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best WordPress lightbox plugins

7+ Best WordPress Lightbox Plugins 2024 (Compared)

Written By: author image Stacey Corrin
author image Stacey Corrin
Stacey has been writing about WordPress and digital marketing for over 10 years and on other topics for much longer. Alongside this, she's fascinated with web design, user experience, and SEO.
     Reviewed By: John Turner
reviewer image John Turner
John Turner is the co-founder of RafflePress. He has over 20+ years of business and development experience and his plugins have been downloaded over 25 million times.

Are you looking for the best WordPress lightbox plugins?

With lightbox popups, you can display image galleries and targeted messages at the right time to your website visitors. They also help users make decisions by removing distractions.

With so many lightbox plugins available with different features, which one should you choose?

In this article, we’ll compare the best WordPress lightbox plugins so you can create user-friendly popups for your WordPress website.

What Is a WordPress Lightbox Plugin?

A WordPress lightbox plugin is a tool that lets you display images, videos, and other media in an overlay on top of your web page rather than in a separate window. This functionality is excellent for creating image galleries, displaying videos, and other types of media on your WordPress site.

Lightbox plugins typically use JavaScript and CSS to create the overlay effect and provide a user-friendly interface for browsing and navigating the media. Some lightbox plugins also let you display messages, opt-in forms, and call-to-action buttons to help you generate leads and conversions.

The benefits of using a WordPress lightbox plugin are as follows:

  • Improved user experience: Lightbox plugins provide a clean and elegant way to display media on a website, allowing users to view images, videos, and messages without navigating away from the current page.
  • Increased engagement: Lightbox plugins can help increase engagement on a website by making it easier for users to view and interact with media.
  • Mobile optimization: Many lightbox plugins are optimized for mobile devices with responsive design settings, ensuring users can view media on smaller screens.
  • Customization options: Most lightbox plugins come with various customization options, allowing you to tailor the lightbox gallery to your specific needs.
  • Accessibility: The best lightbox plugins are designed to be fully accessible to users with disabilities, including those using screen readers.
  • SEO: By displaying images, videos, and messages on the same page, lightbox plugins can help improve the overall user experience and reduce the number of clicks required to view media, which can have a positive impact on search engine optimization.

Overall, a lightbox plugin is an effective way to increase your WordPress site’s engagement, user experience, and SEO.

Best Lightbox Plugins for WordPress

Now that you know what a lightbox plugin is, you’re ready to compare the top solutions for your website. Below we’ve compared some of the best WordPress lightbox plugins so you can make an informed decision.

Let’s dive in.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster best WordPress lightbox plugins

OptinMonster is a popular lead generation and conversion optimization tool for WordPress websites. The plugin lets you create and customize various types of opt-in forms, such as lightbox popups, slide-ins, floating bars, and more, to help convert website visitors into email subscribers and customers.

One of the best features of OptinMonster is its ability to display popups based on user behavior and engagement using “smart rules.”

For example, you can set a lightbox popup to appear only when a user is about to leave your website or has reached a specific web page. This helps increase the chances of converting visitors into subscribers or customers.

Another feature of OptinMonster is the ability to create and customize popups using pre-built templates or the “Canvas” feature. This lets you create your own designs without code with the drag-and-drop builder.

OptinMonster also offers various other features, such as:

  • Mobile-friendly popups
  • Over 26 animations and sound effects to grab user attention
  • Multiple trigger options
  • Integration with popular platforms like email marketing services, CRM, and more
  • Detailed campaign reports and analytics

Pricing: Starts from $9 per month (billed annually) with the basic plan.

Get started with OptinMonster today.

2. Simple Lightbox

Simple lightbox WordPress plugin

Simple Lightbox is a popular WordPress plugin that lets you create and customize lightbox popups on your site. The plugin has a clean and minimalist design, making it easy to use and lightweight.

Once installed, it automatically adds a fullscreen lightbox feature to your images and galleries, allowing you to display media in an overlay triggered by clicking a link or image.

Simple Lightbox is 100% mobile responsive, so your lightbox will automatically adjust to the size of visitors’ devices. As a result, your lightbox will look and function correctly on different screen sizes.

Simple Lightbox also offers a variety of customization options, such as the ability to create slideshows, add transitions and animations, and control the overlay speed of the popup. You can also choose between different lightbox themes and customize the design and color scheme.

Other features of Simple Lightbox include:

  • Automatic activation of links
  • Keyboard navigation
  • Supports links in widgets and image attachments
  • Customizable themes for lightbox
  • Mobile responsive themes

Pricing: Simple Lightbox is a free plugin you can download from the WordPress.org repository.

3. FooBox

FooBox lightbox image gallery plugin

FooBox is a responsive WordPress plugin that allows you to create and customize lightbox overlays for images, videos, and other media.

Its lightboxes are mobile responsive, rearranging lightbox content to fit mobile devices in both portrait and landscape orientations. This makes it an ideal choice for optimizing the user experience on mobile devices.

One of the stand-out features of FooBox is that it supports the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg). That means you can use it with native image and gallery blocks, and it will automatically pick up image captions that you set in the editor.

FooBox also offers a variety of customization options, such as choosing from several color schemes, loader icons, and button icons. It also has over 85 different customizable settings, allowing you to tailor the lightbox layout and design to your specific needs.

Other features of FooBox include:

  • Responsive design
  • Social sharing buttons for lightboxes
  • No additional configuration required
  • Supports videos, HTML, and iFrame
  • Integration with other WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Jetpack, and more

Pricing: Starts from $29 with a 7-day free trial.

4. WP Featherlight

WP Featherlight simple jquery WordPress lightbox plugins

WP Featherlight is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create and customize a simple, minimalist lightbox popup. The plugin is lightweight and fast, making it an ideal choice for optimizing your website’s loading speed.

Once installed, the plugin automatically adds a lightbox feature to your images and galleries, allowing you to display your images, videos, and other media in an overlay triggered by clicking the image thumbnail.

WP Featherlight is also very easy to use, as it doesn’t require any additional setup or configuration. Additionally, it has a minimalist and simple lightbox popup design, making it perfect for beginners who want a lightbox popup without the extra setup.

Other features of WP Featherlight include:

  • Automatically adds images and galleries upon installation
  • One-click disable option
  • Create lightbox videos, iframes, and Ajax content
  • Lightweight and won’t affect your site’s loading speed

Pricing: This is a free plugin for creating lightbox-style images on your website.

Responsive lightbox and gallery plugin by dFactory

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery by dFactory is a popular WordPress lightbox plugin. With its drag-and-drop builder, you can create any lightbox popup, and it even works with the Visual Composer page builder, allowing for additional customization options.

One of the key features of this plugin is that it lets you display images, videos, and products from your eCommerce store as galleries. It’s also lightweight and fast, which helps your website’s loading speed and search engine optimization (SEO).

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery offers a variety of customization options, such as gallery templates (slider, grid, and masonry) and responsive lightbox scripts. It can also automatically add a lightbox to WordPress image galleries, links, videos, and more.

Other features of Responsive Lightbox & Gallery include:

  • Multisite support
  • Trigger the lightbox popup on custom jQuery events
  • Conditional load scripts and styles
  • Highly customizable settings for each gallery and lightbox scripts

Pricing: Responsive Lightbox & Gallery is a free gallery plugin with a lightbox effect. However, premium extensions and add-ons are available starting at $14 and going up to $49.

Alternative: You might also like NextGen Gallery for WordPress.

6. Easy FancyBox

Easy FancyBox WordPress lightbox plugin

Easy FancyBox is a popular WordPress plugin with lightbox popup functionality. It’s flexible and aesthetic, offering a wide variety of lightbox popups.

One of the key features of Easy FancyBox is its automatic content recognition. That means it supports content from popular platforms like YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, and Google Maps, as well as images and iframes. As such, it’s a versatile plugin that can handle different media types.

Easy FancyBox also offers a variety of customization options, such as the ability to customize the lightbox animation, overlay speed, and the option to show and hide image titles over mouse hover.

Other features of Easy FancyBox include:

  • Compatibility with WordPress Galleries
  • Additional styling options like text colors, rounded corners, and more
  • Automatic trigger options
  • Priority support

Pricing: Easy FancyBox offers an entirely free version. The pro version starts from $29.

7. WP Video Lightbox

WP Video Lightbox plugin

WP Video Lightbox is a free WordPress plugin that lets you create and customize a video lightbox for your website. You can embed videos in a lightbox overlay, making it easy to grab the user’s attention and create engagement.

One of the key features of WP Video Lightbox is that it supports different types of media files. It allows you to add videos from other platforms, such as YouTube or Vimeo, and also lets you add images and iframes to your responsive lightbox in WordPress.

Each lightbox element is customizable, allowing you to create stunning popups.

Additionally, WP Video Lightbox offers a variety of customization options, such as the ability to control the animation speed, autoplay option, and to choose from different design options. It also has a deep-linking option that links to a specific lightbox element directly.

Other features of WP Video Lightbox include:

  • Easily customize your video lightbox
  • Clean and responsive design
  • Supports different types of media files
  • Offers autoplay option

Pricing: WP Video Lightbox is a free WordPress video lightbox plugin.

Bonus: SeedProd Image Blocks (with Lightbox)

seedprod WordPress website builder

SeedProd is an all-in-one WordPress page builder that allows you to create custom WordPress themes from scratch. With its drag-and-drop interface, you can easily create professional landing pages and complete websites without coding.

With SeedProd’s image block and lightbox feature, you can create a portfolio website with the theme builder and show your work in high-quality image lightboxes. It also allows you to create landing pages and display large images in a lightbox to reduce page loading times.

SeedProd’s image and gallery blocks include options to add image links, opacity, metadata, lightbox popups, customizations, and more without touching a single line of code.

SeedProd lightbox feature

The beauty of a plugin like SeedProd is you won’t need to install additional WordPress plugins or add fiddly shortcodes to get the functionality you need. It’s also lightweight and bloat-free, so it won’t impact your page load speeds.

Some of SeedProd’s other key features are as follows:

  • Built-in page modes, including coming soon and maintenance mode
  • Email subscriber management dashboard
  • Custom domain mapping
  • Responsive landing page templates
  • 1-click website kits
  • WooCommerce support
  • Drag-and-drop blocks, including opt-in, login, and contact forms
  • And much more.

Pricing: Starts from $39.50 per year with a 14-day money-back guarantee

Get started with SeedProd today.

Which Is the Best WordPress Lightbox Plugin?

After looking at the solutions in this comparison, we’re confident that OptinMonster is the best WordPress lightbox plugin. It offers many helpful features, is easy to use, and includes powerful trigger options to show your popup at the right time.

SeedProd is also a fantastic lightbox plugin because of its page-building functionality. You can build virtually any WordPress layout and add lightbox popups without writing code.

There you have it!

We hope you found this comparison helpful in finding the best WordPress lightbox plugin. Before you go, you might like this tutorial on how to set up a thank you page in WordPress.

If you liked this article, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for RafflePress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

author avatar
Stacey Corrin Writer
Stacey has been writing about WordPress and digital marketing for over 10 years and on other topics for much longer. Alongside this, she's fascinated with web design, user experience, and SEO.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

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