Are you a designer or photographer looking for the easiest way to build a portfolio website in WordPress?
There are plenty of WordPress portfolio plugins that allow you to easily build beautiful portfolio websites.
However, finding the perfect portfolio plugin can be difficult for beginners. You will need to find a plugin that makes your work stand out, loads fast, and looks good on mobile devices.
In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers.
Choosing Between WordPress Portfolio Themes vs WordPress Portfolio Plugins
Many WordPress portfolio themes come with built-in functionality to create a portfolio website.
This makes many beginners wonder why would anyone want to choose a plugin when themes can do the job?
Themes in WordPress are only supposed to handle the visual appearance of your website. This includes colors, styles, layouts, and presentation of your content.
Plugins on the other hand are the proper way to add functionality to your WordPress site such as slider, contact form, and more.
Adding a portfolio comes under functionality, which is why we recommend using a plugin.
Using a theme for functionality ties your website with that theme. If you change the theme, then you will lose your portfolio data.
On the other hand, if you decide to use a portfolio plugin, then you are free to use it with any theme you want.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the top WordPress portfolio plugins.
1. WP Portfolio
WP Portfolio is the best WordPress portfolio plugin for photographers, freelancers, developers, and agencies. It allows you to instantly create portfolio websites from 40+ professionally designed portfolio templates.
It is made by the creators of Astra Theme, which is one of the best WordPress themes of all times. WP Portfolio brings the same ease of use to portfolios.
It comes with multiple style choices, layouts, supports all types of media, and can be easily customized without writing any code or CSS.
Most importantly, all portfolio layouts look equally great on mobile devices and work as elegantly as they do on laptops.
2. Envira Gallery
Envira Gallery is a premium WordPress gallery plugin. It allows you to create beautiful image galleries and albums. Already used by thousands, Envira Gallery is the best WordPress plugin for photographers and designers.
Creating a portfolio with Envira Gallery is quite easy. Simply create galleries containing your portfolio items with optional description and details. You can also group galleries into Albums or make filterable portfolio.
The plugin also makes it easy to add your portfolio anywhere on your WordPress site with the click of a button.
For detailed instructions, take a look at our guide on how to add a portfolio to your WordPress site.
3. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is a popular WordPress plugin for creating image galleries, albums, and photography portfolios. Loved by beginners and expert photographers alike, NextGen comes with an intuitive user interface to create galleries.
It includes multiple styles and layout choices with support for albums, filterable portfolio, columns, and more. You can also create portfolio carousel/slider, compact portfolio albums, and list or timeline style layouts.
4. Visual Portfolio
Visual Portfolio is an elegant WordPress portfolio plugin that allows you to create beautiful portfolio galleries.
It comes with multiple layout styles including masonry, grid, justified, tiles, and carousel. The plugin also includes a Gutenberg block which makes it even easier to add a portfolio anywhere you like.
Your users can also sort portfolio items using filters, which offers a beautiful browsing experience.
5. GridKit Portfolio Gallery
GridKit Portfolio Gallery is a simple WordPress photo gallery and portfolio plugin. It allows you to manage portfolio items in projects and make them sortable. It comes with support for new WordPress block editor with shortcode support for older editor.
The base plugin is very with limited layout styles and features. You’ll need the premium version to get access more styles and features.
6. Meow Gallery
Meow Gallery is a free WordPress gallery plugin with full Gutenberg block editor support. It allows you to organize your portfolio items in beautiful image galleries.
It ships with support for multiple layouts including masonry, grid, tile, and justified. You can select the number of columns you want to display. It also comes with several add-on plugins that can be used for additional functionality like lightbox, audio commentary, external links, and more.
7. Genesis Portfolio Pro
If you are using a StudioPress theme or any theme made for the Genesis theme framework, then you would want to try Genesis Portfolio Pro plugin.
It is made specifically for Genesis framework and provides a custom post type to create your portfolio items. It also comes with templates to display the featured image you set as the portfolio item in a grid layout.
It is a simple plugin and does not include many features of several other portfolio plugins. However, if you are looking for something minimalist, then it would get the job done nicely.
That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers. You may also want to see our list of 41 best free photography themes for WordPress.
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