The most useful free trial of Imagely is one that never ends: the free version, with no time limit and no card.
That matters, because the other route people take to “free Pro” is a download site offering the paid plugin for nothing. Those copies can put your whole website at risk, along with every photo on it.
The free path gets your galleries live on your own site today. It also shows you what the paid plans would add, so you can decide on Imagely Pro with nothing on the line.
Is There an Imagely Free Trial?
Yes, and it never expires. Imagely, the WordPress gallery plugin for photographers, has a free version called Imagely Lite. It’s a full gallery plugin you can use on a live site for as long as you like.
You don’t sign up, you don’t enter a card, and there’s no countdown. When you open the License screen in the free plugin, it simply says “You’re using Imagely Lite – no license needed.”
One detail trips people up. On WordPress.org, the free plugin is listed under its original name, NextGEN Gallery (full title: Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery). It’s the same plugin, from the Imagely team, and it’s the one to install.
What the free version won’t do is unlock the paid features for a while and then take them away. If you want to test those, the paid plans come with a refund window, which I’ll cover in the upgrade section.
What the Free Version of Imagely Includes
The free plugin is more than a demo. You can build a complete portfolio with it and publish it on your real site.
Imagely Lite gives you all of this at no cost:
- Four gallery layouts: Thumbnail, Slideshow, ImageBrowser (one large photo at a time) and TagCloud, which shows your image tags so visitors can click through by subject.
- Two album layouts: Compact and Extended, for grouping galleries by client, trip or project.
- A built-in lightbox: click a thumbnail and the photo opens large, with arrows to the next one.
- Watermarking: add your name or logo as a text or image watermark, with control over size, opacity and position.
- Automatic backups: Imagely keeps a copy of each original you upload, so you can recover it later.
There’s no cap on how many galleries you create, either. You can also upload by drag and drop or from your Media Library, and tag your images to keep a big archive tidy.
The free lightbox is clean and quick. It shows the photo against a plain background with arrows, a close button and a photo counter, and it can show the image’s description as a caption.
If you want to compare it with the other lightbox styles, our guide on adding a lightbox to WordPress walks through the free and Pro options side by side.
Watermarking is the free feature people least expect. It lives under Imagely > Settings > Watermarking, and it can stamp new uploads automatically or be applied to a whole gallery at once.
Our tutorial on watermarking photos for free covers every setting on that screen.
What Imagely Free Doesn’t Include
The paid features fall into four plans: Starter, Plus, Pro and Ultra. Each one includes everything in the plan below it.
This is roughly what each step up adds:
- Starter (1 site): two more gallery layouts, Film and Mosaic. Film gives thumbnails the look of slide film, and Mosaic packs images into a Pinterest-style grid.
- Plus (3 sites): the rest of the layout library, including Masonry, Tile and Filmstrip, plus the Pro Lightbox, hover captions, image protection, social sharing, photo comments and frontend search.
- Pro (5 sites): the business tools. That means client proofing, selling prints and digital downloads, automatic print fulfillment, Adobe Lightroom sync and 96+ photography theme designs.
- Ultra (25 sites): everything in Pro, with multisite support for agencies and anyone running many websites.
Support also changes with the plan. Free users get help through the WordPress.org support forums, Starter and Plus come with Standard Support, and Pro and Ultra get Premium Support.
You don’t have to guess which features are paid. The free plugin shows paid settings greyed out, and clicking one opens a short upgrade prompt that names the feature.
That makes the free plugin a decent preview of the paid one. You can see exactly where image protection or client proofing would sit in your setup before spending anything.
Key Takeaway
- Imagely Lite is free for good, with four gallery layouts, two album layouts, a lightbox and watermarking.
- Starter and Plus add layouts and display features, while Pro adds proofing, selling and print fulfillment.
- Paid settings show up greyed out inside the free plugin, so you can see what you’d unlock before you buy.
Why a “Free” Imagely Pro Download Is a Bad Idea
Search for a NextGEN Gallery Pro free download and you’ll find sites offering one. These are usually “nulled” copies.
A nulled plugin is a paid plugin that someone has altered so it runs without a license, then shared for free. You have no way of knowing what else they changed in it.
Security company Sucuri explains that nulled themes and plugins can carry hidden backdoors, which are secret ways for an attacker to get into your site later. Sucuri also says malware is often concealed inside them, and some inject spam links into your pages.
For a photographer, that’s a lot to risk. Your website holds your portfolio and your client galleries, and a hacked site puts all of it in someone else’s hands.
There’s a practical problem too. Imagely delivers its paid features through a license key, and that key is also what brings you updates. A copy from a download site never went through that check, and as Sucuri points out, nulled software gets no updates or support from the original developer.
An outdated plugin is a security risk of its own. The free version avoids that because it updates from WordPress.org like any other plugin.
Get the Safe, Official Imagely Free Plugin
Install Imagely Lite straight from WordPress.org, with no card and no time limit. It gets every update, and you can upgrade to a paid plan whenever you need more.
How to Install Imagely Free in WordPress
Installing the free plugin takes a couple of minutes and happens entirely inside your WordPress dashboard. You don’t need to download a file first.
Go to Plugins > Add Plugin and type NextGEN Gallery into the search box. Look for the listing called Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery, with the green Imagely icon.
Click Install Now, then Activate. A new Imagely menu appears in your dashboard sidebar, and that’s where everything else happens.
Create Your First Free Imagely Gallery
Open Imagely > Add New Gallery and give the gallery a title. Then drag your photos into the upload area, or pick them from your computer or your Media Library.
Once the uploads finish, the next steps let you customize how the gallery looks, including which free layout it uses. I’d start with Thumbnail for a portfolio, since it shows the most of your work at a glance.
Add Your Free Imagely Gallery to a Page
Open the page or post where the gallery should go, click the + button and search for the Imagely block. Choose your gallery from the Select Gallery list, click Insert, then update or publish the page.
Preview the page and click a photo to check the lightbox. Our full guide to creating a WordPress image gallery goes deeper on layout settings if you want to fine-tune it.
How to Upgrade From Imagely Free to a Paid Plan
Plenty of photographers stay on the free plan for good. The time to upgrade is when a specific feature would change how you work.
Common moments are when clients need to pick their favorites from a shoot, when you want to sell prints from your galleries, or when you want a layout like Masonry. Those land in different plans, so it’s worth matching the feature to the plan first.
The Upgrade to Pro link in the free plugin’s Imagely menu takes you to an upgrade page for Lite users, with a discount applied at checkout. After you buy, your license key is waiting in your Imagely account dashboard.
Then go to Imagely > Settings > License, paste the key and click Activate License & Install Pro. Imagely installs the paid plugin for your plan next to the free one, so you don’t have to download or upload anything yourself.
The free plugin stays installed, so the galleries you built carry on working. And if the paid plan turns out not to fit, Imagely refunds 100% of your money within 14 days, which makes the first two weeks a real trial of the paid features.
Ready for Proofing, Print Sales and More?
Pick the Imagely plan that matches the feature you need, from extra gallery layouts in Starter to client proofing and print fulfillment in Pro.
FAQs About Imagely Free
Is Imagely free?
Yes. Imagely Lite is free on WordPress.org with no time limit and no card. The paid plans, Starter, Plus, Pro and Ultra, add more layouts and the business tools.
Can I download NextGEN Gallery Pro for free?
Not safely, and not from Imagely. NextGEN Gallery Pro is the original name of Imagely’s paid plugin, and it’s installed with a license key you get when you buy a plan. Free copies on download sites are usually nulled, which can expose your site to malware and leaves you without updates.
What is Imagely Lite?
It’s the free version of Imagely. On WordPress.org you’ll find it listed as NextGEN Gallery, its original name, and it’s the same plugin.
Does the free version of Imagely expire?
No. There’s no trial period and no license to renew. You can keep using it on a live site for as long as you like.
Will I lose my galleries if I upgrade?
No. Upgrading adds the paid plugin next to the free one, which stays installed, so your galleries stay where they are.
Is watermarking included in Imagely free?
Yes. Text and image watermarks are in the free plugin. Image protection, which disables right-click saving, is a paid feature from the Plus plan up.
The free plugin gives you real galleries on your real site, and the paid plans are there when your work needs more. Be sure to check out our guide on how to create a photography website to build the rest of your site around them.
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For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.
