Modula Review: Beautiful WordPress Image Galleries Worth It?

What Is Modula and What Does the Deal Include?

Modula is a WordPress plugin built specifically for creating image galleries. It's been around in the WordPress repository with over 50,000 active installations and overwhelmingly positive reviews — 95 five-star ratings at the time of this review.

The lifetime deal offers two tiers: one code at $39 gets you five site licenses, while two codes at $78 unlocks unlimited sites. That makes the decision pretty straightforward — solo entrepreneurs and small business owners can get away with one code, while agencies and freelancers working with multiple clients will want the unlimited option.

There's also a free version available in the WordPress repository, so you can test the waters before committing any money. The free version handles basic galleries of 20 images or fewer, but you'll miss out on video support, filtering, and the expanded lightbox options that come with the pro license.

Setting Up Modula: The Plugin Architecture

One thing that stands out immediately is that Modula's pro functionality is split across five separate plugins. There's the core free plugin from the WordPress repository, plus four premium add-ons: Advanced Shortcuts, the main Pro plugin, Modula Speed Up, and Modula Video.

This is worth noting because three of those premium plugins were sitting at version 1.0 during testing, while the core plugins had already gone through several iterations to version 2. Brand new plugins tend to carry more risk — less real-world testing, potentially more bugs, and the general growing pains that come with early software. Having five plugins running just to power image galleries does feel like a lot of overhead for a single piece of functionality.

That said, the installation process itself is painless, and once everything is activated, Modula adds a clean section to your WordPress sidebar where you manage all your galleries.

Creating Your First Gallery: The Custom Grid

Getting a basic gallery up and running takes almost no effort. You create a new gallery, upload your images (which notably don't go into your standard WordPress media library), and Modula gives you a shortcode to paste into any page or post. Out of the box with default settings, the results are perfectly usable — nothing groundbreaking, but clean and functional.

Where things get interesting is the custom grid feature. This is genuinely one of Modula's standout capabilities. Once you switch to custom grid mode, you can drag and resize individual images to create exactly the layout you want. Want to feature one hero image larger than the rest? Just grab the edge and expand it. The grid dynamically adjusts as you make changes, and it's surprisingly intuitive.

Additional controls let you fine-tune the gutter (spacing between images), set thumbnail sizes, and configure lightbox behavior. You can link images directly to files for download or use various lightbox effects for on-page viewing. These basic customization options are available even in the free version, though you're capped at 20 images.

Video Support in Your Galleries

Mixing videos into your image galleries is a pro-only feature, and it works with YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted video files. Adding a video is simple — click the edit icon on any image in your gallery, paste in the video URL, and save. The image then displays a play icon overlay, and clicking it opens the video right inside the lightbox.

There's one gotcha to watch out for: not all lightbox styles are compatible with the video extension. During testing, the default lightbox style caused an infinite loading spinner when trying to play videos. A quick check of Modula's documentation revealed the fix — switching to the Pretty Photo lightbox style resolved the issue immediately. It's a minor annoyance, but the kind of thing that could frustrate a less technical user.

You can customize the play icon color (the default white tends to get lost on lighter images), and the video playback within the lightbox is smooth. Being able to combine photos and videos in a single gallery is a genuinely useful feature for portfolios and project showcases.

Image Filtering and Where It Falls Short

The filtering feature lets visitors sort through your gallery by category. You create filter tags like "Video Tools" or "Web Development," assign them to individual images, and your gallery displays clickable filter buttons at the top. It's a solid concept for anyone with large galleries spanning multiple categories.

The execution, however, needs work. The default styling for the filter buttons is rough — there's no spacing between categories, and the underline hover effect bleeds into adjacent labels. Modula's own documentation suggests adding custom CSS to fix the padding issue, which isn't exactly a user-friendly solution for the photographers and artists this plugin is supposedly built for.

This is the kind of polish issue that's understandable in an early release, but it does hold the plugin back. Basic styling options for filters — font size, spacing, colors — should really be baked into the settings panel rather than requiring users to write CSS. Hopefully future updates address this, because the underlying functionality is genuinely useful.

Captions, Social Sharing, and Styling Options

Modula provides solid caption customization. You can set title and caption colors, adjust font sizes, and choose whether to pull text from your WordPress media library metadata or enter it manually per image. Titles display on the image itself, while captions appear on hover — a clean approach that keeps the gallery uncluttered.

Social sharing is built right into the hover overlay with support for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Each platform can be toggled on or off individually, and you can customize the icon colors. One notable omission: there's no Instagram sharing option, which seems like a significant oversight for a plugin aimed at photographers.

The styling section covers borders, border radius for rounded corners, and drop shadows — standard CSS properties that are nicely exposed through the settings panel. The responsiveness settings let you control how many columns display on tablet and mobile, and there's a custom CSS field for any additional tweaks you want to make without touching your theme's customizer.

The Hidden Killer Feature: Built-In ShortPixel

This might be the most underrated part of the entire deal. Modula includes unlimited access to ShortPixel's image optimization and CDN — the same ShortPixel that runs its own popular lifetime deal and earned a glowing review on this channel.

What this means practically is that every image you upload to a Modula gallery gets automatically optimized and served through ShortPixel's CDN, without costing you any ShortPixel credits. You get full control over compression settings, with the ability to set different compression levels for thumbnails versus lightbox images. Lazy loading is also included.

If you're already a ShortPixel user, this might seem redundant. But if you're primarily using image galleries and don't want to pay for a separate optimization service, this feature alone could justify the $39. It's surprisingly buried in the marketing — AppSumo's deal page barely mentions it — but for anyone running image-heavy WordPress sites, it's a serious value-add.

Lightbox and Hover Effects

Modula ships with 12 hover effects and 6 lightbox styles, giving you plenty of ways to customize how visitors interact with your galleries.

The hover effects control how titles, captions, and social icons appear when someone mouses over an image. Options range from subtle fades to more dramatic zoom and slide animations. Honestly, the differences between many of them are fairly subtle — you'll notice variations in zoom intensity, caption positioning, and overlay opacity, but they're all in the same ballpark. Each effect also supports a customizable hover color and opacity setting.

The lightbox styles offer more meaningful variety. Fancy Box gives you a clean, minimal popup. Light Gallery adds a darker background with smooth sliding transitions. Pretty Photo stands out with thumbnail previews of other gallery images along the bottom and an auto-play feature. The Swipe Box is designed primarily for mobile touch navigation. All six are functional, and the choice really comes down to aesthetic preference.

Final Verdict: A Solid 7.1 for the Right User

Modula earns a 7.1 rating — a respectable score for a plugin that does its core job well but isn't without rough edges. The custom grid builder is genuinely great, the ShortPixel integration is an underappreciated bonus, and the overall ease of use makes it accessible to non-technical users.

The downsides are real but not dealbreakers: five plugins for one feature set feels heavy, some styling elements (particularly filters) need more polish, and the lack of Instagram sharing is a missed opportunity for a photography-focused tool. The version 1.0 status of several premium add-ons also suggests you're buying into potential as much as current capability.

This deal is perfect if you're a photographer or artist who needs a simple way to showcase images on WordPress, or if you're building sites for clients who need to manage their own galleries without learning Elementor. Web designers looking for advanced layout control will probably find it limiting. If it fits your use case, $39 for lifetime access plus unlimited ShortPixel optimization is a genuinely good deal. If it doesn't, there's no reason to force it.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.