13 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Envira Gallery

Most people who write to us before buying Envira Gallery aren’t asking whether the galleries look good. They can already see that from the demos.

What they want to know is whether it’ll fight with their page builder, slow their site down, or lock the one feature they actually need behind the top plan.

Those are fair worries, and WordPress galleries have earned every one of them. Plenty of plugins keep the tier quiet until checkout.

So here are the questions we get asked most before someone buys, answered straight, with the plan each feature comes in named in the same breath. Pick the one that’s holding you up.

1. Do I Need to Know HTML or CSS to Use Envira Gallery?

No. Envira Gallery is a WordPress plugin built for non-techies, and that’s been the point since day one.

You drag your photos in, pick a layout, and publish. There’s no markup to write and no stylesheet to touch.

The layouts are pre-built, so choosing the look is a dropdown, not a design job. There are 16 in total, and four come with the free Lite version: Automatic, Bento Grid, Horizontal Carousel and Horizontal Slideshow. Any paid plan adds the other 12, including Mason, Grid, Polaroid and Vertical Focus.

That choice lives on the Configuration tab of the gallery editor.

If you do want to hand-tune something, there’s a Custom CSS box on any paid plan. Most people never open it, and if you get stuck, our support team is full-time. That’s a big part of why the plugin sits at 4.7 out of 5 from 1,597 reviews on WordPress.org, 1,429 of them five-star.

2. Which Envira Gallery Plan Do I Need?

Probably a smaller one than you think. The honest answer comes down to one thing: the single feature you came here for.

There are five tiers, in this order: Lite, Basic, Plus, Pro and the Elite Bundle. Lite is free and stays free.

Each paid plan is a one-year license covering a set number of sites, then it renews at the price in the Renewal column.

Here’s how the five compare, and who each one suits.

Plan	First year	Renewal	Sites	Best for
Lite	Free	Free	Unlimited	Trying it out. Drag and drop, four layouts, lazy loading and the block editor.
Basic	$39.50	$79	1	One site, one portfolio. Adds the other 12 layouts, image protection, slideshows, standalone galleries and custom CSS.
Plus	$69.50	$139	3	Bloggers and busy portfolios. Adds watermarking, password protection, tagging, filterable galleries, pagination and Instagram galleries.
Pro	$99.50	$199	5	Working photographers. Adds video galleries, client proofing, Envira Payments with no transaction fee, WooCommerce, Lightroom, albums, search and deeplinking.
Elite Bundle	$149.50	$299	5	Media-heavy sites and client work. Everything in Pro, plus unlimited galleries and users, 2,500 AI credits, WordPress multisite support, client management, premium support and the Soliloquy slider plugin.

The quick version: if you’re just starting out, Lite or Basic is plenty, and bloggers who want tagging and filtering land on Plus. Anyone selling, proofing or publishing video needs Pro. Running a multisite install or handing galleries over to clients is what the Elite Bundle is for, and it adds the Soliloquy slider plugin on top.

Already running another gallery plugin? The Envira Importer moves your existing galleries over from Modula or FooGallery, and it’s included with every paid plan.

You point it at the plugin you’re leaving, tick the galleries you want, and your images, captions and titles come across as native Envira galleries.

The full walkthrough is in our announcement on switching from FooGallery or Modula in minutes.

3. Does Envira Gallery Work With Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, and the WordPress Block Editor?

Yes, all four, though not in the same way. Three have a native integration built for them, and Divi works through a shortcode.

Start with the block editor, since that’s the one most people are using. Search for Envira in the block inserter, drop the block on the page, and choose an existing gallery. That works on every plan, free Lite included.

Elementor and Beaver Builder each get a proper addon on Pro plans and above, so your galleries appear as native widgets in the builder panel. We have step-by-step guides for adding image galleries with the Elementor addon and for doing the same in Beaver Builder.

Divi is the one worth being precise about. There’s no Divi addon to buy or install, and there never was.

Instead you copy the gallery’s shortcode from the Shortcode column on Envira Gallery > Galleries, then paste it into a Divi Text or Code module. It works in Divi 4 and Divi 5, and in free Lite.

That shortcode route is the quiet answer to any builder we haven’t named, because anything that renders a WordPress shortcode will render an Envira gallery. The exact steps are in the docs on how to add an Envira gallery to a Divi page.

4. Will My Galleries Look Right on Phones and Tablets?

Yes, from Basic upward. Mobile friendly is listed on every paid plan, so your galleries adapt to a phone without you configuring anything.

Your columns reflow, your thumbnails resize, and the lightbox still works under a thumb.

The Mobile tab goes further, letting you design the phone view separately instead of accepting the desktop one shrunk down. Turn on Create Mobile Gallery Images? and you get your own column count, thumbnail dimensions and lightbox behavior for small screens.

If you want to see the settings applied end to end, our guide on optimizing image galleries for mobile walks through the gallery and the lightbox together.

5. Will Envira Gallery Slow Down My Site?

Galleries are heavy by nature, so it’s the right question to ask. Speed is what we optimize hardest for, and you have four levers to pull.

Each sits at a different point on the plan ladder, so here’s what you get and where.

• Lazy loading holds back images below the fold until someone scrolls to them. Free, in Lite.
• Pagination splits a big gallery across pages so the browser never loads 400 thumbnails at once. Plus and above.
• Image Compression shrinks the file size of your uploads without a visible drop in quality. Pro and above.
• Envira CDN serves your images from the location nearest each visitor. Sold separately, see below.

Compression is the one that usually does the most work, because most photographers upload straight out of the camera. You can see before and after file sizes right in the media library.

Full details are in our post on speeding up your website with Envira Gallery’s image compression.

Envira CDN is worth calling out separately, because it isn’t part of any plan. It’s a standalone plugin at $10 a month or $100 a year, delivering from 335+ locations, and it works on any WordPress site whether or not you use our gallery plugin.

The announcement covering setup and limits is our post on lightning-fast WordPress images with one click.

6. Can I Create Video Galleries With Envira Gallery?

Yes. Video galleries come with Pro plans and above, and they behave exactly like a photo gallery: same layouts, same lightbox, same drag-and-drop ordering.

You can mix videos and photos in one gallery, which is what most people actually want for a wedding or an event recap.

The supported sources are YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, DailyMotion, Twitch, VideoPress and self-hosted files. Audio files work the same way, so a podcast archive or a music portfolio can live in a gallery too.

Here’s what the Videos tab and a finished video gallery look like.

To build one from scratch, follow our beginner’s guide to creating a WordPress video gallery.

7. Can I Add a Slideshow or Carousel to My Galleries?

Yes, and you don’t need a second plugin for it. Sliding galleries used to be a separate purchase, and they aren’t any more.

Two of the four layouts in the free Lite version are Horizontal Slideshow and Horizontal Carousel, so you can publish a sliding gallery before you’ve spent a penny.

For a true lightbox slideshow, the Slideshows addon arrives on Basic plans and above. That’s where autoplay, transition effects and background music live.

You switch it on from the Lightbox tab of any gallery.

On the front end, visitors get play and pause controls inside the lightbox rather than clicking through one image at a time.

Either way, the slideshow is your gallery. There’s nothing to rebuild and no second set of images to keep in sync.

8. Can I Sell My Photos Directly From My Galleries?

Yes, and as of this year you can do it without building a store at all. Envira Payments puts a purchase button on your images and handles the checkout with Stripe, and it works on any paid plan. From Pro upward there is no extra charge. On Basic and Plus it still works, with Envira adding a 5% transaction fee on top of Stripe’s own.

You don’t have to configure a cart, build product pages, or learn a separate shop plugin.

Setting it up takes about five minutes. Activate the Payments addon from the add-ons page, then go to Envira Gallery > Settings > Payments and connect Stripe. Creating a Stripe account is free, and it happens inside that same step.

From there, open a gallery, tick the images you want to sell, and click Sell with Envira Payments. A popup sets the price for everything you selected, so you can price a whole gallery at once or charge more for your best frame.

Your visitor sees a purchase button, picks a download size, and pays on a secure Stripe page by card, Apple Pay or Link. They never have to create an account on your site, and the confirmation email with the download link sends itself.

One thing to know before you pick a layout: on Vertical Focus, the purchase button only appears inside the lightbox. The setup steps are in the docs on how to sell images with Envira Payments.

If you already run a WooCommerce store, the WooCommerce Integration (Pro and above) turns gallery images into products instead, so your existing checkout, tax rules and reporting stay in place. The Digital Downloads addon (also Pro and above) covers file delivery if you’d rather sell that way. The full feature tour is in our announcement on selling images directly from your galleries.

9. Can I Send Clients a Proofing Gallery?

Yes. Client Proofing comes with Pro plans and above, and it replaces the whole email-a-zip-file routine.

Your client opens the gallery on your site, stars the images they want, leaves a note on any of them, and submits the selection back to you. You don’t need a third-party proofing app or another monthly subscription.

Here’s what your client sees.

Pair it with password protection, available on Plus and above, and only the client with the password can see their shoot. Our tutorial on creating a client gallery and proofing images online covers the whole flow.

10. Does Envira Gallery Protect My Images From Theft?

It makes casual copying much harder, and nothing on the web can make theft impossible. Four features do the work, and two of them start on a lower plan than the old version of this article claimed.

Image Protection disables right-click and copy inside your galleries, and it starts on Basic plans, not Pro. Watermarking, which stamps your name, logo or another image over your photos, starts on Plus, and so does password protection. Image Licensing, on Pro and above, lets you publish your usage terms alongside the work.

Watermarking is the one people set up first, because it travels with the file wherever it ends up.

For the practical setup, we have guides on protecting your website from image theft and on watermarking WordPress images.

11. Can I Sync Photos From Adobe Lightroom, Instagram, TikTok, or Dropbox?

Yes to all four, with one difference worth knowing up front: Dropbox is a one-time import, while the others keep your gallery in step with the source.

The self-updating ones are Instagram Galleries on Plus and above, plus TikTok, Dribbble and Google Photos on Pro and above. You connect the account once, and new posts flow into the gallery on their own.

You pick the source when you create the gallery, from the gallery type selector.

Google Photos is the one most readers will care about, since that’s where the photos already are. You connect a Google account, build an External gallery, then choose up to 2,000 items through the Google Photos Picker. Our Google Photos addon announcement covers the setup.

Lightroom works differently, and better, for anyone who edits before they publish. Envira installs as a publish service inside Lightroom, so you drag photos into a collection, hit publish, and the WordPress gallery updates. It comes with Pro plans and above.

Our guide to publishing photos from Adobe Lightroom to WordPress has the step-by-step setup.

That leaves Dropbox. The Dropbox Importer, also Pro and above, runs once rather than syncing, so files you add to the folder later won’t show up in the gallery.

12. How Do I Help Visitors Find One Photo Among Thousands?

This is the question that separates a portfolio from an archive. Once you’re past a few hundred images, scrolling stops being a navigation plan.

Four features solve it, and they stack. Tagging and filtering let visitors narrow things down, search lets them jump straight to one image, and albums give the whole collection a shape.

Tagging comes with Plus and above. You label images once, then a filter bar appears above the gallery so visitors can pick a category. If you have thousands of untagged photos, the AI Image Assistant can write the tags for you instead, and it runs on AI credits that come with Pro and above.

Our guides on tagging images in WordPress and on making a filterable gallery portfolio cover both halves of that.

Searchable galleries, on Pro and above, add a real search box to the gallery so someone can type “golden retriever” and get there in one move.

Albums, also Pro and above, group galleries into a single browsable page, which is usually the right top level for a big body of work. We walk through it in our guide to creating a stunning photo album in WordPress.

13. Will Envira Gallery Help My Photos Get Found in Google?

It removes the two things that usually keep gallery images out of search results: no page of their own, and no words attached to them.

Standalone Galleries, on Basic and above, give every gallery its own indexable URL instead of burying it inside a page. Deeplinking, on Pro and above, goes one level further and gives individual images their own shareable link. Breadcrumbs, also Pro and above, help search engines understand where each gallery sits in your site.

Deeplinking is the setting most people miss, and it lives in the gallery’s SEO options.

Then there’s the part nobody enjoys: alt text and captions. The AI Image Assistant writes them for you, one image at a time from the sparkle icon or across a whole gallery with the Bulk Image Assistant. It skips anything that already has metadata, so nothing gets overwritten.

AI credits come with Pro plans and above. The Elite Bundle includes 2,500 of them, and both can be topped up with an AI Credits Pack. If you want tags generated too, you’ll need the Tags addon active, which arrives on Plus and above. The docs on how to use the AI Image Assistant cover all three ways to run it.

None of that replaces the wider work of ranking your photography, though. Our post on SEO for photographers is the fuller picture, and our announcement on AI-generated alt text, captions and tags shows the Assistant in action.

That’s the list we hear most often, and there’s a pattern in the answers: the plan you need is usually further down the ladder than you’d guess. If you’d rather test everything before deciding, read up on how to get an unlimited free trial first.

Not using Envira Gallery yet? Get started today!

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