Recently, one of our readers asked us if it’s possible to embed Instagram feed widgets on WordPress for free.
After all, displaying your Instagram widgets on your website is a great way to increase your brand’s reach and even boost your conversions and sales with the help of social proof.
But since there are lots of options when it comes to embedding your Instagram feed for free, it can be confusing to start. Especially if you’re a WordPress newbie.
Here at Smash Balloon, we’ve created the best free Instagram feed plugin for WordPress that you can use to embed Instagram feeds on your website.
In fact, our social media feed plugins are trusted by over 1.75 million users all over the world.
And in this article, we’ll share with you the best way to help you display your Instagram content on your website — 100% free.
The awesome part? You can quickly embed Instagram feed widgets, no coding needed.
Can You Embed Instagram Feed Widgets for Free?
Yes. With the help of the Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed plugin, you can embed your Instagram feed on your website to boost user engagement, at absolutely NO cost to you. No credit card needed.
As the free version of Instagram Feed Pro, the best Instagram feed plugin for WordPress, Social Photo Feed helps you create, customize and display gorgeous Instagram feeds on your website — no technical knowledge needed.
Since this free Instagram feed plugin extends the functionality of your WordPress website, Social Photo Feed does all the hard work for you.
In fact, you just need to connect it to your personal or Instagram business account.
Then, Social Photo Feed will help you easily add your Instagram feed to your website’s homepage, landing page, product pages or sidebar in just a few clicks, so you can start increasing your Instagram followers from your website visitors.
And if you want to customize your Instagram gallery’s design? No problem.
As the best WordPress plugin for Instagram feeds, Social Photo Feed lets you customize your feed’s style, so you can improve its visual appeal, even if you don’t have any background in design.
No need to mess around with custom HTML, custom CSS or other coding languages. It’s 100% compatible with WordPress, Elementor, Divi, Astra, and more!
With just a few clicks in the plugin’s visual feed customizer, you can readily change the width, height, number of photos, number of columns, background color and image spacing of your Instagram feeds.
Features of a Free Instagram Feed Plugin
If you don’t have room in your budget yet for a premium social media aggregator for Instagram, you can use Social Photo Feed to get started in upgrading your Instagram marketing.
Even better, since it’s the free version of Instagram Feed Pro, Social Photo Feed is also ultra-fast.
This means that your embedded Instagram feed widgets will load as fast as possible so your page speed won’t be negatively affected.
As a result, you can even enjoy improved SEO for your website and a better user experience for your e-commerce site visitors. It’s a total win-win!
Using the free trial of Social Photo Feed also lets you enjoy the following features:
- Super easy to set up: Connect Social Photo Feed with your Instagram profile and display your feeds in just a few minutes — quickly and hassle-free for WordPress newbies.
- Multiple Instagram accounts: Have more than 1 Instagram account? Social Photo Feed helps you display photos from multiple Instagram accounts in the same feed or in separate feeds.
- Tons of customization: Customize your Instagram feed to match your brand’s design just by clicking — no need to deal with confusing HTML code so you won’t accidentally break your site.
- GDPR-compliant: In just 1 click, the plugin integrates with many of the popular GDPR cookie consent plugins on the market.
- 100% compatible: Social Photo Feed is fully compatible with both WordPress and Instagram, so it’s a piece of cake to embed your Instagram feeds for free. It’s not designed for other website builders such as Wix, Weebly, Webflow, Shopify or Squarespace — but it’s guaranteed to be compatible with WordPress, the fastest-growing site builder in the market.
- Backup system: The plugin is guaranteed to show your Instagram posts on your website, even if Instagram is temporarily down. Meaning, your embedded Instagram feeds will always be displayed on your WordPress without any interruptions.
- Instagram oEmbeds: Want to automatically power your Instagram oEmbeds? Just install Social Photo Feed and it’ll take care of it for you.
- Automatically responsive: The plugin automatically makes your Instagram feeds look great on both mobile and desktop, so no need to hire a developer to do this for you.
Smash Balloon Instagram Feed: Free vs Pro
A common question that we get from our users is what’s the difference between using the free Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed and premium Instagram Feed Pro when it comes to displaying Instagram feeds on websites.
You’ll be happy to know that Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed is 100% free.
And if you want to have ready access to more features, you can easily upgrade your free plan to Instagram Feed Pro so you can:
- Show off Instagram hashtag feeds with single or multiple hashtags so you can curate user-generated content (UGC) like testimonials from customers who love your brand
- Sort Instagram posts by the number of likes
- Display “Tagged” feeds of Instagram posts that you are photo-tagged in
- Embed Instagram carousels on your WordPress
- Display post comments and the number of likes and comments for user feeds
- Show off Instagram stories right on your site
- Use “Masonry” or “Highlight” layouts for your Instagram feeds
- Show Instagram photos directly on the site in a popup lightbox
- Embed Instagram reels and videos on your site (reels are similar to TikTok videos)
- Set up shoppable Instagram feeds to boost your sales from your online store
- Receive priority customer support from WordPress experts
- And a whole lot more!
The best part?
Instagram Feed Pro is developed by Smash Balloon, the best social media feed plugins for WordPress used by over 1.75 million smart business owners to display engaging social feeds and social media posts on their website.
Founded in 2013, Smash Balloon is trusted by the world’s biggest brands like Coca-Cola, Indeed and Baileys, to help them display social media feed widgets on their websites so you know you’re in great hands.
How to Embed Instagram Feed for Free (Step-by-Step)
Want to start showcasing your Instagram content on your website for free? Below are the simple steps to easily add Instagram feeds to your WordPress:
Step 1: Install the Social Photo Feed Plugin
First, navigate to your WordPress website’s dashboard in your backend. See the left-hand panel? Hover your mouse over the Plugins menu and click Add New.
This will take you to your website’s plugins page. In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll see a search box. Look for “Smash Balloon Instagram Feed”.
See the plugin called Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed? Click the Install Now button next to it.
Done clicking on the Install button? Great! Give it a few seconds and wait for the button to change before clicking on the Activate button beside the plugin.
Now that we’ve installed and activated the plugin, you can move on to step 2 and create your Instagram feed.
Step 2: Create New Instagram Feed
After this, you can start using the guided flow to create Instagram feeds on your site.
First, navigate to the Instagram Feed » All Feeds menu from your WordPress admin area.
After that, click on the big Add New button at the top.
Next, you can choose which type of Instagram feed you want on your WordPress site.
The premium version of the plugin comes with tons of advanced feed types like hashtag feeds for your hashtag campaigns, tagged posts, and more.
Since this is the free version of the plugin, you can click on the User Timeline option to show your own Instagram posts.
After that, click on Next to continue.
You’ve just created a new Instagram feed using our guided flow. In step 3, you can go ahead and connect it to a source.
Step 3: Connect Your Instagram Account
The next step is to connect your Instagram account to the Social Photo Feed plugin. This way, you can start embedding your Instagram feeds for free.
To do this, first, click on the Add Source button.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose between linking a personal Instagram account or a business account.
Want to show special Instagram feeds like hashtag feeds, photo tagged feeds, shoppable feeds and so much more? Use the business account.
The “business account” feature is available for Instagram Feed Pro users only, so feel free to upgrade to Instagram Feed Pro.
This way, you can unlock more useful features of the plugin so you can use Instagram for business and promote your brand online.
For now, you can choose the personal account so you can embed feeds from your own Instagram account only.
Then, click on the Login with Instagram button.
This will send you to Instagram so you can give read-only access to the plugin.
With that, Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed will only view your info and won’t have access to make any changes, so Smash Balloon is completely safe and secure.
To continue, you can just click on Allow on the popup.
Finally, click on the Next button to confirm this account as the source for your Instagram feed.
Your Instagram account is now connected to the plugin. As you can see, the plugin does this automatically so you don’t need to manually connect to Instagram’s API — it took just a few clicks and you’re done.
In the next step, you can customize how your Instagram feed widget looks.
Step 4: Customize Your Instagram Feed
Did you know that the plugin already looks great right out of the box?
This means that Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed automatically copies your website’s design. As a result, your Instagram feeds will look consistent with your brand’s identity.
And if you want to have more control over the look and feel of your feeds, the plugin lets you easily configure your Instagram feed display using our live feed editor.
On the left, you can see customization options to change your feed type, color scheme, Instagram feed theme, CTA, header style, and more.
When you use these options to change the design of your feed, you can also see a preview on the right which shows the changes you make in real-time.
To get started, click on the Color Scheme option on the left.
After this, you can choose from 4 different color options for your Instagram feed:
- Inherit from Theme: Copy your theme’s colors automatically
- Light: Show a bright background and a dark font for your feed
- Dark: Pick a darker background and a light-colored font instead
- Custom: Manually select the colors by yourself
After you pick your feed color, click on Save to confirm the changes.
Using the visual customizer, you can customize your feed size, number of Instagram posts, header, buttons, and more using our live feed editor.
Click on Save once again once you’re done with the customization.
Want even more customization options?
With Instagram Feed Pro, you get different feed layouts, templates, header design, post style options, captions, feed moderation, and much more.
Finally, it’s time to embed the Instagram feed on your website.
Step 5: Embed Instagram Feed on Your Website
To display social media content on your site, you can add your Instagram feed in 2 ways using this free WordPress Instagram feed plugin:
- Add Instagram feed to your website’s page, or,
- Add Instagram feed widget to your website’s sidebar or footer areas
Let’s talk about both options below.
Embed Instagram Feed on Website’s Page
You can go ahead and embed your Instagram feed directly from the live feed editor using this plugin.
To get started, click on the Embed button at the top.
From the popup, you can copy the unique feed shortcode, or even better, simply click on Add to a Page to continue and show your Instagram feed on a WordPress page.
Next, just select your page from the list and click on Add.
This will open your WordPress page in the live feed editor.
Inside your editor, click the Plus (+) icon to add a new WordPress content block.
Next, go to the search field and look for “instagram”. Then, click the Instagram Feed block to add it to your web page.
Now, your Instagram feed will be automatically displayed on your page as a preview. If you’re happy with how it looks, click on Publish or Update to make it live on your website like this Instagram embed example:
With that, let’s go ahead and see how to embed Instagram feeds on your widget-ready areas.
Embed Instagram Feed on Website’s Sidebar or Footer
You can also add your Instagram feed widget to your website’s sidebar without needing to embed code snippets.
First, go to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to Instagram Feed » All Feeds and click on your Instagram feed from earlier.
Now, you can see your Instagram feed open in the live feed editor. Just click on Embed here to proceed.
This time, click on the Add to a Widget button on the popup.
Now, the plugin will send you to the Widgets page of your site so you can add a new Instagram feed widget.
From here, click on Sidebar to add your free Instagram widget there.
Or, you can click on Footer instead if you want to add your Instagram feed to your footer area.
For this article, we’ll go with the sidebar option.
To embed your feed, click on the plus (+) icon and then select Instagram Feed.
Make sure you click Update before heading to your website to see your Instagram feed embed live on your sidebar, like this:
And so, there you have it, folks! Now, you’ve learned how to easily embed an Instagram feed on your WordPress website, for free.
Ready to create engaging Instagram feeds? Click here to get started with Instagram Feed Pro today!
If you want even more customization options, tons of feed types like Instagram hashtag feed, tagged feeds and Instagram carousels, with priority support, try the premium version of Instagram Feed Pro.
How to Embed Social Media Feeds on WordPress for FREE
- If you have a Facebook page, here’s a tutorial on how you can embed Facebook pages on your WordPress for free.
- Looking to show Google reviews on your site? See this post on how to embed free Google review widgets on WordPress.
- For YouTube channel-owners, you can display your YouTube channel on your website for FREE using this post.
Want to display Facebook feeds or YouTube videos feeds from other social networks? Use social proof to grow your business and add different social media feeds on your WordPress site.
You may also want to check out this next post on Smash Balloon vs EmbedSocial to see the best social feed plugins for your chosen social media platforms.
