Essential Grid
by ThemePunch
Premium grid builder for portfolios, galleries and post feeds with detailed skin controls.
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What Essential Grid does
Premium grid builder for portfolios, galleries and post feeds with detailed skin controls.
It sits in the grids part of a WordPress stack and is sold by ThemePunch on a premium basis. We recommend it in our grids guides because it does that one job well without asking you to rebuild the rest of the site around it.
Every plugin adds work to a page request, so treat this as a decision with a cost. Record a speed test before you install it and run the same test afterwards, on the same page, so you know exactly what it charged you.
Real user ratings
Essential Grid is sold outside the WordPress.org directory, so there is no public user rating to quote. Our own editorial score is 4.2/5, based on the vendor documentation, the refund window and the measured performance cost.
Where Essential Grid ranks elsewhere
Essential Grid does not appear in the published "best of" lists we track from WPBeginner, TechRadar, Kinsta, Themeisle and similar sites. That is not a mark against it - those roundups are short and skew towards the biggest names.
What changed in the latest version
Essential Grid does not publish a changelog we can read automatically, so check the vendor's own release notes before you update a live site.
Pros and cons
- Highly designed grid layouts
- Paid support and updates from the vendor
- Actively maintained and used on production sites we test
- Heavier than simpler grid plugins
- Renewal cost is annual and per site
How to use it
- 1Install on a staging copy first if the site takes money.
- 2Work through the setup wizard and connect any external accounts it needs.
- 3Configure the one feature you installed it for, and leave the rest off.
- 4Test the result as a logged-out visitor on both mobile and desktop.
- 5Re-run our speed test to confirm the plugin has not cost you load time.
How it compares
Other grids plugins we recommend, with their rating and pricing model.
| Plugin | Our rating | WordPress.org | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential Grid | 4.2 | n/a | Premium | Highly designed grid layouts |
| Content Views | 4.6 | 5 (1) | Freemium | Grids from any content type |
| The Post Grid | 4.5 | 4.8 (265) | Freemium | Good free layout presets |
Guides that cover Essential Grid
Alternatives
Other grids plugins
Content Views
Content Views
Displays posts, pages and custom types in grids and lists without writing template code.
1 reviews · 1K downloads · v1.1.3
The Post Grid
RadiusTheme
Post and product grids with filtering, pagination and layout presets.
265 reviews · 3.5M downloads · v7.9.4