Timelines are unique elements that can help organize and illustrate growth over time. This is particularly beneficial for showing your company history, product updates, work experience, a project roadmap, and more.
You can create an interactive timeline with CSS — but that will require some serious technical know-how. WordPress offers a much easier alternative for those without coding experience: a WordPress plugin.
WordPress timeline plugins enable users to easily create and customize timelines without coding. Let’s take a look at the best options below.
Best WordPress Timeline Plugins
- Qi Blocks for Gutenberg
- Cool Timeline
- Timeline Express
- Elementor Timeline Widget Addon
- WP Timeline
- Everest Timeline
- WP Timeline Designer Pro
- Bold Timeline
Let's take a look at your best free options, then take a look at the premium timeline plugins.
Free WordPress Timeline Plugin
A free WordPress timeline plugin will provide the templates and features you need to quickly and easily create a timeline without coding. While it may lack the advanced functionality and flexibility of a premium plugin, a free timeline plugin is a great option for site owners on a budget.
1. Qi Blocks for Gutenberg
Qi Blocks for Gutenberg is an amazing collection of custom blocks that greatly extends the basic Gutenberg functionality. It helps users create modern, engaging websites with useful elements.
One of those elements is the Timeline Showcase block. The block can be added anywhere where you want to display a timeline and can easily be customized to fit your visual style. It includes four distinct timeline layouts on vertical and horizontal axes, with “regular” or circular images and highly customizable typography.
Your timeline can be static or animated, with or without additional titles and dates. You can use custom icons and adjust the arrows and other symbols used for the timeline, or opt to use none at all if a more minimalist style suits you better. All Qi blocks are lightweight and fast and wont place any additional burden to your website.
In addition to the Timeline Showcase block, you can, of course, use any other block from the collection, depending on the version (free or paid) you chose.
If you prefer working with Elementor, there is an almost identical plugin for you - Qi Addons for Elementor, with 100 exclusive widgets. This collection also features a Timeline Showcase widget like the one for Gutenberg, but it also includes a premium widget called Vertical Timeline. This widget allows you to create complex and data-rich vertical displays of your events or important events and is ideal for festivals and conferences.
2. Cool Timeline
Cool Timeline is a free plugin that can be used in the Gutenberg editor to create responsive horizontal and vertical timelines. Designed to help you enhance the blog feed on your site, Cool Timeline will automatically populate a timeline with blog posts you’ve created based on their publish date in ascending or descending order. To customize the look of your timeline, you can add images, icons, buttons, and custom colors to each story.
Cool Timeline also has a premium version available with more ready-made designs and advanced features, including animation effects and pagination options.
Here’s a demo of a user creating a vertical timeline with the Cool Timeline Gutenberg block.
3. Timeline Express
Timeline Express is an ideal choice for users looking to create animated and responsive vertical timelines on their sites.
With this free plugin, you can add beautiful CSS animations to your timelines. You also have multiple configuration options for each timeline announcement: you can specify the excerpt length, hide the date of each announcement, set a custom image, and specify the display order (between ascending or descending).
Here's a demo of a vertical timeline illustrating the history of WordPress.
4. Elementor Timeline Widget Addon
As the name implies, Elementor Timeline Widget addon is a free addon to the Elementor page builder plugin. You can use this addon to create horizontal and vertical timelines for your WordPress site. Thanks to this widget’s advanced settings, you can easily add or customize the colors, fonts, icons, images, and content inside your timeline stories.
Here's a look at what timeline elements you can customize with Elementor.
Premium WordPress Timeline Plugin
A premium WordPress timeline plugin will provide a greater selection of templates and features than its free counterparts. Dozens of pre-designed templates and advanced functionality, like animation effects and pagination options, can help take your timelines to the next level.
5. WP Timeline
WP Timeline is one of the most popular and highly-rated plugins for creating horizontal and vertical timelines. It comes with over 60 ready-made timeline examples that are all fully responsive and customizable. You can customize the font, color, and order of timeline announcements. You can pick from over 40 animation effects and add images, videos, and other media to make your timelines more engaging.
Here’s a demo of a step-by-step timeline with slider controls.
6. Everest Timeline
Everest Timeline is a responsive WordPress timeline plugin that comes with over 50 pre-designed templates. These templates are for horizontal and vertical timelines as well as Facebook and Twitter layouts. You can embed the most popular media formats into your timelines, including images, YouTube and Vimeo videos, and SoundCloud links. You can also add filters — like categories, tags, or keywords — and social media share buttons to your timelines.
Here’s an example of a horizontal timeline with banner dates.
7. WP Timeline Designer Pro
WP Timeline Designer Pro is a feature-rich and flexible timeline plugin. It offers 17 unique templates for horizontal and vertical timelines. Each template is responsive and highly customizable. You can either style the templates with over 100 customization options that WP Timeline Designer Pro offers or add custom CSS.
This premium plugin also provides 10 social media packs so you can easily add social sharing icons to your timelines. You can also set your timelines to have classic pagination, infinite scrolling, or load on scroll.
Below is a story layout that’s ideal for blog posts.
8. Bold Timeline
Bold Timeline is a premium and responsive timeline plugin. With this plugin, you can choose from 27 ready-made examples of horizontal and vertical timelines. You have dozens of customization options to make these examples your own. You can configure the position, alignment, shape, markers, and lines of your timelines. You can also enrich your timelines with icons, images, videos, and other media.
Here’s an example of a horizontal timeline with slider controls.
Adding a Timeline to Your WordPress Website
Whether featured on the homepage, on the About page, or in a blog post, an interactive timeline can elevate the look of your WordPress website. It’s easy thanks to WordPress plugins. Use any of the plugins above to create a timeline that illustrates your company history, work experience, product roadmap, or another passage of time.
