also a good option if you want visitors to see your images without any distractions.

You can enable and disable the lightbox for individual galleries using a simple checkbox.

If you install the Gallery Themes addon, then you can also choose between different pre-built lightbox themes.

By default, the lightbox will show each image at the original size.

However, you can choose between different sizes, including thumbnail, medium, and large.

You can also use the lightbox supersize mode.

With this setting enabled, each image will appear full scale in the lightbox window.

Envira Gallery can also add arrows and captions to the lightbox, loop the images, and more. In this way, you can create a custom lightbox experience that works perfectly for your website and target audience.

5. Crop Images Automatically

By default, Envira Gallery automatically resized all my images to perfectly maintain their aspect ratio. However, sometimes you may want to crop your images so they meet specific dimensions. This provides a more consistent experience, by showing all images in a gallery at the same size.

Envira Gallery can crop images automatically, based on dimensions set by you.

You also select the position that images will be cropped from, such as center or top left.

This saved me a ton of time, especially when compared to my experience manually editing images in WordPress.

6. Add Galleries to Any Page, Post, or Widget-Ready Area

Once you’re happy with your gallery, the next step is adding it to your website using either a shortcode or the Envira Gallery block. These options give you the flexibility to add an image gallery to any page, post, or widget-ready area.

In my opinion, the easiest method is using the Envira Gallery block, as you can simply open a dropdown menu and choose the gallery you want to show.

You can also configure some extra settings in the WordPress content editor, such as enabling or disabling the lightbox. This was particularly useful when I wanted to show the same gallery in multiple locations, but using slightly different settings.

If you have one of the newer, block-enabled themes then you can even add the block to templates you can’t edit using the standard content editor.

For example, I tried adding the Envira Gallery block to my theme’s 404 page template, and it worked perfectly.

For more advanced users and WordPress developers, Envira Gallery automatically creates a template tag for each gallery.

This means you can add the gallery to your WordPress template files, or even use it with a code snippets plugin (I recommend WPCode).

7. Create Entire Galleries Using AI

Don’t have the funds to hire a freelance WordPress designer, or the time to create beautiful galleries yourself?

Upgrade to a Pro plan or higher and you’ll get access to Envira AI. This powerful tool uses artificial intelligence to generate custom images directly in the Envira Gallery builder.

Simply describe what you want using natural language, and Envira Gallery will generate 9 unique, high-quality images based on your prompt.

You can also choose from a range of image types, such as ‘Photographic,’ which generates realistic images that mimic photography, or ‘Digital Art’ which uses computer-generated visuals with vibrant colors and effects.

I played around with this feature and was able to create some really cool images for my blog!

Envira Gallery even has a ‘3D Art’ style that renders three-dimensional objects or scenes.

After entering my information, Envira AI created 9 variations based on my prompt. I was happy with the first batch, but if you’re not wowed then you can just keep pressing ‘Create new images’ until you’re happy with the results.

When you find an image you like, you can either download it or add it to the WordPress media library with just a few clicks. 

In this way, you can build beautiful galleries for your portfolio, blog, or business site in minutes, without having to rely on designers or web design software (I typically use Canva, but Envira Gallery’s AI generation is much more fun.)

8. Easily Re-use Galleries

Sometimes, you may want to show the same gallery in multiple locations. For example, if I was selling photos online then I might create a gallery showing my best-selling images. To get more sales, I would add that same gallery to multiple posts and landing pages.

In that scenario, it wouldn’t make sense to manually create the same gallery multiple times. Thankfully, I can simply create that gallery once in the Envira Gallery editor.

I could then add it anywhere on my site using either a shortcode or the Envira Gallery block, as many times as I wanted.

This would save me a ton of time and effort, since I’m not wasting time recreating the exacy same gallery multiple times.

9. Optimized for Performance

Image galleries with a lot of large, high-resolution photos can have a big impact on your page loading times. In fact, according to our web design industry statistics, pages that load within 2 seconds have an average 9% bounce rate.

If your page takes 6 seconds to load, then that bounce rate rises to 46%. That’s really bad news, so you’ll want to do everything you can to speed up your site.

As I already mentioned in this Envira Gallery review, it has built-in lazy loading, so images only load when a visitor scrolls down to them. This improves the initial page loading times, and the user experience.

Lazy loading is automatically enabled for every new gallery you create. However, it is possible to disable lazy loading for individual galleries – although I wouldn’t really recommend it, it’s nice to have the option.

This may be a good choice for galleries that are a core part of the page content. For example, if you’re creating a portfolio page on your photography website, then you might disable lazy loading so all the images load immediately.

For an extra performance boost, Envira Gallery has a built-in compression tool.

This lets you optimize your Envira Gallery images, or even all the files in your WordPress media library. This means I optimized all my images, without having to install a separate image compression plugin.

With Envira Gallery, you can choose between lossy, lossless, and glossy compression.

For larger galleries, you can boost WordPress speed and performance by showing those images across multiple pages.

Simply install the Pagination addon and you’ll get access to a new tab where you can add numeric pagination to your gallery.

You can change how many images appear on each page, customize the ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ pagination labels, and more.

10. Import and Export

Sometimes, you may want to use the same gallery across multiple online stores, websites, or blogs. Once again, recreating content isn’t the best use of your time. Instead, you can simply use Envira Gallery’s import and export feature.

This lets you export any gallery as a JSON file, and then import it into any other website that has Envira Gallery installed.

If I was running a freelance design agency, then I could imagine using this feature to create a gallery template that has all the right settings. I would then import this starter template into all my client websites, so I don’t have to configure the same settings every time. This is pretty much the definition of ‘work smarter, not harder.’

11. Prevent Image Theft

It’s far too easy for people to copy images on the internet. Image thieves may even use your work in their own adverts, or sell it to other people. This is incredibly frustrating when you’ve worked so hard to create beautiful images.

With that said, Envira Gallery’s Watermarking addon can automatically add a watermark to all the images in your gallery, to help protect your original work.

You can choose where this watermark appears, so thieves can’t easily crop it out.

Another option is disabling right-click in your galleries with the Protection addon. After installing this addon, you can disable right-click for individual galleries, and even show a popup when someone tries to save an image in this way.

This popup is your chance to explain that the image is your original work, or even share information about how the visitor can buy the image, or get permission to use it on their site.

It’s unlikely to stop people who are deliberately trying to steal your work, but some people assume that just because an image is available for free online, they have permission to take and re-use it. For these people, a popup may be enough to make them realize this is actually stealing.

Another option is adding a password to your galleries so they’re no longer public, using the Password Protection addon.

In this way, you control who has access to the gallery, so it’s also perfect for sharing photos with your clients, such as images from a customer’s wedding.

For extra security, you can also ask the visitor to verify their identity by typing in their email address or username.

12. Customize the Default Settings

Envira Gallery has detailed settings that allow you to create completely custom galleries. However, configuring these settings takes time, especially if you have very specific requirements for your galleries.

With that in mind, you may want to change the plugin’s default settings, so it applies the same configuration to every new gallery you create.

You can do this using the Defaults addon. After installing and activating this addon, you’ll see a new Envira Default Gallery Settings gallery.

Simply open it in the editor, and configure it just like any other gallery.

The plugin will then apply these settings to every new gallery you create. Throughout testing, I experimented with different default settings and when used well, I’m sure this feature could really boost your overall productivity.

13. Organize Your Images

When I have lots of different galleries and images, I like to organize them into albums.

If you install the Envira Albums addon, then you can add multiple galleries to the same album.

This allows you to create collections that readers can look through without having to navigate through multiple individual galleries.

For example, if I was a professional photographer then I might create a ‘Portfolio’ album made up of themed galleries, such as ‘Landscape,’ ‘Headshots,’ and ‘Family Photos.’

Alternatively, you can organize your galleries using tags.

This can help visitors find the images they’re looking for, even if your site has lots of different galleries and photos. Simply install and activate the Tags addon, and you’ll get access to a new area where you can create tags for your images.

14. Social Sharing Buttons

If people share your images on social media, then it can get you more followers, visitors, and even conversions. With that being said, you’ll want to make it easy for people to share your media to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other popular platforms.

Envira Gallery has a Social addon that automatically adds a row of social share buttons above every image.

This is incredibly easy to set up (it basically works out of the box) and it allows visitors to share your images with just a few clicks.

15. Enable Deeplinking

You can use Envira Gallery’s Deeplinking addon to create URLs for every image in a gallery.

These links open the image in a lightbox view, which is perfect if you want to show a specific image without embedding an entire gallery. For example, you might add the link to a sales page, landing page, call to action button, or any other location on your WordPress website.

These links are also indexed by the search engines, so it’s an easy way to optimize your images for the search engines.

16. Create a Video Gallery

Do you want to create beautiful video galleries in WordPress? For example, if I was running an online marketplace then I might show clips of customers using my products.

With the Videos addon, you can create galleries from Vimeo, YouTube, Wistia, DailyMotion, Twitch, and VideoPress videos. Although I don’t recommend uploading videos directly to WordPress, Envira Gallery can create galleries from self-hosted videos.

After installing the addon, you’ll get access to a new tab in the gallery editor. Here, you can fine-tune how the lightbox looks and acts, and decide whether your videos will autoplay. You can also add and remove controls, or show information such as the current time and video length.

17. Create Galleries From Any Post, Page, or Custom Post Type

Envira Gallery’s Featured Content addon can turn any page, post, or custom post type into a gallery. For example, if I was using a testimonials plugin, then I might display my best testimonials in a gallery.

I really like how this allows you to quickly and easily turn your existing content into beautiful galleries. It’s much better than recreating that content inside Envira Gallery.

After activating the addon, I simply clicked on ‘Featured Content.’

With that done, I selected the content I wanted to use.

For example, to create a gallery showing all your WooCommerce products, simply select ‘Product’ as the post type.

18. Sell Images Online

If you create high-quality artwork or graphics, then you can often make money online by selling your work.

If you use WooCommerce, then you can sync your gallery images to existing WooCommerce products. As I already mentioned in this Envira Gallery review, it can even automatically create a new product every time you add an image to a gallery.

To get started, I simply installed and activated the WooCommerce addon, and immediately saw a new ‘WooCommerce’ tab in the Envira Gallery editor.

You can also let customers choose their favorite images from a gallery. For example, if I was a professional photographer then I might upload my entire photoshoot into a gallery so my client could choose what images they want to buy.

You can add this feature to your website using the Proofing addon.

This addon lets customers type in order notes, which is ideal if they have special requests or need to share information such as their postal address.

You can customize the proofing process in the Envira Gallery editor, and track incoming orders for each gallery.

19. Allow Printing and Downloading

Sometimes, you may simply want to share images with other people. For example, if I sold digital art and graphics online, then I might offer free samples or lower-resolution versions that potential customers can get for free.

To add a ‘Download’ button to my images, I simply installed Envira Gallery’s Downloads addon.

Similarly, I experimented with adding a ‘print’ button using the Printing addon. I can see how these buttons would make the downloading and printing process slightly easier for visitors, which would definitely improve their experience on your website.

20. Sync with Other Platforms

Do you publish images to multiple platforms?

Envira Gallery has several addons that can sync and import galleries from popular image sharing platforms and storage locations.

You can automatically create and sync photo galleries from your Adobe Lightroom collections, and import images from Instagram or Dropbox.

Even if you use a different photo sharing platform or program, you may still be able to import these images into your WordPress galleries using the Zip Importer addon.

21. Community and Professional Support

Throughout writing this Envira Gallery review, I found it to be a very easy-to-use and intuitive plugin. The user interface is carefully designed so it’s always clear what you need to do next, so I had no problems creating all kinds of galleries and adding them to my site.

However, Envira Gallery does have a lot of add-ons and extra features, so I appreciated the fact that there’s detailed online documentation available for both free and premium users. This was a big help while writing this Envira Gallery review.

There’s also an Envira Gallery blog where you’ll find detailed, step-by-step guides on how to use this plugin.

Here, I also found lots of general advice, best practices, and the Envira Gallery team’s expert pick of the best WordPress plugins for photographers. While the online documentation is useful for answering specific questions, their blog is more of a general resource for anyone who wants to add galleries to their website.

Once again, you can access the blog no matter whether you download the free Gallery Plugin for WordPress, or buy a premium license.

However, if you upgrade to the premium plugin then you’ll also get access to professional support. Simply raise a support request in your account, and a member of the Envira Gallery team will get back to you within 24 hours, Monday-Friday.

Envira Gallery Review: Pricing and Plans

If you’re looking for a free plugin, then I would recommend checking out Envira Gallery Lite. It lets you create as many galleries as you want, and then add them to your site using either a shortcode or the built-in Envira Gallery block.

For some WordPress blogs and smaller websites, this may be exactly what you need – and you can get it for free! However, if you want to customize the lightbox experience, integrate with WooCommerce, optimize your galleries for mobile, and unlock other powerful features, then it’s well worth upgrading to a premium plan.

There are four premium plans to choose from:

• Basic. For $39.50, you can access all of Envira Gallery’s mobile optimization features, so you can create galleries that look great no matter what device the visitor is using. You can also stop people from stealing your images by disabling right-click. This is a good starting point for all kinds of blogs, websites, and online stores, so you can’t really go wrong with this plan.
• Plus. Priced at $69.50, this plan helps prevent image theft by allowing you to add a watermark and passwords to all your galleries. It also gives you access to the Featured Content addon, which is ideal for quickly turning products, customer testimonials, and other content into galleries. With that said, Plus is a great option if you want to protect your original work or products.
• Pro. For $99.50 annually, you can use Envira Gallery on up to 5 websites. This plan also has advanced features to help you sell images online including WooCommerce integration and photo proofing. That said, Pro is a particularly good option if you already have a WooCommerce store.
• Lifetime. For $349.50, you can use Envira Gallery on up to 25 websites. It also comes with client management features, making this ideal for agencies, freelancers, or anyone who manages lots of different client websites. If you run a network, then Lifetime also supports WordPress multisite.

Envira Gallery Review: Is it Worth It?

To sum up this Envira Gallery review, I’m confident that it’s the best WordPress gallery plugin.

It lets you add an unlimited number of mobile responsive galleries to your website, no matter whether you download the free plugin or invest in the premium version. Unlike some other gallery plugins, it’s optimized for performance so it didn’t slow down my site, and I got a noticeable performance boost from the built-in image compression tool.

If you’re just getting started, then the Basic plan has essential features that will make it more difficult for people to steal your content. However, if you want to sell images online, then I recommend upgrading to Plus or higher.

Envira Gallery Plus can automatically add a watermark to all your images, and password protect your galleries. In my opinion, these are essential features for preventing content scraping.

If you’re using WooCommerce, then Envira Gallery’s WooCommerce addon is a must-have. For that reason, I’d encourage all WooCommerce users to invest in the Pro plan.

Finally, if you manage client websites then you can use Envira Gallery Lifetime on up to 25 websites. It also comes with essential client management features, and supports WordPress multisite networks.

Envira Gallery Review: FAQs

Is Envira Gallery good?

In my opinion Envira Gallery is the best WordPress slider plugin. It’s easy to use, and lets you add unlimited galleries to your website without hurting its performance. It also has a large library of extensions so you can add practically any feature you need. 

You can even use Envira Gallery to sell images and make money online. 

How much does Envira Gallery cost?

You can buy a basic plan for $39.50 per year, or get an unlimited lifetime license for $349.50. Alternatively, you can download the lite version from WordPress.org and use Envira Gallery for free, forever. 

How do I install Envira Gallery?

It couldn’t be easier! In fact, you can install and activate Envira Gallery just like any WordPress plugin, and then create your first gallery with just a few clicks. 

To be honest, most of the time you can simply follow Envira Gallery’s clear onscreen instructions to create beautiful sliders and galleries. However, if you’re craving a step-by-step tutorial, then WPBeginner has you covered! Check out how to easily create responsive WordPress image galleries, for more information. 

What is the best gallery plugin for WordPress?

There’s no shortage of gallery plugins that you can download from WordPress.org or premium sites. However, in my experience a lot of those plugins can slow down your website, which we all know is bad for your search engine rankings and the user experience. 

For that reason alone, Envira Gallery is already my top pick, since it comes with a built-in compression tool and has lazy loading enabled by default. In fact, members of our team actually ran a speed test on Envira Gallery and found that it was the fastest loading image gallery plugin.

You can learn more in our best WordPress gallery plugin roundup, which includes a detailed breakdown of our speed test. 

Is there a free alternative to Envira Gallery?

Why waste time looking for a free alternative? You can head over to WordPress.org and download the lite version of Envira Gallery for free, today.

Simply install and activate this plugin, and you can create unlimited galleries. With that said, the lite version should be enough for most personal blogs, hobby bloggers, and even smaller websites and stores (although I’d always recommend upgrading to the premium plugin so you can access the full range of features). 

I hope this Envira Gallery review helped you decide whether it’s the right gallery plugin for you. Next, you may want to see our guide on how to create a custom Instagram photo feed, or check out our expert pick of the best WordPress landing page plugins.

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