As a WordPress consultant since 2015, I often have clients asking how to showcase YouTube videos on their sites in an engaging, organized video gallery format.
And it‘s no wonder – YouTube is the world‘s second largest search engine and second most popular website globally. Online video continues to explode in popularity and importance:
- Cisco predicts 82% of global consumer web traffic will come from video streaming by 2022
- 75% of people watch videos online to help with purchasing decisions
- 68% prefer learning about a product or service through video vs other mediums
So if you run any kind of WordPress site – blogs, news, magazines, online stores, etc. – there‘s an excellent chance you‘ll want to showcase YouTube videos prominently.
But what‘s the most effective way to add a YouTube video gallery to WordPress?
Rather than sticking videos awkwardly into blog posts and pages, I recommend using a dedicated YouTube gallery plugin. They make it simple to pull videos from a YouTube channel and display them in polished, customizable galleries.
In this expert guide, I‘ll compare the 9 best YouTube video gallery plugins for WordPress available in 2023 based on core features, design flexibility, performance, support, and value.
I‘ve personally used all plugins discussed, consult on WordPress implementations involving video galleries, and draw on my over 15 years of web development experience.
Why Use a Dedicated YouTube Gallery Plugin?
Before diving into the top plugins, let‘s briefly go over why you should use one vs just sticking YouTube embed codes randomly across your site:
Better Organization – Gallery plugins allow you to group videos logically into different galleries. This improves navigation and lets you modularize different types of videos.
More Design Control – You can customize gallery layouts, styles, spacing, sizing, colors, lighting boxes, and much more compared to basic embeds.
Added Functionality – Features like pagination, tags/filters, autoplay next, related videos, dynamic actions, popups and more significantly improve the viewer experience.
Simplified Management – You can instantly pull multiple YouTube videos by connecting to a channel or playlist then controlling options from one dashboard.
Enhanced Performance – Optimized loading, caching layers and lightweight builds prevent heavy YouTube embeds from slowing your site down.
Simply put, YouTube gallery plugins create more dynamic, professional video experiences your visitors will love while saving you time and control compared to basic copy-and-paste embed codes.
Next let‘s explore the top plugins available…
1. Envira Gallery – Powerful All-in-One Media Gallery
Envira Gallery is one of most robust, enterprise-grade gallery plugins available for WordPress. While mainly a photo gallery plugin, its premium YouTube add-on is extremely full-featured.
You can add YouTube videos to Envira galleries in three ways:
- Individually – Manually embed videos by URL along with custom thumbnails
- YouTube API Channel Imports – Connect Envira to the YouTube API to automatically import all videos from a channel
- YouTube Playlist Imports – Import full YouTube playlists via the API connection
Envira goes far beyond basic galleries. You can mix YouTube videos into galleries alongside images, audio, even PDFs and PowerPoint presentations:
Key Features
- Mix photos, videos, audio files, and documents in unified galleries
- Deep customization – Styles, columns, spacing, slider options, lightbox popups, mobile layouts, and much more
- Integrates with WordPress natively for easy organization by tags, categories, and more
- Lightning fast performance through built-in caching, lazy loading and optimization
Ideal For: Media heavy sites like video blogs, magazines, tutorials, creative agencies, video production firms and entertainment brands.
Pricing: Premium licenses start at $99 then scale based on site traffic.
Verdict: Envira Gallery offers unparalleled creative freedom to blend media beautifully while optimizing for speed and engagement. For sheer flexibility and power, nothing else matches it. The one downside is the cost, but you get what you pay for.
2. WP YouTube Lyte – Fast, Free and Popular Gallery Builder
As a free plugin active on over 100,000 WordPress sites, WP YouTube Lyte strikes an excellent balance of features, performance and value.
It creates responsive YouTube video galleries from channel content or curated playlists. WP Lyte prioritizes speed through a lightweight build and optimization like caching.
Key Features
- Pulls videos from multiple YouTube channels or playlists
- Customize columns, aspect ratio, colors, spacing, borders, video actions
- Paginated galleries with AJAX loading for smooth user experience
- Integrates with popular caching and optimization plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Fastest Cache
Ideal For: Sites focused on user experience – blogs, video channels, tutorials/courses, entertainment and niche sites.
Pricing: Free on WordPress.org. Premium version with more features is $39/year.
Verdict: For a free gallery plugin, WP YouTube Lyte packs an incredible amount into a clean, extensible interface. Optimization for site speed and engagement makes it a great pick for publishers and information-focused sites.
3. NextGEN Gallery – Integrates Video Galleries with Photo Management
NextGEN Gallery is a wildly popular WordPress image gallery plugin with over 15 million downloads.
While focused on photos, NextGEN‘s Plus and Pro versions allow you to extend its robust core gallery management features to YouTube video galleries.
You can import entire channels worth of content, categorize videos into different galleries using tags, customize thumbnails, and view responsive popups in the integrated lightbox.
Key Features
- Pulls entire YouTube channels into integrated gallery management
- Organizes videos into galleries using categories and tags like posts
*Smart thumbnails with hover previews - Integrated lightbox with responsive video popups
- Full gallery print sales functionality
Ideal For: Photographers, creative agencies, portal sites and bloggers who share both photo and video content.
Pricing: Starts free then $39 (Plus) and $99 (Pro) per year for add-ons like YouTube galleries
Verdict: NextGEN Gallery takes WordPress‘s built-in media and post concept and supercharges it for rich media. Integrating video galleries with images can produce stunning mixed formats that capture attention.
4. Responsive Photo Gallery – Beautiful Galleries Made Easy
Developed by 10Web, Responsive Photo Gallery straddles the line between easy and powerful. As the name suggests, it expertly enables beautiful image galleries seamlessly responsive across devices.
And while focused on photos, the plugin supports YouTube video galleries through easy embedding by URL with the option for custom thumbnail overrides. Videos integrate cleanly with the photo timeline, masonry and slideshow-style gallery views.
Key Features
- Embed YouTube videos in inline gallery views or lightbox popups
- Add custom thumbnail images for each video
- Integrates smoothly with 10+ core gallery views like slideshows
- Make entire galleries from YouTube videos/channels
- Fully responsive across all devices
Ideal For: Photographers, creative agencies, bloggers and small business retail sites looking for both image and video galleries.
Pricing: Free on WordPress.org with premium version offering more features starting at $39/year.
Verdict: Responsive Photo Gallery sets the standard for easy media galleries in WordPress. While richer in features exists, it gets 80% of use cases done beautifully at a reasonable cost.
5. YouTube Gallery Plugin by Max Foundry – Full-Featured Free Option
The YouTube Gallery Plugin by Max Foundry excels in offering a full-featured free YouTube video gallery builder.
Once installed, simply connect your YouTube channel or playlist to automatically import titles, descriptions and poster images into a polished, responsive gallery.
While basic by default, it includes customization options for layout, styling colors and fonts, autoplay behavior, load more button preferences and more.
Key Features
- Auto imports YouTube channel or playlist content
- Flexible multi-column responsive layouts
- Configure autoplay, queueing, load more, popups
- Customize colors, fonts and some styles
- Free on WordPress.org
Ideal For: Newer or budget-conscious sites looking for a free, decently customizable YouTube video gallery option.
Pricing: Free version available on WordPress.org. Paid premium version starts at $69/year for more features.
Verdict: The Max Foundry YouTube Gallery plugin succeeds in squeezing an impressive amount of utility into a free package. The premium version adds welcomed upgrades like playlists, categories and lightboxes.
6. ARForms YouTube Channel – Decent Integrated Option
ARForms is a respected WordPress form and survey builder used on over 70,000 sites. Conveniently, it also allows embedding YouTube videos and entire channel galleries.
While basic compared to specialized gallery plugins, ARForms provides a free YouTube integration directly within its form builder if you‘re already leveraging it for data collection.
Key Features
- Free YouTube video embeds and channel galleries
- Part of ARForms form/survey/quiz builder
- Simple integration if already using ARForms
- Very limited customization and features
Ideal For: Sites using the ARForms builder that want quick YouTube video integration.
Pricing: Free, included with ARForms. Paid ARForms plans start at $29/year.
Verdict: Works best for those already invested in ARForms. Decent free addition but lacks standalone robust features.
7. Envira Gallery vs WP YouTube Lyte vs NextGen – Side-by-Side Comparison
To help summarize the differences between the best paid, free and integrated options covered above, here‘s a head-to-head comparison between Envira Gallery, WP YouTube Lyte and NextGEN Gallery:
| Envira Gallery | WP YouTube Lyte | NextGEN Gallery | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $99+/year | Free/$39 Pro | $39+/year |
| Primary Focus | Media Gallery | YouTube Gallery | Photo Gallery |
| Key Video Features | Mixed media gems, YouTube API integration | Channel imports, caching, pagination | Channel imports, categories/tags, lightbox |
| Customization Options | Extremely High | Medium | High |
| Ease of Use | Moderate Learning Curve | Easy | Moderate |
| Ideal For | Creative Agencies, Video Mags | Bloggers, Channels | Photogs, Retail Sites |
Other Top YouTube Video Gallery Options for WordPress
While Envira Gallery, WP YouTube Lyte and NextGEN lead the pack in their respective categories, here are 6 more excellent plugins to consider:
- Smart YouTube Gallery – Simple free plugin to add basic channel-sourced galleries
- YouTube Galleries by ShapedPlugin – Create unlimited YouTube video galleries with categories and filters
- YouTube Channel Gallery – Embed an entire stylistic YouTube channel within WordPress
- YouTube Gallery & Video Plugin Switch between video gallery views and replicated channel pages
- Gallery by 10Web – Media gallery supporting YouTube videos alongside image galleries and lightboxes
- Master Slider Video Gallery – Premium video gallery builder with YouTube support. 30+ templates.
Summing Up – Get More From Your WordPress YouTube Galleries
As this guide demonstrates, you have several excellent options when choosing a dedicated YouTube video gallery plugin for WordPress. Each brings something unique, be it features, ease of use, customization or integration.
I recommend:
- Envira Gallery if you want supreme creative freedom and media flexibility beyond just YouTube, albeit at a steeper price
- WP YouTube Lyte if you value performance, great UX and customization in a free package
- NextGEN Gallery for easy organization with photos and video side-by-side
No matter which plugin you select, you‘ll present YouTube videos to engage your audience far better than with basic embeds scattered arbitrarily. Visitors will consume more content and have an incentive to explore your channel.
Now get out there, install a dedicated YouTube gallery plugin, and start reaping the benefits of featuring videos prominently on your WordPress website!
