If you do any kind of online work, then you are going to need a portfolio website to showcase it. Not only does an online portfolio help you organize your work, it’s also a great method for attracting new clients. You will find the best free WordPress portfolio plugin in this post.
Writers, graphic designers, videographers, and artists of all kinds can greatly benefit from setting up a portfolio site. It gives you a chance to talk about yourself, and your previous experience, and most importantly, you can showcase your work as proof of what you have achieved.
The best part is that you can create a portfolio site very quickly by using WordPress. Now, some people prefer to use portfolio themes, but for this post, we’re actually going to focus on the best WordPress portfolio plugins. This will give you the freedom to use any kind of WordPress theme you like. You might be interested on Best WordPress Team Members Plugins
Top WordPress portfolio plugins are listed below:
- Portfolio – WordPress Portfolio plugin
- Visual Portfolio
- Portfolio Gallery
- Responsive Filterable Portfolio
- Portfolio (by BestWebSoft)
Portfolio – WordPress Portfolio Plugin
Portfolio is an exceptional plugin that is ideal for creating and displaying personal and company portfolios. It allows you to add all the items you want on your portfolio easily from the admin panel. It offers a widget and a carousel slider, which have various settings, including the number of items to display at a time.
Since Portfolio is highly responsive, it will look amazing on all devices. The Elementor portfolio plugin allows you to create your website using the Elementor Page Builder. It also enables you to use Gutenberg if you want. Since you can use shortcodes and the shortcode generator, you won’t need coding experience to create your portfolio.
The free version of Portfolio 3 grid layouts for showcasing your portfolio items easily. You also get 3 slider layouts and 3 isotope filter layouts. With the full customisability of all these layouts, you can work and come up with the most attractive and unique layouts.
Portfolio Pro by RadiusTheme
On the other hand, Portfolio PRO has an amazing 50+ layouts that include masonry grid, masonry isotope, even isotope, even grid, and carousel slider. You can create over 100 layouts because Portfolio is highly customizable and allows you to combine different variations. You can apply any of the unlimited color schemes it accommodates.
The drag & drop function of Portfolio ensures that you have a smooth user experience. The 4 types of pagination it offers give your customers the easiest time browsing your portfolio items. You can use Ajax load more, Ajax number, autoload on scroll, and normal number pagination.
The Portfolio Pro plugin supports gutter or padding control. It even has an RTL version incorporated for use with the Carousel Slider. Its external links for titles and images give you more freedom in sharing your portfolio and enhancing your Site’s SEO. It is compatible with the WPBakery Page Builder.
Highlighting the Top Features of Portfolio
- Layout preview available in shortcode generator
- RTL available for Carousel Slider
- Count on the load more button
- Count display for Isotope button
- Search function for Isotope layouts
- You can disable or show all buttons on Isotope display
- Full control over the color of buttons
- You can command a random ordering of your items
- Easy dynamic image resizing and custom image size setting
- Drag & drop item ordering
- Drag & drop taxonomy, i.e. category ordering
- Gallery image view included
- Unlimited colors and shortcodes
Visual Portfolio
Visual Portfolio is one of the best WordPress portfolio plugins that lets you create beautiful portfolio layouts and beautiful image galleries. The plugin also allows you to create using the Gutenberg block editor. Unlike some plugins that restrict you to masonry post type, Visual Portfolio will enable you to use any custom post type, such as Justified, Tiles, Grid, or Carousel.
You can use the infinite scroll for one-page sites and load more pagination to make browsing and navigation straightforward. Visual Portfolio comes with 4 predefined hover effects, including fade, classic, emerge, and fly. The layouts at your disposal are paged so that you don’t have to go through the process of indicating the page numbers. Theft Protection enables you to add your logo on top of your images to make them harder to steal, and also add a password to gallery blocks and send it to your clients.
The pop-up gallery that comes with Visual Portfolio support video embeds from YouTube and Vimeo. This feature works seamlessly with default WordPress galleries and images. The portfolio carousel WordPress plugin offers custom CSS for each portfolio layout. Whether you’re using the Elementor or WPBakery Page Builder on your website, Visual Portfolio has your back since it supports both.
Portfolio Gallery
Portfolio Gallery is a super-simple plugin created by the guys at A WP Life. The plugin stands out with its unique ‘filters’ feature which lets you apply custom filters to your portfolio galleries. Besides that, this plugin gets a lot of good rep for its diverse column layouts selection.
The pro features include an Easy & Simple interface, Responsive Gallery, Portfolio Filtration, Unlimited Filters, Unlimited Filter colors, Customize Border Settings, Portfolio Masonry Gallery, Link Portfolio Gallery, Load More Portfolio option, Multiple Column Layouts, Bootstrap 3.3.6 Based, 30 Hover Effects, 5 Light Box Pop-up Styles, Image Title, Gallery in Post, Gallery in Page, Gallery in Widget, SEO Friendly Gallery, Thumbnail Size & Quality Settings, Navigation Error in Lightbox Preview, Portfolio Gallery Images Order Buttons (Ascending, Descending & Shuffle). Having the ability to display galleries in different styles can help to match the portfolio with your overall site design. In addition, the extensive documentation will quickly get you up to speed on how to make this plugin work for your specific needs.
GridKit Portfolio Gallery
GridKit wordpress portfolio plugins prides itself on its diverse catalog of display features. So, rather than limiting the display only to portfolio items, you can also add product catalogs, gallery sliders, and even collections of video content.
So, if you needed to add a gallery of client logos, you can absolutely do that. Likewise, you can add a gallery of your team members or any sponsors who are supporting your project.
But the feature I think you are going to enjoy the most is actually the Gallery Demos. There are some 30+ demo previews available, all of which can be imported in your WordPress site with a single click!
Portfolio Gallery (by Total-Soft)
The Portfolio Gallery plugin is a fantastic tool that allows you to display your most impressive portfolio images. This plugin supports all modern browsers, on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. With its powerful filter, your visitors can filter items by groups and get to the ones they’re interested in faster.
It comes with over 100 features that enable the creation of a unique portfolio for any WordPress website. Regular updates are provided for the plugin. Its ease of use and functional capabilities make it an ideal addition to your WordPress website.
This plugin facilitates text overlay on the bottom of any feature. It can be used anywhere on an image with CSS and below it using an option. Portfolio Gallery allows you to add unlimited galleries in your pages quickly using the shortcodes you have.
You can adjust the effects, speed, locations, and other features easily. Apart from supporting use on mobile devices, it supports swiping on the devices. What’s more, you can zoom as much as you want without restrictions. With this WordPress portfolio plugin, you can add the “Launch Button” that links to project URLs to each project.
Blog Filter
The Blog Filter is the easiest way to add filters to your portfolio pages and other pages. This plugin can automatically fetch all posts without you having to lift a finger. Even if your website is a blogging website, you can display it with the filters, precisely like a post portfolio.
You can filter your posts with categories and get your visitors to the faster posts they want to see. Additionally, Blog Filter accommodates filtering with tags, so the posts with similar tags can be filtered out together. The image quality option allows you to select the quality of images that you want to display.
Blog Filters is fully responsive so that your elements appear perfectly on all devices. You don’t have to work with links to have your single posts appear on the listings; they will automatically appear on the listings. This WordPress portfolio plugin with categories comes automated to display your posts in the masonry layout.
Easy Photography Portfolio
The creators of Easy Photography Portfolio based the plugin on the idea of old school albums to make browsing an exceptional experience. Picture an album whose contents have been grouped into categories. This WordPress portfolio plugin will display your images in a masonry gallery layout and view each image individually for a closer view.
Its straightforward layout makes it easy to use without too many buttons and knobs to manage. Easy Photography Portfolio allows you to include unlimited categories and images. You can add the plugin to any photography website templates since it works seamlessly with PHP and JavaScript.
Easy Photography Portfolio has a remarkably similar custom template function, assuring you that it will work as smoothly as the eCommerce plugin. You can use filters and actions to modify the existing functionalities that you have. For instance, you can adjust the main masonry layout entirely or slightly to achieve the results you are visualizing.
Genesis Portfolio Pro
The Genesis Portfolio Pro comes with a new “Portfolio” post type that enables you to create portfolio entries with galleries and images to showcase your videos or images. The plugin comes with default styles that allow you to create a portfolio grid that showcases your featured videos and images in a landscape format. These images and videos will be shown automatically, so you won’t have to deal with links to connect them to the single pages.
The links on the listings will direct the user to a simple page where you can control the content, be it text, image, and galleries. To start creating your portfolio, all you need to do is click on “add new” on the “portfolio” menu feature. Adding images and content is just as straightforward as adding posts and publishing on WordPress. Genesis Portfolio Pro is fully translatable and comes with 5 ready translations.
Responsive Filterable Portfolio
The Responsive Filterable Portfolio is a responsive portfolio carousel WordPress plugin for websites of all niches. The admin can manage an unlimited number of images, videos, links, and textual content in the portfolio grid. They can also add, edit, and delete the content. Before adding a portfolio to your website, the Responsive Filterable Portfolio gives you the chance to preview it on a grid that is similar to what it looks like after posting.
This plugin makes it incredibly easy to change the height and width of thumbnails. You can also change slider speed quickly. Few plugins display videos and images in a lightbox as well as Responsive Filterable Portfolio. The WordPress portfolio plugin allows you to show and hide the media filter easily.
The pro version supports HTML5 videos and embeds from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, and DailyMotion. It also supports pagination to the portfolio grid. You can add captions to the thumbnails on your pages.
Portfolio (by BestWebSoft)
The Portfolio plugin is one of the best WordPress portfolio plugins with which you can craft and edit projects on your website. You can create, configure, and manage portfolios for unlimited projects. You can add an unlimited number of portfolio projects with a title, description, short description, technologies, executor profiles, completion date, images, project URL, and source file URLs.
This WordPress portfolio plugin with categories allows you to album image sizes for the album cover and thumbnails. What’s more, you can set the default portfolio projects while sorting order by title, ID, date of creation, menu order, random, ascending, and descending.
The Portfolio plugin enables you to set the number of images to display per row. You can also manage the number of portfolio columns that you want to show. This plugin is translatable and takes any language that you set. Its straightforward settings accommodate a quick setup without having to modify the code.
WordPress Portfolio Builder
With incredible expertise, the Portfoliohub team created one of the most responsive design options in web portfolios. You can use images or embed videos from YouTube to fill your gallery. You can create as many portfolios and projects as you want and add unlimited videos and images.
This WordPress portfolio plugin is equipped to automatically generate shortcodes that you can embed in your portfolio gallery. Specific widgets are available from the widgets item on the admin panel. You can sort your portfolio gallery by date or title, ascending or descending, and order or default. You have seven presentation layouts, each with their animation effects. The portfolio gallery has a fully responsive design.
The WordPress Portfolio Builder has 4 premade portfolio gallery demos, including list view, content toggle, masonry, content popup, image grid, elastic grid, and content slider. The main gallery allows you to sort and categorize content for every view.
Advance Portfolio Grid and Slider
As the name suggests, the Advance Portfolio Grid and Slider adds a responsive portfolio to your website, while allowing you to choose between a grid and slider layout. The column settings for your portfolio will have different screen sizes. What’s more, you can showcase custom post type items in your portfolio.
Advance Portfolio Grid and Slider allows you to include or exclude portfolio items easily without deleting them entirely. You also get the option for a quick view popup on your portfolio. This plugin supports the Elementor Page Builder to edit your portfolio using the drag & drop page builder. What’s more, the Advance Portfolio Grid and Slider is compatible with Gutenberg, therefore, giving you an extra option if you don’t want to use Elementor.
The portfolio carousel WordPress plugin also comes with a secure shortcode system that easily adds elements to your portfolio. It supports all modern browsers too. This plugin is fully translation-ready, with support for WPML and Loco Translate plugins, and it can work with any WordPress theme. Dedicated support is available 24/7.
Portfolio Post Type
So, this is actually a slightly different style of a portfolio plugin. It’s targeting those with a slight technical amplitude. Meaning, PPT provides a custom taxonomy registry for the post type “portfolio”.
After activating the plugin, you’ll able to create new Portfolio Items much like you would publish a blog post. The only difference is that PPT does not come with pre-determined layouts. As a result, you’ll need to create a custom layout yourself for all of the portfolio items you have added.
This might not sound appealing if you’re inexperience, but for any of you with some technical background — this plugin might actually give you the freedom you require for displaying portfolio content on your website.
Go Portfolio
Go Portfolio is an absolute stunner of a plugin with more than 8500 clients already. Having been in development since 2013 — the plugin has adopted nicely to the style of modern web designs.
It supports pages and offers two filtering types – classic isotope and opacity change. The plugin comes with four default styles: FLEX, DOOR, VARIO, and DELUX, and it allows for a responsive grid layout or horizontally sliding layout with up to 10 columns. The grid system is flexible and percent-based, with customizable vertical and horizontal spaces. The plugin is optionally responsive with custom settings and has a huge admin panel with many options. There are unlimited portfolios and custom post types, and it works with existing custom post types and regular blog posts. The plugin also supports WooCommerce and has advanced post-query options.
As a user, you’re going to love importing custom templates with a few clicks of a button. The layouts included in this particular plugin cater to almost any industry out there. Display individual portfolio images or spice things up by adding custom taxonomies such as title, date, category, etc,.
Media Grid
Media Grid gives you the flexibility to create mobile-friendly, filter-based portfolios. The most notable feature is the Visual Grid Builder, which you can use to design your own personal skins. Each design can be applied to a custom container, and that container can be placed anywhere on your WordPress website.
One great feature that you’re going to find useful is the ability to create grids using your existing WordPress content. So, whether it’s Images or actual Blog Posts — simply specify the source of content and have a grid portfolio generated instantly.
In addition to its portfolio features, Media Grid offers support for custom post types and taxonomies, making it easy to organize and display your content. The plugin also includes social sharing buttons, which allow users to share your content on social media platforms.
Colio
Colio’s unique presentation style for your portfolio is definitely its number-one selling feature. You can apply a traditional grid layout or use a more immersive pop-out layout. The alternative layout is ideal for all you creatives working with in-depth individual projects.
On individual project pages, you can include concise descriptions, and also add social icons to help spread the word about your work.
The learning curve for this plugin is extremely fast. You’ll be creating SEO-friendly portfolios in a matter of minutes. And if you do run into problems, the extensive documentation is there to give you a helping hand.
Cube Portfolio
This versatile WordPress portfolio plugin has been around since 2014. And with that, comes a lot of maturity and usability. Cube’s strongest features its diverse styles for displaying a portfolio gallery.
You can go from a traditional Masonry design to something like a Lightbox Gallery without needing to write a single line of code. It’s also popular amongst bloggers who wish to display their Blog Posts in a portfolio style.
And of course, Cube takes care of things like Slider presentations and even individual project pages.
Essential Grid
And for last, we have Essential Grid. This gallery-oriented portfolio plugin has risen to immense popularity over the years. And this is mostly because a lot of theme creators have decided to include this plugin in particular as the default choice for their themes.
Nevertheless, Essential Grid backs up this popularity by providing modern, robusy, and fun to work with features. It’s as simple as selecting the Source of your content, choosing a Layout, and applying any Filter options you like.
The pricing might seem a little steep, but in the long run, it should pay itself back tenfold. The easier it is for site visitors to see your work, the better your chances of converting those visitors into paying customers. So you can try this best wordpress portfolio plugins.
Closing words
Finding the best WordPress portfolio plugin comes down to preference in most cases. You have to examine the features you need, but also have to look at how a plugin integrates with your existing site design.
Having said that, we hope that this article has shed some light on the best options available to you.
