Trusted by 300,000+ users worldwide

Keep Your PDFs From Leaving Your Site

A standard WordPress upload hands out a public file URL. With the secure feature in PDF Embedder, you’ll have file-level protection and control on all PDFs you upload to your site. The raw file never leaves your server.

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Annual Pro

Up to 20 Sites

Secure PDF storage, watermarks, and dynamic attachment pages are included on the Pro and Elite plans. Compare all four plans on the pricing page.

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14-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

Built To Protect Your Work

Secure PDF Storage

Uploads go to a protected folder, not the public media path.

Right-Click Protection

The right-click menu is switched off over secure embeds.

Search Engine Exclusion

Secured documents stay out of Google’s index.

Dynamic Watermarks

Every page carries the reader’s own name, email, or IP.

Pages Management

Full-Text Search in PDFs

Per-File Control

Premium Support

500+ Reviews

4.7

Trusted by 300,000+ WordPress Sites

Clean, clear, and performant

This is one of those lovely plugins which does the job advertised, clearly and efficiently, without getting in its own way with feature creep.

OpenDNA

Does the job simply and well

This plugin integrates perfectly into WordPress, adding a PDF option to the list of available blocks. It is simple to use, and provides many useful options…

greg02134

Steady, reliable, protects my work!

I use this product so that I can display my poems without them being (easily) scraped and pirated. PDF Embedder does the job well, with no fuss!

kimbols

This plugin is terrific!

For years I solved the pdf problem by converting the file to Word, then importing to WP. When I saw this — and saw that it worked — I was overjoyed. If you don’t use the Pro version, you’re wasting a lot of time maintaining your website.

TonyLima

Essential plugin

As soon as I found out about PDF Embedder, I knew it would be a game-changer for my local news site… Simple to use, both for editors and for users. This is kinda what the Internet was invented for.

mongrel

Great tool, definitely recommend

…I found PDF embedder and it did the job beautifully. I definitely recommend downloading and installing this plug-in.

Yann Gourvennec

Stable with good functionality and support

Have used this plugin for several years and it has always performed well. My users like it as well. On the one instance I needed support the response was timely and accurate.

Robert W. Drummond

Brilliant Plugin

This is one of the best plugins I have used on my website. It is quite unique and does what it sets out to perfectly.

piersmcleish

Just what I needed

It does what I need simply which is really important within the WordPress ecosystem… So thank you!

Xtremefaith

Why 300,000+ Sites Choose PDF Embedder

Web browser window displaying 'example.com' with an access-denied shield and a locked document, next to a PDF Embedder interface, symbolizing blocked access and security.

Direct File URLs Have Restricted Access

Upload a PDF to WordPress the normal way, and it gets a public address anyone can reach, no login needed. One person shares that link and your document is sitting on someone else’s server by the afternoon.

Switch on Secure PDFs in PDF Embedder and new uploads land in a protected folder at wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/ instead of the standard media path. The plugin passes the file contents through to the viewer on the server side, so the browser never receives the real path.

A file that can be fetched by URL can be reposted anywhere, and once it is out there, there is no pulling it back. Paste a secure file URL into a private browsing window yourself and nothing downloads.

Right-Click Is Switched Off

Blocking the file is only half the job. Several browsers put a Save Image As option in the right-click menu, which lets a visitor pull down rendered pages one at a time until they have the whole document.

Tick Disable Right Click and the menu no longer opens over the viewer. It applies to every secure embed on your site, and you can override it for one document with the disablerightclick shortcode attribute when you want a particular file left open.

Page-by-page saving is how most casual copying actually happens. Closing that menu removes the easy route without asking readers to log in or install anything.

Illustration of a computer screen showing a document with a 'Right-Click Disabled' shield and a cursor pointing at it
Abstract illustration of a laptop window showing a PDF document being searched with a magnifying glass, symbolizing document search.

Your Documents Stay Out Of Search Results

A PDF sitting in the standard uploads folder is fair game for crawlers. Paid chapters and internal reports show up in search listings, and readers land on the file without ever passing the page you built around it.

Secure files have no public address for a crawler to fetch, so there is nothing to index. WordPress attachment pages are also left off for secure PDFs unless you deliberately turn them on.

Content you charge for should not be one search away from free. This particular leak is also easy to miss, because nothing looks wrong from inside your admin.

Watermark Readers Details Dynamically

Nothing stops a determined reader photographing a screen, and any document that renders in a browser has that gap. Blocking downloads handles the lazy copying, not the deliberate kind.

PDF Embedder overlays every page with the viewer’s name, email address, or IP, pulled from their login. You control font size, rotation, opacity, and placement, set globally or on one file at a time.

A screenshot carrying somebody’s own email address rarely gets passed along. The watermark changes what the person holding your document is willing to do with it.

Illustration showing multiple PDFs and browser windows with a neural network icon, representing PDF handling and digital document workflows.
Abstract illustration of a PDF workflow with linked documents and a secure browser window, signaling secure document sharing

Share A Link Without Sharing The File

Sooner or later you need to send a client or a student to one specific document. Usually that means handing over the file URL, which undoes the protection you just set up.

Turn on attachment pages for secure PDFs and every document gets its own WordPress page with the viewer already in place. You share that page, and the file stays where it is in the protected folder.

The recipient gets an ordinary link that carries your theme and your protection settings. Nobody needs the file path to read the document.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have questions about the PDF Embedder secure feature? We’ve got answers.

Which plans include the PDF Embedder Secure feature?

PDF Embedder Secure is available on the Pro and Elite plans. Secure PDF storage, watermarks, and dynamic attachment pages all unlock at Pro. The free version and the Basic and Plus plans cover embedding and viewer options but not file-level protection. The pricing page lists what each plan includes.

What happens to PDFs I uploaded before turning Secure option on?

PDFs uploaded before you enabled Secure stay in the standard uploads folder and keep their public URLs. Re-upload them so they land in the securepdfs directory, then point the affected blocks and shortcodes at the new file paths. Our upgrading guide covers the steps.

Does secure PDF storage work on Nginx or LiteSpeed?

Secure PDF storage works without extra setup on Apache and Apache-compatible servers, LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed included. On Nginx or Caddy you add one server rule blocking direct access to the securepdfs directory. We publish the config for Nginx and Caddy.

Can I leave one PDF unprotected?

Yes, PDF Embedder Secure gives you per-file control in two places. Right-click blocking is a global setting you can override on a single embed with a shortcode attribute. Secure storage is decided at upload time, so a file you want freely downloadable should be uploaded with the Secure PDFs option unchecked.

Does securing PDFs slow down page loads?

Secure PDFs are encrypted before delivery, and PDF Embedder caches the encrypted copy on your server so that work happens once per file rather than on every view. The cache is on by default and refreshes on its own when you replace the source document. If you run a caching plugin, exclude PDF Embedder from it.

Can someone still screenshot a secure PDF?

Screenshots are possible with any document that renders in a browser, and PDF Embedder Secure is no exception. What secure storage takes away is the easy path: the original file, at full quality, in a single click. Watermarks cover the rest by stamping each page with the reader’s own name or email address.

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