FileDeck – Document Library, Download Manager & Client Portal

FileDeck is a WordPress plugin for documents, downloads and client portals. It turns file collections into a fast, searchable document library, PDF library, resource library or plain file list with table, grid, gallery and folder layouts; tracks every download and protects private files; and gives each client a private document portal. For teams that need more than a file library, Pro adds document management proper — version history, review and approval cycles, scheduled expiry and a full audit trail.

See it in action: watch the one-minute tour below, try the live demo (the real plugin, no signup) or read the documentation.

A free version that’s actually usable. Every layout, every filter, and the Gutenberg block are free, and you can list as many documents as you like. Nothing essential is locked away just to force an upgrade.

What people use FileDeck for

• Safety data sheets and product documentation – SDS, manuals and spec sheets searchable by product code, with a QR code per sheet. SDS library
• Meeting minutes, agendas and newsletters – filed by year, with a free year filter. Minutes archive
• School policies and forms – for parents, with the library’s interface in nine languages. For schools
• Staff policies and procedures – an intranet policy library; Pro limits it to staff and tracks review dates.
• Client portals and secure file sharing – Pro gives each client a private document area. Client portal guide
• Annual reports and public documents – reports, public notices and tender documents.

What you won’t find elsewhere

• Full-text document search – Pro searches inside your PDFs, Office and text files — text is extracted on your own server; only the optional OCR for scanned documents sends files off-site, and only when you switch it on
• One-click migration – switching plugins? FileDeck imports the whole library, files and all (see below)
• Large file uploads – drawings, scans and video upload in resumable chunks, past your host’s upload limit, and a dropped connection resumes
• Library event webhooks – a signed JSON POST when a document is published, updated, retired or deleted, for Zapier, Make or your own system, or a readable message in Slack or Teams
• Client areas – give each client a private document portal with uploads and email notifications

Free features

• Four layouts – searchable table, responsive card grid, a thumbnail-forward document gallery, or collapsible folders that follow your category hierarchy, sub-folders and all, in the order you choose
• Instant search – filters as you type; every word counts, “exact phrase” and OR searches work
• Date-added filter – narrow a library to the past week, month or year (optional)
• Year filter – a dropdown of the years the library’s documents span, for minutes, newsletters and reports filed by year; year="2025" pins a library to one year
• Reference number – a part number, document code or form number on every document: searchable, and a sortable column
• Group by category or year – one library as a titled section per category, or a section per year, with one search box across all of them
• AI-agent ready – read-only abilities for WordPress 6.9’s Abilities API, so agents can search the library through MCP
• Sortable columns – title, date, size, type, downloads, and more
• Unlimited documents – search scales as your library grows
• Download tracking – per-document download counts
• Force download or open in browser – choose per document whether the button saves the file or opens it in the browser
• Library builder – design a library with a live preview on your own site, in your theme, then create the page in one click or copy its shortcode
• Gutenberg block + shortcode + six page builders – a native block, the [filedeck] shortcode, and elements for Elementor (Library, Document Embed and Search), Bricks, Divi, WPBakery (Visual Composer), Avada (Fusion Builder) and Beaver Builder
• Translation-ready, nine languages bundled – the library’s front end ships translated into Hungarian, Slovak, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese, with a .pot template for translating it into any other language; documents and categories translate with WPML, Polylang and compatible plugins
• ⌘K command palette – site-wide quick-search overlay that jumps straight to any document
• Sidebar widgets & Popular Documents block – Recent Documents, Top Downloads and Related Documents widgets, plus a Popular Documents block: most downloaded, newest, recently updated or related
• QR codes – generate a printable QR for any document (offline, nothing leaves your site) for noticeboards and posters
• Multi-select filters with counts – categories, tags, and optional file type and author filters: pick several values at once, see how many documents sit behind each before you click, and drop any one from the active-filter bar; shown above the library or under the column headings
• Multi-column sorting – click a heading to sort, shift-click a second to break the ties (file type, then newest first)
• Shareable filtered views – search, filters, sort order and page all live in the URL with a one-click “copy link”; hover previews show a thumbnail and file details
• Pagination your way – page numbers, a Load more button or infinite scroll, plus an optional fixed library height that scrolls the documents in place
• External links – list documents hosted on Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, or any URL — pasted Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive links embed as live previews
• Custom field & taxonomy columns – add any post meta (cf:field) or taxonomy (tax:slug) as a column; Pro adds the field builder that defines those fields, fields that apply only to chosen categories, and one-click import of your existing ACF field groups
• Document previews – lightbox preview for PDFs and images, and featured images open in a lightbox from the image column
• Inline document embed – embed a single document as a viewer in any page with the [filedeck_embed] shortcode, the Document Embed block or the Elementor widget: PDFs, images and Google links, with an optional download link and a full-screen button
• Document pages – a page per document with the details you pick, the document itself on its page (PDFs, images, Google files), a download button and an optional related documents list
• Search and download blocks – a Document Search block for a header or home page, and a Document Download block that shows one file as a button, link or card; also [filedeck_search], [filedeck_download] and [filedeck_login]
• Styles to match any theme – a full design-token system: a “Match my theme” preset that inherits your theme’s colours, Minimal/Bordered/Compact presets, a built-in light/dark/auto colour scheme, accent + surface + text colours — no CSS required, with --fdk-* variables to go further
• Any file type – PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, images, audio, video, and more
• Lightweight – no jQuery on the frontend; assets load only where a library appears
• Old links keep working – after a migration, old download links, item pages and shortcodes open your FileDeck documents, even if Pro lapses
• Theme template overrides – copy a template into your theme’s filedeck/ directory to replace library markup without forking the plugin
• Accessible – keyboard-sortable columns, ARIA labels, screen-reader friendly, plus an optional “Request an accessible version” form

Switching from another WordPress document plugin?

FileDeck Pro moves your whole library in one click from Download Monitor, WordPress Download Manager, Document Library Pro, Shared Files and others (full list in the FAQ): documents, files, categories, tags and supported metadata, read from your own database. Your original library stays intact while you review the result. We’ll help you move free.

FileDeck Pro

Upgrade for the features organizations need — from $59/year, your renewal never increases, and every purchase is covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee:

• Full-text search inside files – search the text inside PDFs, Office and text files (scanned PDFs too, with optional OCR), extracted on your own server, and jump to the page a match is on
• Access control – role restrictions on categories, password protection on a category or any single document, plus assigning a document to specific named people or to a group you define once and reuse — an assigned document is hidden from everyone else, not padlocked. Site-wide IP rules can limit downloads to your own networks, and a refused visitor can be sent to a page of your own. Members signing in elsewhere (single sign-on, JWT) get a sign-in link and member-field rules
• Protected files – restricted files move to a deny-all vault and stream only after an access check, so direct file URLs stop working; optional signed links expire, for sharing with someone who can’t log in, and a single-use link works for exactly one download and then stops. Optional hotlink protection refuses downloads requested from other sites’ pages
• Share button on every document – copy the link, open the device share sheet, or send it by email, X, Facebook, LinkedIn or WhatsApp; shares the document page, never the file, and loads nothing from any network until a visitor picks one
• Client portal – add a client and FileDeck creates their account, a private client area and an emailed invitation. Clients sign in on your site, not the WordPress dashboard, to their documents, uploads and account page. Admit people by name, group, email domain, membership plan (MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, WooCommerce Memberships, Restrict Content Pro, s2Member) or purchase or course (WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LearnDash, Tutor LMS, LifterLMS); access ends when the membership, order or enrolment does. Plus download history, new/already-downloaded markers and favourites
• One-click migration – from the plugins listed in the FAQ, read straight from your own database
• Import a server folder – point FileDeck at a folder in your uploads directory and every file becomes a document, with sub-folders becoming nested categories; an optional daily re-scan imports new files on their own, so SFTP-ing a file in is enough to publish it
• Automatic PDF thumbnails – no Ghostscript needed, plus Office, audio and video previews and inline embeds on top of the free PDF/image lightbox and embed
• Self-hosted PDF viewer – embedded PDFs render from your own server with bookmarks, page thumbnails, working links, zoom, find, print, full screen and links to a page; served from your own site, it also shows protected, signed-link and watermarked files. Popup mode opens any embed in an overlay that loads only when clicked
• Supporting files – a datasheet, drawing or appendices on one document, under its download button and its access rules
• Document lifecycle – version history, supersede with evergreen links, review cycles, approval workflow and auto-expiry, plus a public document changelog (a block or the [filedeck_changelog] shortcode) that lists published and updated documents newest first, grouped by month
• Check-out & editing locks – claim a document while you prepare its next revision, so nobody else can replace its file until you check it back in
• Downloads toolkit – email, Slack, Teams or webhook download notifications, daily quotas, per-document download limits (expire after N downloads), optional CAPTCHA bot friction (Cloudflare Turnstile or Google reCAPTCHA), lead capture with Mailchimp/Brevo sync, multi-select zip downloads with a select-all control in the table header, and Download all on a folder
• Require a form before download – gate downloads behind Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, WPForms, Contact Form 7 or any other form plugin you already use
• Attach documents to a post – tick documents in the post editor and they list automatically at the end of the page
• Terms before download – require readers to accept licence conditions or a disclaimer first, with every acceptance recorded in the activity log
• Analytics & audit – activity log with per-document history (with country, referrer and user agent), a per-document view count (also as a library column), analytics dashboard, optional GA4 events, CSV export
• Search synonyms & spelling tolerance – teach the library your shorthand so “PO” finds “purchase order”, and let a search with no results retry with the closest spelling in your titles, saying which word it used
• Search analytics – popular searches and a content-gap report of searches that found nothing, fed by every search box: library search, the command palette, full-text and AI search
• Document feedback – anonymous “Was this helpful?” votes on document pages, with a least-helpful report (off until you enable it)
• Cloud storage – browse and attach files from Amazon S3 or any S3-compatible service (Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces), plus Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint document libraries and Box
• Vault offload – mirror protected files into an S3-compatible bucket and serve downloads by short-lived presigned link, so the bucket carries the bandwidth while every access check still runs first
• Multisite shared libraries – render one site’s library on any other site of a WordPress network, with the source site’s access rules still enforcing
• Publish & embed – put your whole library on any other website (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, Framer, or a custom front end) with one line of code; embeds show public documents only

Plus custom fields with faceted filtering, CSV import/export that round-trips spreadsheet edits, bulk add from the Media Library, change subscriptions, a library health monitor, a GDPR toolkit, WP-CLI commands and more — see every feature. An optional AI tier adds records governance — retention schedules, access certification, transmittals, acknowledgment tracking and PDF accessibility screening — plus semantic search, smart collections and “Ask this library”, on your own key or the AI connected to WordPress. Full pricing: https://www.getfiledeck.com/pricing/

Download Monitor, Simple Download Monitor, WordPress Download Manager, Document Library Pro, Document Library Lite, Shared Files, Simple File List, Advanced File Manager, BSK PDF Manager, Download Attachments, WP Customer Area, FileBird, and FileBird Document Library are trademarks of their respective owners; FileDeck is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.