YouTube Plugin – WordPress YouTube Gallery is a commercial WordPress plugin by Elfsight that embeds YouTube channels, playlists and individual videos into a WordPress site as a styled, filterable gallery rather than a plain iframe. It is aimed at site owners, freelancers and agencies who want a YouTube feed to look like part of the site’s own design, with control over layout, colours, sorting and what metadata appears next to each thumbnail. The product is sold on CodeCanyon for $49 under the YouTube Plugin Social Networking category, and it has accumulated 5,773 sales with a 4.77 out of 5 rating across 276 reviews.
The plugin is often referred to by its internal name, Yottie, and that name appears throughout the admin interface and the vendor’s online builder. Everything below is based on the vendor’s declared specification and feature list.
What the plugin actually lets a site owner control
The core function is source management. A site owner can point the plugin at a YouTube channel, a playlist, or a hand-picked set of individual videos, and the plugin pulls that content into a gallery. Multiple sources can be combined into named groups, and there is no stated cap on the number of sources per group. That matters for publishers who want, for example, one gallery for tutorials and another for product demos without duplicating configuration.
Sorting is handled through six order fields: date, views, likes, dislikes, position and comments. A random order option is also available, which is useful for sites that want the gallery to feel refreshed on repeat visits. The vendor also states that cache duration is configurable, so a site owner can decide how long video data is held in the browser before it is fetched again.
Presentation is where the plugin carries most of its weight. There are three header layouts (Classic, Accent and Minimal) and eight toggleable header elements, including channel logo, banner, channel name and description, recording counter, subscriber counter, views counter and a subscribe button. The subscribe button is the notable one here: it lets visitors subscribe to a YouTube channel without leaving the site, which is a meaningful conversion path for creators who treat YouTube as a primary channel.
Video previews offer three layouts (Classic, Cinema and Horizontal) with another eight toggleable elements covering play icon, duration, title, date, description, views, likes and comments. Playback can happen in a popup, inline in the widget, or by sending the visitor to YouTube. The popup itself has twelve configurable elements, including a likes ratio and a description expand button.
Navigation supports arrows, scroll and drag, with five slide effects (slide, fade, coverflow, cube and flip), adjustable animation speed, horizontal or vertical scrolling, an auto-scroll timer, and a responsive grid that changes size with the browser window. The plugin ships with four ready-made colour schemes (default, dark, red and deep blue) and, according to the vendor, allows colour customisation across 60 individual interface elements. Sixteen languages are supported.
On the WordPress side, the plugin is Gutenberg optimised, includes a dedicated WPBakery Page Builder element, and is declared compatible with Elementor, Cornerstone, Layers WP, WooCommerce, Jigoshop and WP e-Commerce. Source files are included in JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP. Updates are delivered through the standard WordPress admin update flow.
Where this fits, and where it does not
The strongest fit is a content-led site where YouTube is a primary distribution channel: a creator’s own site, a course or coaching business, a church or community organisation, a restaurant or gym with a video library, or an agency building a media hub for a client. In those cases the gallery is not decoration; it is the main content surface, and the level of layout control pays off.
It also suits agencies that need a repeatable YouTube block across many client sites. The WPBakery element and the shortcode output from the vendor’s online builder mean the same configuration can be reused without rebuilding it in each install.
A second good fit is a product or service page that needs a small number of embedded videos presented consistently. The single-video showcase and the simple grid showcase both cover that, and the option to strip out headers and metadata keeps the page from looking cluttered.
Where it is the wrong choice: a site that needs only one or two embeds on a blog post. WordPress handles a pasted YouTube URL natively, and a $49 plugin with more than a hundred parameters adds configuration overhead and an extra dependency for no real gain. It is also a poor fit for anyone who needs the gallery to pull from a source the plugin does not list, such as a non-YouTube video host, or who needs live chat, membership gating or analytics beyond what YouTube itself reports.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Genuinely deep presentation control, particularly around headers and video previews, which most lightweight YouTube embeds do not offer at all.
- Multiple sources can be combined into named groups, so a site can run several distinct galleries from one plugin install.
- Three playback modes, including a popup with its own configurable element set, give flexibility in how visitors consume the video.
- Strong page-builder coverage, with a dedicated WPBakery element plus declared compatibility with Elementor and Cornerstone.
- An online builder with a live preview and shortcode output shortens the trial-and-error loop considerably.
- Source files are included, which gives developers something to work with if the stock options are not enough.
- Established track record on the marketplace: 5,773 sales and a 4.77 rating from 276 reviews.
Limitations
- The last vendor update recorded is 25 December 2020. The declared compatibility list stops at WordPress 5.7.x, and the plugin has not been publicly refreshed against the WordPress versions released since. Anyone running a current WordPress install should test thoroughly before committing.
- WooCommerce and Jigoshop compatibility is listed, but the vendor does not explain what that compatibility consists of. Treat it as untested until verified on a staging site.
- Configuration depth cuts both ways. With more than 100 parameters, the time from install to a finished gallery is longer than with a simpler embed, and there is no indication of presets beyond the four colour schemes and the vendor’s showcase examples.
- The plugin depends on YouTube’s own data for sorting and counters. If the YouTube API changes its terms or quota behaviour, the gallery is affected, and the vendor’s stated cache setting is the only lever available.
- There is no stated support for video sources other than YouTube.
How it compares with the alternatives
The realistic alternatives fall into three groups. The first is WordPress core embeds: paste a URL, get a responsive player. That costs nothing and is fine for occasional use, but it offers no gallery layout, no sorting, no channel header and no subscribe button.
The second group is free YouTube gallery plugins from the WordPress.org repository. These typically cover the basics well: a grid of thumbnails, a lightbox, maybe a channel feed. Where they usually fall short is granularity. Fewer toggles per element, fewer layout variants, and less control over the header treatment. For a site where the gallery is one block among many, that is a reasonable trade.
The third group is custom development against the YouTube Data API. That gives complete control and no plugin dependency, but it means ongoing maintenance, API key management and quota monitoring. For an agency billing by the hour, the $49 price is trivial next to that.
The plugin’s position is therefore in the middle-upper band: more control than a free gallery plugin, less commitment than a custom build. The open question is maintenance. A plugin in this category lives or dies on keeping pace with WordPress core and the YouTube API, and the vendor’s public update history is the main thing a buyer should weigh.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this plugin work with the current version of WordPress?
The vendor’s declared compatibility list covers WordPress 4.9.x through 5.7.x. The most recent update recorded for the plugin is December 2020, so later WordPress releases are not officially confirmed. It may still function, but a staging-site test before deployment on a production site is the sensible approach.
Can a YouTube gallery be built from more than one channel?
Yes. Sources can be combined into named groups, and the vendor states there is no limit on how many sources a group can contain. That allows separate galleries for different channels, playlists or hand-picked videos, each configured independently within the same plugin installation.
Does the plugin let visitors subscribe without leaving the site?
Yes. The channel header includes a subscribe button as one of eight toggleable header elements. Visitors can subscribe to the linked YouTube channel directly from the gallery, which keeps them on the site rather than sending them to YouTube mid-session.
Is the plugin compatible with Elementor and WPBakery?
WPBakery Page Builder has a dedicated Yottie element with the full set of customisation options. Elementor, Cornerstone and Layers WP are listed as compatible, though the vendor does not describe how that integration works. Gutenberg is supported natively, and the online builder produces a shortcode that works in any editor.
Verdict
This is a well-featured YouTube gallery for WordPress sites where video is central to the content strategy, and the 5,773 sales and 4.77 rating suggest it has delivered for a substantial number of buyers. The presentation controls are the reason to choose it over a free alternative: header layouts, per-element toggles and popup configuration are all deeper than the typical free option.
The caveat is maintenance. With the last recorded update in December 2020 and declared compatibility ending at WordPress 5.7.x, buyers on current WordPress versions are taking on some risk, and the vendor does not publish a roadmap or a support commitment in the listing.
Buy it if the gallery is a genuine feature of the site, the design needs to match an existing brand system, and a staging test can be run first. Skip it if only a handful of videos need embedding, if a non-YouTube source is required, or if running an unverified plugin on a live site is not acceptable.
