Images are critical to your site’s success. As a result, choosing the right image for your post or project is critical — WordPress image plugins offer a way to access millions of images directly from your dashboard.
Here’s a look at some of the best.
Don’t want to leave your WordPress dashboard to find images? These five plugins can help.
5 Plugins to Help Find Images From the WordPress Dashboard
- Getty Images
- Envato Elements
- StockPack
- PixelRockstar
- Instant Images
1. Getty Images
Getty Images is one of the most popular online image sources that features over 50 million embeddable images for free editorial use. Search through millions of photos, vectors, and illustrations by using keywords and filters to match your blog posts’ intent.
This WordPress plugin will let you insert images into your website by using the media manager in the WordPress dashboard.
What we like:
The Getty Images plugin lets you easily find and insert images into any WordPress post. Just select Getty Images from the Media Access tab and type in your search. Not only are searches customized based on your Getty Images account, you can also search specifically for embeddable images to help save time and effort on your search.
2. Envato Elements
Envato Elements boasts more than 600,000 installations and makes it possible to browse and import both templates and stock photos without leaving WordPress. With access to thousands of templates and photos, WordPress site owners can quickly find what they’re looking for, import it, and then customize it to their liking.
Installation and use are simple. There’s no code to modify or complex connections to make; simply download and install the plugin on your site and start browsing more than 1 million royalty-free photos. Worth noting? Full access to Envato’s stock photo and template library is subscription-based — for $16.50 per month you get unlimited downloads and 50 million additional stock photos.
What we like:
Envato Elements offers a massive amount of stock photos for free, plus even more for a relatively low subscription price. The plug also integrates with popular WordPress page building tool Elementor, making it easy to get a new site, page, or project up and running.
3. StockPack
StockPack offers access to more than 430 million stock images for your WordPress site by searching popular stock photo services including Unsplash, Adobe Stock, Stock, and Pixabay.
The plugin also offers direct photo downloads to your server to help save on download times and bandwidth, making it both easier and most cost-effective to find the photos you need when you need them. Powerful search features also let you quickly pinpoint pictures that work best for your site.
What we like:
Along with access to more than 400 million images and seamless integration with your existing WordPress media library, this plugin also lets you customize filenames, add source citations, and provides automatic captioning options to ensure you meet licensing requirements.
4. PixelRockstar
This WordPress image plugin comes fully loaded with more than 4 million stock photos, and any photos you download are yours to keep and use forever.
All images have been fully vetted to ensure the license is eligible for use on your website, and the PixelRockstar digital license allows you to use these photos as part of WordPress pages and in social media posts. Photos are available for as little as 57 cents per image.
What we like:
Along with a host of great photo options, PixelRockstar also lets you easily add images into WordPress posts and automatically tags them with SEO-friendly captions to help drive increased site traffic.
5. Instant Images
Used by more than 90,000 websites, Instant Images lets you quickly upload images from Pixabay, Pexels, and Unsplash to your WordPress site for free — without leaving your dashboard.
The plugin’s powerful search tool makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Once you’ve found it, just click on the image for direct upload to your media library. You can also customize image alt text, caption, and filename before uploading to ensure it's easy to find and use on your site.
What we like:
Along with high-quality photos and a powerful search engine, Instant Images also offers quality-of-life features that streamline the stock photo finding process. For example, you can set standard max image width and height before uploading to save time cropping images once they’re on your site.
Which WordPress Image Plugin is Right for You?
Finding the right images for your blog posts can be a time-consuming task; WordPress image plugins can streamline this process by making it possible to find great pictures directly from your dashboard.
Not sure which one is right for you? Don’t worry — this isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. Try out a few from our list and see which one best matches your needs and budget. Prefer two for different applications? No problem. Finding your first choice no longer meets your needs? Change it up.
Bottom line? The right picture is worth a thousand words — but it shouldn’t take thousands of tries to find. Any of the plugins listed above make it possible to find best-fit photos ASAP.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
