10 Best WordPress File Viewer Plugins for PDFs and Documents

Whether you’re an online instructor or a WooCommerce shop owner, you need to effectively communicate your ideas to your audience.

For instance, you might want to share course material with your students or publish a review of products on your website. By default, WordPress lets you upload PDFs and documents to the Media Library but it doesn’t give you a reader-friendly interface to present them to visitors in an effective way.

You need a file viewer plugin for your website if it features a lot of text-based content – whether it’s in the form of blog posts, books, magazines, or booklets.

In this article, we’ll run the rule over some of the best WordPress file viewer plugins that will enable you to upload and embed your documents in WordPress and share them with other people.

#1: Filr

Filr is a handy WordPress file viewer plugin that helps you quickly add, protect, and share files and documents through your WordPress website. This plugin lets you display documents on your site pages using shortcodes. It has a number of file security features including file encryption and file expiration on set dates or number of downloads.

Key features: 

• Using Filr, you can allow users to download files and documents in two ways: offer single file downloads so users can choose which file to download one at a time or zip multiple files into a single archive file and let them download all of the files at once.
• Filr enables you to group documents into lists and easily manage them on the back-end.
• You can add any number of files directly from your website’s and create a front-end document library to organize them.
• You’ll be able to restrict site users from viewing documents on your site and only allow authorized people to access them.

#2: Embed Any Document

The Embed Any Document WordPress plugin helps you add and embed your PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents directly on your WordPress site. You don’t need to install a browser plugin like Acrobat Reader or Flash.

Key features: 

• It offers a clean and intuitive user interface.
• Embed Any Document supports all popular document file types including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Portable Document Format, text files, and TIFF Images.
• You can choose between Microsoft Office Online and Google Docs Viewer to display the documents on your website. And, if one service is down, you can easily switch to the other one. 
• Embed Any Document comes mobile-ready out of the box and offers cross-browser compatibility.

Price: Free

#3: PDF Embedder

PDF Embedder is a popular WordPress file viewer plugin that lets you upload PDFs and embed them directly into your website pages. The plugin is easy-to-use and offers a lot of flexibility if you want to change your document’s appearance.

Key features: 

• PDF Embedder automatically resizes PDFs to their natural shape and size. Alternatively, you can manually specify the document’s size.
• The plugin only uses JavaScript to embed PDFs giving you more freedom over the appearance of your documents.
• Its drag and drop interface lets you quickly add files to your website with a single click.
• Its premium features include a download button in the toolbar, continuous scroll between pages, full screen mode, and tracking the number of downloads and views.

Price: 

• Free version available
• PDF Embedder Premium costs $20 for single site license

#4: PDF.js Viewer

PDF.js Viewer is a WordPress file viewer plugin that helps you display your documents in a visually-appealing way. Your PDFs will be embedded in a stylish grey theme frame, and viewers can navigate documents using an intuitive document outline.

Key features: 

• It uses Gutenberg blocks and shortcodes to embed documents in pages and posts.
• Its lazy load feature helps keep your site speeds up by only displaying portions of a document that has been navigated to. 
• PDF.js works seamlessly with mobile devices and supports all languages.
• You’ll be able to secure your documents using passwords.
• Other useful features include customizable buttons, advanced search functionality, and advanced zoom settings.

Price: Free

#5: 3D FlipBook

3D FlipBook is a powerful WordPress document viewer that enables you to display your PDFs, images, and HTML pages as a flipbook. This plugin allows you to present your content in a reader-friendly way.

Key features: 

• It’s an easy to use and responsive PDF viewer.
• This plugin is ideal for websites that feature books, magazines, brochures, cards, and booklets.
• Its flipbook reading functionality will also work seamlessly on mobile devices.
• 3D FlipBook simulates the real-world experience of reading books. Plus, you can customize the way flipbook pages deform as viewers turn them over.
• Other useful features include smart pan mode, PDF bookmarks, PDF search, and auto resolution.

Price: Free

#6: Flowpaper

This WordPress PDF viewer plugin offers a user-friendly document reading interface featuring a flipbook. Its backend controls are geared towards advanced developers who want a great looking PDF viewer. Flowpaper comes with a number of code customizations and storage limits that are suitable for advanced users.

Key features: 

• You can display your documents in one of three ways. The first method involves hosting the files on another location and pasting in the link. The other two methods involve uploading your PDFs to WordPress or the Flowpaper cloud.
• Flowpaper supports the majority of browsers and devices.
• Viewers can choose between light and dark themes.
• The Flowpaper cloud only lets you upload PDFs that are 15 MB or smaller.

Price: Free

#7: PDF & Print

If you’re looking for a multi-purpose WordPress PDF plugin, PDF & Print is just what you need. It can quickly convert a blog post to the PDF format. This way, users can print your site pages by converting them to PDF directly from your WordPress site.

Key features: 

• PDF & Print is an easy-to-use plugin that doesn’t require any coding skills.
• You’ll be able to display PDF & Print buttons for specific user roles.
• You can automatically add PDF & Print buttons to posts, pages, search results, custom post types, and archives.
• It lets you set and change PDF button actions including Download PDF and Open PDF in a new window.

Price: Free

#8: WooCommerce Product Files Tab

WooCommerce Product Files Tab is a popular document viewer plugin that lets you display additional information along with your PDF files. This way, you’ll be able to present more information to potential customers and increase downloads.

Key features: 

• This plugin comes with easy-to-make back-end configurations.
• It supports both the WPML and Polylang plugins.
• WooCommerce Product Files Tab supports all popular file types including PDF, DOC, XLS, PNG, TXT, and ZIP.

Price: Free

#9: Inline Google Spreadsheet Viewer

Inline Google Spreadsheet Viewer is a useful WordPress file viewer plugin that helps you convert data saved in Google Spreadsheets, CSV files, and MySQL databases into a visual-friendly layout. This way, you’ll be able to sort and search through stored data or create great-looking interactive charts and graphs. In addition to this, you’ll be able to embed live previews of document file formats such as PDF, DOC, and XLS using Google Docs Viewer.

Key features: 

• It is easy to use and allows you to quickly load large amounts of data from Google Spreadsheets.
• You’ll be able to customize the plugin to suit your particular needs.
• You can easily embed Google Spreadsheets, app scripts, and CSV files in WordPress pages or posts as HTML tables or interactive charts and graphs.

Price: $10

#10: Elfsight File Embed

Elfsight File Embed is a powerful WordPress file viewer plugin that helps you quickly integrate over 20 file formats on your website. Site users will be able to download the documents, view the documents directly from your website, or open them in a new tab.

Key features: 

• You can name individual files, upload your own pictures or icons, and select file layout variants to view documents on the website.
• It supports all popular document file formats including PDF, DOCX, JPG, and JPEG.
• You can add files to your site in one of three ways i.e. by directly uploading files, by adding their URLs, or by selecting them from recently uploaded files.

Price: Free

Conclusion

We looked at various PDF and document file viewer plugins for WordPress and covered their standout features. By using the right file viewer plugin for your website, you can easily make documents and PDF files available to your site’s visitors in an easy-to-read and printer-friendly way.

Check out our roundup of the 7 Best Document and File Management Plugins for WordPress in 2020 for even more plugins.