7 Best Document and File Management Plugins for WordPress

With the right document and file management plugin, you can enhance the file organization workflow on your website and enable your site’s users to easily find, access, and download files.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best WordPress document and file management plugins and highlight the standout features on offer with each tool to help you find the right solution for your website

Why You Need a Document and File Management Plugin

Document and file management plugins enable businesses and webmasters to better manage their files through a centralized dashboard and share them with users and team members in a secure way. For example, you can protect files using passwords and only allow authorized people or logged-in users to access them.

Here are some of the things you can do with a document and file management plugin:

• Make documents and files downloadable e.g. if you want to share PDF files with your site users.
• Restrict access to documents and files e.g if you want to sell online courses or if you run a membership site.
• Better manage documents on the WordPress back-end e.g  if you have a large library of image or audio files that team members regularly need access to.
• Make it easy for your team to access documents and files e.g. if you want to share an important document with team members.

Here are the key features you should look for when choosing a document and file management plugin for WordPress:

• It should let you showcase documents and files on the front-end. You should also have the option to display individual files or a collection of files in an archive.
• You need document security features e.g. encryption and directory protection.
• It should give you full control over making documents accessible to users.
• Your file management plugin should let you create downloadable files.

Also, be sure to check out our article on the 5 ways to protect PDF documents and files!

Best Document and File Management Plugins for WordPress in 2021

Below, we’ll take a look at some of the best document and file management plugins that can help you improve how you manage files on your website and share them with other people. 

#1: Filr

Filr is a powerful WordPress document and file management plugin that lets you easily upload, secure, and distribute files through your WordPress site. It offers several file protection features out of the box such as filename encryption and file expiration based on chosen dates or number of downloads. In addition to this, you’ll be able to display files on your site pages using simple shortcodes.

Key Features:

• It can help you limit user access to documents and files on your website and make them accessible to authorized users only.
• Filr offers a simple way to create a document library and add one (or more) files directly to your website’s front-end.
• You can group files and documents based on lists. This enables you to quickly track and organize files on the back-end.
• Let you make files accessible to site users in two ways: as individual files allowing users to choose and download one file at a time or zip multiple files into a single archive file and download all of them in one go.
• You can change the appearance of your document libraries by modifying colors, font sizes, borders, and box-shadows.
• Restrict file access by the user (e-mail) or user role
• manage your files in folders in a modern and UX-friendly way
• provide a live search and pagination solution to display hundreds of files within a library
• password-protect ZIP files for maximum security, encrypt file names and completely shut down external access to files
• Prevents uploaded files to be visible as an attachment by uploading only to secured folders and blocks Google and other search engines from indexing your files accidentally

It’s an easy-to-use tool with the most powerful feature set on the market. Don’t rely on unsecure products, when you handle viable data or customer information.

Price: Single version is available for $79.99.

Check out our step-by-step tutorial on how to create a secure document hub in WordPress!

#2: WP Download Manager

If you’re looking for a multi-purpose plugin for your files, WP Download Manager is just what you need. It can help you organize your documents, protect files with passwords, and sell digital products.

Key Features:

• You can allow site users to download multiple files as a single zip file.
• It lets you control who can access and download your documents and files.
• WP Download Manager enables you to secure a full zipped package or individual files within a package with one (or more) passwords.
• You can limit file download speeds so users don’t abuse server resources.
• It lets you upload files using FTP and quickly import and convert those files to packages at the same time.

It’s a great file and document manager for online entrepreneurs and membership site owners.

Price: Free version is available.

#3: WP File Download

WP File Download is a WordPress file manager plugin that helps you organize and distribute your files and documents through your website. You can connect this tool with your WooCommerce store and start using its selling features including payment systems and sales statistics.

Key Features:

• It comes with four themes that control the way files are shown to users. They include a standard listing, table, accordion tree, and Google Drive view.
• WP File Download offers a user-friendly, drag-and-drop WordPress file manager that lets you easily organize files, file categories, and move and duplicate files.
• It lets you set permissions to allow users to view, update, download, delete, and edit files. Additionally, you can limit user access to a file or file category.
• Its flexible search engine helps you easily find the required files using tools such as text search, category file filtering, and tag filtering.

It’s an ideal tool for WooCommerce store owners and freelancers.

Price: Start version costs $29 for six months.

#4: WP Document Revisions

WP Documents Revisions is a file management plugin that helps you manage and securely share files including images, text, and spreadsheets with other people. As a version control tool, it can help you easily track each document’s progress and keeps you informed about any updates to the document.

Key Features:

• It supports all file types including docs, PDFs, spreadsheets, and images.
• You can securely store all your important files as well as any of their revised versions. Additionally, all files are checked out and locked so revisions don’t collide or get edited.
• It creates a permanent, authenticated URL for each file that always points to the latest version.
• You can toggle between private, public, and password protection for files with a single click.

It’s a great document management tool for small businesses and professional web designers.

Price: Free.

#5: CatFolders

CatFolders is a freemium WordPress plugin, that offers useful features that make a quick, flexible, and professional management file tool for your site. 

With CatFolders, it has no folder restrictions, you create tons of folders and subfolders, making it easy to filter and search through your document files. This helps blow away your worry about a slow site, interrupted workflow, and hindering your site’s growth by the mountain of cluttered files. 

Additionally, with this plugin, sorting by name, date, or author is a breeze, making it simple for you to manage in a folder tree, locate all of your necessary documents, and bulk-select files or folders as well.

Besides adding an image gallery on your post page, CatFolders also lets you create a document gallery. This enables the display of various document file types on WordPress websites, adding content richness to your WordPress website. With a document gallery, even you can preview files in a popup window and download files if necessary.

Key Features: 

• Drag and drop files/folders from your computer to add document files to a chosen folder and see it in list/grid mode.
• Remember your most recent folder or auto back to a specific folder.
• Sort files by file name, created date, modified date, author, newest or oldest, etc.
• Bulk-select files and folders to optimize your document and file management process.
• UX/UI design that makes your management process easier and more logical.
• Folder access permissions allow you to have an admin role to control folder and folder permission on your site.
• Import folders from other plugins with one click.
• You can keep a record of files and folders on your website with the Backup and Restore tool. 
• Support multi-languages such as English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, etc.
• Compatible with many third-party and page builders plugins. 

Enjoy ultimate productivity with CatFolders and wave goodbye to disorganized document files for your page.
CatFolders free version can create unlimited folders and other simple features. The paid version with advanced features costs $79/year for 1 site and $159 as a one-time payment.

#6: Embed Any Document

Embed Any Document enables you to easily upload and embed documents in your WordPress site. This way, you don’t need to install any extra browser plugin such as Acrobat Reader or Flash. You can implement either Microsoft Office Online or Google Docs Viewer to display documents on your website, and if one of them is not working, you can always switch to the other one.

Key Features:

• Simple and user-friendly interface.
• It supports all popular file types including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), text files, TIFF images, Adobe Illustrator, and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs).
• You can quickly upload documents directly to your media library and embed them with a single click.
• The document viewers are cross-browser compatible and are fully mobile-responsive.
• It comes with extensive documentation which includes explanations, video tutorials, and screenshots.

It’s built primarily for graphic designers, creatives, and website owners.

Price: Free.

#7 FileBird

Filebird is a WordPress media and document organizer. It helps you create folders and sub-folders to categorize your files as much as you like.

With folders, file management becomes much easier using a drag and drop interface. Meaning you can move files and folders around without changing their permalinks or breaking the folder structure.

Combined with the document gallery plugin, you can create dynamic document galleries with file-type thumbnails in Gutenberg as well as in the classic editor. Whenever you add new documents or remove files from the gallery folder, the gallery displayed on the front-end will be updated accordingly.

Key Features:

• Widely compatible with all major themes and page builders
• Supports multiple file types and languages
• Independent folder structure for different users
• Import folders/categories from 5+ file manager plugins

Price:

FileBird is free to use and allows you to create unlimited folders and subfolders. Pro version costs $39 as a one-time payment and comes with 6-month support via ticket system, email, and Messenger live chat.

Conclusion

With the right document and file management plugin for your site, you can make it easier to manage a large number of files, securely share them, and quickly access them when needed.

Based on the key features discussed above, we recommend:

• Filr for anyone who’s looking for a way to better manage documents on the back-end, make documents accessible to visitors from the front-end, and avail document and file encryption options.
• WP Download Manager is for anyone looking to sell documents and files and leverage licensing features.
• Embed Any Document for embedding documents on their WordPress site.