Best WordPress Media Library Manager With Folders

When starting a fresh website, we can agree that organizing media with folders is not a priority; It's usually more time for the website features, SEO and performance optimization. As the content is growing and as media represent a large part of it, this is when you'll start to search for better way to organize your media for various reasons like...

- I need to stop sending over and over the same media because I can't find it anymore (oops I forgot to rename that image)
- I need to easily find back my media using advanced search engine and filters
- I don't want this plugin to slow down my WordPress admin
- I want to control what media my author are uploading and where it goes not to mess up my media library again
- Compatible and integrated with other plugins

How do we select and test the best media library manager plugins? Here are the criteria.

• 3rd party compatibility, especially page builders
• The possibility to manage galleries
• SEO optimized
• Search and filter engine for media
• Feature rich
• Should be maintained and updated

1. WP Media Folder: Folders in Your WordPress Media Library

We're maybe a bit biased on this one, though considering the criteria mentioned, WP Media Folder is above the competition, especially for a profesional use.
The plugin uses, as most of the competitors, the native WordPress media library with a taxonomy for folders. It has advantage that if you want to uninstall the plugin, you won't lose any media files at all. This also means that even if you move the media from one folder to another, the links will not be broken.

You can sort your media by file type, size, title and even in custom order and can filter the files accordingly. There's 2 plugins pretty advanced in this domain (the other is Real Media Library) because it allows the creation of custom filter you can apply to all the website

WP Media Folder is compatible with WooCommerce and any other media plugin that relies on the WordPress Media Library and has a dedicated integration with DIVI, Elementor, WooCommerce, Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. A “Replace Media” option allows to replace old media files with new ones having the same format, so the links to media are not broken. You can also use the plugin to add a watermark to all or some of the images in the media library folders.

As per additional features and the gallery management, we would mention the automatic media synchronization with server folder and a gallery from folder possibility, especially well integrated for Gutenberg. An add-ons to the plugin helps the integration with advanced galleries, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, PDF embed, and One Drive.

Finally SEO is petty well done with image automatic rename, multi folder per media to handle duplicate images.

Compatibility, especially page builders: YES
The possibility to manage galleries: YES
SEO features: YES
Feature rich: YES
Advanced search and filter engine: YES
Commercial: $29

2. WordPress Media Library Folders

By default, one media folder per year and one subfolder per month is created, pretty much like WordPress on the server. You will find all the images you had previously uploaded to the library. Then, you may create the folders you need and copy the images you want.

The main plugin features are: 

• Move, copy, rename and delete files and folders with a drag and drop interface
• Regenerate thumbnails when replacing images
• SEO Images to specify ALT and TITLE attributes when uploading
• Synchronize folders/files when moving or uploading a folder via FTP

This plugin offers you a logical way of having your media files organized. The plugin is integrated with MaxGalleria, his gallery plugin.
As cons we can note the UX design, the impossibility to drag'n drop several media or folders.

Compatibility, especially page builders: YES
The possibility to manage galleries: NO (require another plugin)
SEO features: YES
Feature rich: NO
Advanced search and filter engine: NO
Commercial: $49 with addons, Freemium

3. Media Library Categories

Media Library Categories is more limited regarding the features but it has the advantage of being very light.  Media Library Categories features are:

• Add / edit / remove categories from media items
• Change the category of multiple items at once with bulk actions
• Filter on categories in the media library
• Taxonomy filter

Compatibility, especially page builders: YES
The possibility to manage galleries: NO
SEO features: NO
Feature rich: NO
Advanced search and filter engine: NO
Commercial: $21, Freemium

4. Organize Media Library by Folders

This next free WordPress plugin is pretty simple, it allows you to create different folders from the media view and apply a folder to them. Then from your favorite editor, you can load the WordPress media manager and filter your media by folder. The plugin limitations are that there's no mention of 3rd party integrations and you cannot sort your media into folder in the media manager lightbox (during edition).

Compatibility, especially page builders: NO
The possibility to manage galleries: NO
SEO features: NO
Feature rich: NO
Advanced search and filter engine: NO
Commercial: Free

5. WordPress Real Media Library

As mentioned above, this is a feature rich plugin, WordPress Real Media Library helps you organize images and media files into categories and folders, but not only. From a single toolbar, you can create, rename, delete, and reorder folders as well as drag and drop files. While selecting media for insertion into posts and pages, you can search for the media files by filtering.

We liked also the fact that it worked with Gutenberg and as well as WP Media Folder, it works with several page builders, including DIVI, and popular multilingual solution like WPML.

As cons, we can note that it does have any SEO features like automatic file rename and some features like cloud connectors are missing.

Compatibility, especially page builders: YES
The possibility to manage galleries: YES
SEO features: NO
Feature rich: YES
Advanced search and filter engine: YES
Commercial: $25

6. WP Media Folders, Physical Folders

This WordPress free plugin is a bit special and replies to the need of having a storage of WordPress media into physical server folders. By default WordPress stores the media in a folder structure like /uploads/year/month. Then you can't call a media from an external folder because it's not indexed in WordPress database, therefore does not have any thumbnail, srcset generated... anything.

To do so you have 2 options, synchronize server folder and import media in WordPress folder structure (/uploads/year/month) or use this WP Media Folders. the plugin replace the media URL in the database so it'll be loaded from the folder you've defined, with a media URL like: /my-folder/any-subfolder-name/image.jpg

This author of the plugin mention that it has a media physical folder importer to WP Media Folder.

Wrapping up

The "Best WordPress Media Library Manager With Folders" selection is very large but you can easily identify 2 types of plugins. The professional plugins that you can rely on to handle large media library, large website and image SEO. And on the other side you have "single feature" plugins, yet very light, that are centered on the folder management. Hope this post helped to make a choice!