Data Table plugins review 2018

Tables and charts are a good way to display different types of information. It helps you to structure the data in an easy-to-view style. Despite this, WordPress, the most popular blogging software, doesn’t provide this feature as a native functionality, because it is a complex coding task. So, now wondering what to do? There are the following options:

• Create a static image and download it on the page
• Set up a table manually, but you could make a lot of mistakes

Do not like any of them? Ok, we have another more easiest way – use plugins. Today on the Internet you can find a bundle of table plugins for WordPress. Each of them offers different features and is used according to the situation. In Supsystic, we do a lot of researches to compare data table plugins. Now we decided to share with you our experience. Let’s take a close look.

Imagine, you are an experienced WordPress user, and you have three friends. They become a part of the WordPress community not so long:

• Tom owns a shop and sells technics. He has a large base with pricing, items description and so on
• Josh is a basketball trainer. He wants to make a table, that will demonstrate the match results with photos and videos
• Kate works in a real estate agency as analysts. She wants a data table plugin with Google Charts integration

Now, they want to add data tables plugins and ask you to advise the best. Here what you recommend:

• Data tables plugin from Supsystic
• TablePress data plugin
• wpData table plugin

You cannot choose between them, so ask a friends to test plugins, and then write a short review of their experience. Josh, Kate, and Tom divided all comparing criterias into the two big groups:

• Frontend features
• Backend features

To frontend options, people refer filtering opportunities, available data formats, additional editing tools and all others things that help you with designing and displaying the data. Range variety of data sources, tools for integration with other plugins, data manipulation options, and internal plugin optimization tools are backend features.

Pricing: free with paid options

Additional tools: diagrams, charts, graphs

How to insert: through a shortcode and widgets

In Supsystic developed a plugin, which is easily managed through the user-friendly interface. It is similar to Excel. Users can adjust all visual parameters to make tables the most suitable for their site or task. Also, you can build the diagrams from each table to analyze the statistics. All data in tables picked up by search engines.

Supsystic Data Table has almost all features, that refer to frontend: a lot of filtering opportunities, responsive design, pagination, and more. Also, users can insert in the cells player, images, links, and HTML code.

As for backend features, they are full of data manipulation and internal optimization tools. Also, there are a variety of diagrams and shortcodes supporting.

Supsystic Data table plugin enables to quickly create a table from the scratch. It has intuitively understandable design and a lot of editing opportunities. Also, there are the pop-ups with tips when you induce on any of the badges. There is simple navigation in the top of the menu, just switch up across CSS, Diagrams, Preview, Setting and Editor tabs. Supsystic data table plugin provides you with the analytical visual tools. To create a table, Tom just connects with the existing database and upload the data. If something will change in MySQL DB, there will be the changes in the table. Using filtering, he could sort the products by a margin, price or sales. Here is a piece of Tom’s table.

Pricing: free with paid options

Additional tools: charts, graphs

How to insert: through a shortcode

TablePress is one of the most recognizable and using data table plugins through the WordPress community. Now, it has over 700K active installs and a 5-star rating. Creating a data table in TablePress is a simple, but a little bit time-consuming process. But, you can not worry about coding knowledge, because all is done in a spreadsheet-like interface. As TablePress support any type of data, users can easily add image, text, formula, and hyperlink. There is also available the Advanced Editor option, where you can bring a custom style to your table.

TablePress supports some unique frontend features like the opportunity to select row background and row selected colors. Moreover, it has a control zone background color to simple a process of editing.

The important benefit of TablePress plugin is supporting import from different data sources: CSV, xls, xlsx, HTML, JSON, URL, FTPl. Other advantages are automatic periodic table import, ability to join tables and data type transformation from a feed. Unfortunately, TablePress has an old builder interface.

In general, TablePress provides users with the all main functions, there are a lot of advanced and unique features. Users can import and export in different formats. It has a simple and straightforward data inserting process. TablePress has a constructor-like interface. All options are divided into the groups, that are hidden behind the buttons. It a little bit slows down the creating process. See a piece of Josh’s table below.  

Pricing: paid

Additional tools: diagrams, charts, graphs

How to insert: through a shortcode

wpDataTables is a premium paid plugin with an accent to details. There are a lot of customizable options. Nevertheless, this data plugin doesn’t provide you with frontend editing support, meaning, that any input need to be imported from the external source. You can use a sandbox on the site to test a data tables.

Frontend features enable you to adjust table width, fonts colors, add hover effects, and more.

As wpDataTables plugin doesn’t have an opportunity to create a table from a scratch, there are a lot of data import options.

wpDataTables plugin has a lot of customizable options, which will impress everyone. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have free usage options. To use a wpDataTable, Kate created two bases: first with shipping companies and second – with taxes and regions. She wants to know:

• with what companies they made the most deals
• a region with the highest taxes

TablePress and wpDataTables are good choices for more experienced users. wpData has a lot of customizable features, but it is really hard for to navigate among them for new users. Supsystic DataTable plugin is the most accessible for a simple user, combining a lot of popular functions, an informative but compact interface that is similar to Excel. The plugin will be an excellent choice for a user who hasn’t programming skills but exposes quite high requirements to the functionality. The list of tutorials:

• Supsystic Data Table plugin
• TablePress Data Table plugin
• wpDataTables plugin