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A WordPress slider can make your website design more compelling and improve its overall user experience.
However, it might be hard to choose a suitable one for your needs due to a large number of available WordPress Slider plugins.
To help you decide, we have narrowed down the options and compiled a list of the top nine WordPress slider plugins. We will also go over their most notable features and pricing.
What Is a WordPress Slider?
A WordPress slider is a slideshow of images or videos presented on a website. It can automatically change after a few seconds when a visitor clicks on the slides. Moreover, you can modify its content by adding various elements, such as buttons or effects.
Top 9 WordPress Slider Plugins
To carry out our research, we tested and compared 9 WordPress slider plugins based on the following criteria:
- Ease of use – the slider plugins should be suitable for every user, including complete beginners.
- Customizability – the flexibility to edit images, videos, colors, and text on sliders.
- Design options – the amount of pre-made templates or themes available with each plugin.
- Responsiveness – the ability to function properly on different devices, like mobile phones, tablets, and desktops.
- Pricing – a good value for money that can be adjusted to your budget.
Here is a comparison table with the top 9 WordPress slider plugins to overview the options.
| Plugin | Pricing | Overall Rating |
| Smart Slider 3 | $49, free option available |
4.8/5 |
| Meta Slider | $39.50/year, free option available |
4.7/5 |
| Soliloquy | $17/year | 4.7/5 |
| Slider Revolution | $35/year | 4.6/5 |
| Master Slider | $34, free option available |
4.6/5 |
| Pickplugins Product Slider | $19, free option available |
4.6/5 |
| Royal Slider | $24 | 4.5/5 |
| Slide Anything | $10, free option available |
4.5/5 |
| Layer Slider | $23, free option available |
4.2/5 |
Pro Tip
Before installing a WordPress plugin, make sure to consider its last update’s date and user reviews. In addition, check how many plugins you have active. This will help you prevent security risks on your website.
1. Smart Slider 3
- Ease of use: 4.5/5
- Customizability: 5/5
- Design options: 4.8/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: drag-and-drop editor, supports WebP and page builders
Smart Slider 3 is a freemium WordPress slider plugin with an intuitive interface. It provides a drag-and-drop builder for an easy and fast way to edit and add new elements to your slides.
Furthermore, this WordPress slider plugin offers 14 slider templates divided into various categories, from carousels and blocks to web pages.
For example, choose their travel slider template and customize it for your travel blog.
Smart Slider 3 supports the WebP format, which provides superior compression for images on websites. As a result, your web pages will load faster, even if you use high-quality pictures.
In addition, the slider plugin is fully responsive on different devices and works flawlessly with the best WordPress page builders, such as Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder.
If you want to make your slider even more flexible and choose from over 120 templates and 70 animation effects, such as moving shapes, lines, dots, or polygons, switch to its Pro version. It starts at $49 for a lifetime subscription.
However, it may take time to get familiar with Smart Slider 3’s configuration and create a custom multiple-layer slider since it has many toolbar options, including the expert mode for advanced customization.
2. MetaSlider
- Ease of use: 5/5
- Customizability: 4.5/5
- Design options: 4.5/5
- Responsiveness: 4.5/5
- Notable features: 30 animations effects, live preview, supports any type of content, compatible with the WordPress block editor
MetaSlider is one of the best WordPress plugins for bloggers and online store owners. It offers a user-friendly interface and comes with a wide range of pre-made templates and features, such as smart image cropping, animation effects, and Unsplash integration.
With this plugin, you can create a slider in a few minutes as it is compatible with the WordPress Gutenberg block editor, allowing you to modify many layouts and styles without having to code. All you need is to select an image from the WordPress media library or upload one from your computer.
With its post-feed template, you can make your sliders dynamic by showing off your WordPress posts, videos, and images in one place.
This slider plugin will also allow you to add titles and alt text to each slider image, which will help with search engine optimization (SEO).
Furthermore, this WordPress plugin features a responsive slider that will adapt to the screen sizes of different devices, such as tablets, desktops, and smartphones. The slider will load quickly regardless of its content type.
By purchasing the MetaSlider premium version, which starts at $39.50/year, you will gain access to more features, such as thumbnail navigation and 11 professional themes. It also comes with advanced developer functionality, like extensive hooks and filters, to create a more complex slider.
3. Soliloquy
- Ease of use: 5/5
- Customizability: 4.5/5
- Design options: 4.5/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: 100 configurable hooks and filters, WooCommerce integration, image protection
Soliloquy is one of the most powerful WordPress slider plugins. It offers various add-ons to expand a slider’s functionality and features an intuitive interface with a drag-and-drop builder that is easy to use for beginners.
You can choose from 100 configurable hooks and filters to create a slideshow for your WordPress site. Select images from the media library, rearrange the slides and set them up quickly with the editor tools. Besides that, Soliloquy allows users to create a responsive slider from PDFs.
Furthermore, this WordPress slider plugin has the option to activate image protection on a website. It prevents visitors from downloading slide images by disabling the right-click context menu. To deactivate it, uncheck the Enable Image Protection option under the Misc tab of the slider management box.
However, Soliloquy’s free version provides limited options for building dynamic sliders.
Starting at $17/year, its premium version is integrated with various platforms, such as Instagram, Pinterest, and WooCommerce. For online business owners, we recommend purchasing the Developer plan that includes WooCommerce integration for $89/year.
4. Slider Revolution
- Ease of use: 4/5
- Customizability: 5/5
- Design options: 5/5
- Responsiveness: 4.5/5
- Notable features: 2000+ element library, animation keyframes, 3D effects
Slider Revolution is a premium, feature-rich slider plugin for WordPress. You can edit a slider with its drag-and-drop interface and intuitive control. For example, users can add, copy, and duplicate their text, images, and videos by right-clicking.
This WordPress slider plugin also allows you to import and export content from other sources, such as Facebook and Instagram. This can help you showcase your online portfolio across different channels.
What’s more, it provides over 200+ pre-made templates, such as hero sections, sliders, and carousels, and features a 2000+ element library that includes font icons, SVGs, and PNG objects for sliders.
When it comes to effects, Slider Revolution has many fully customizable options, from simple transitions to complex animations. Using them will help create engaging slides for your WordPress website.
Moreover, this plugin has add-ons that support 2D and 3D animations. By setting them up, you’ll be able to add background animations, charts, advanced transitions, and distortion effects to sliders. For example, creating visually impressive lines or bar graphs from .csv files will help you to present data in creative ways.
This plugin’s animation feature makes it one of the best options for a graphic or web designer, enabling them to deliver a solid and unique website design for their clients.
However, Slider Revolution has a steep learning curve as its editor control features a different interface than other WordPress slider plugins.
Unfortunately, using this plugin can increase your website’s load time to the detriment of its SEO. Also, there’s no free version for users to try out – Slider Revolution starts at $35/year.
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5. Master Slider
- Ease of use: 4.7/5
- Customizability: 5/5
- Design options: 4/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: multiple HTML layers, hotspots, smooth transitions
Master Slider is one of the best fully responsive WordPress plugins for website owners looking for a professional image or video slider for their business blog.
Its free version doesn’t provide much functionality – there are only eight pre-made sliders to customize. That said, it includes straightforward image slider settings, letting you add elements like bullets, arrows, and scrollbars.
Online business owners who want to create engaging experiences for their customers can add hotspots to their sliders. This will let visitors see product descriptions on mouse hover. It will be easy to do since Master Slider is integrated with WooCommerce.
In addition, Master Slider allows multiple HTML layers so that images and text can be added over sliders to customize them. Moreover, it provides unique slider skins which can be modified with CSS.
This WordPress slider plugin also offers interactive transitions, such as mask and wave effects, presenting smooth transition animations to site visitors.
By using Master Slider, you can create a dynamic custom post slider from any external source, including Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.
Although its free version has limited functionality for a slider, you can upgrade to the Pro version starting from $34 for a regular license. It includes additional interactive transitions, over 90 pre-made sliders, and extra mouseover hotspots.
6. PickPlugins Product Slider by WooCommerce
- Ease of Use: 4.5/5
- Customizability: 5/5
- Design Options: 4.5/5
- Responsiveness: 4.5/5
- Notable Features: unlimited product sliders, custom ribbon, layout builder
PickPlugins Product Slider is a slider plugin built to improve eCommerce functionality with WooCommerce in mind. It lets you create unlimited sliders, which is great for displaying various products from your online store. They can be added anywhere on a WooCommerce page via a shortcode.
In addition, this plugin provides various features that help you highlight and manage products on a website. For example, checking the Hide out-of-stock products for sliders option will help you keep track of your product stocks.
Choose which products you want to display on a slider based on product tags or categories. For instance, you can display your best-selling or on-sale products to draw visitors’ attention and drive sales.
PickPlugins Product Slider allows you to add a custom ribbon or pick one from 20 templates to mark any exclusive product. You can customize its background, color, text, width, and height. This is a great feature for product promotion. You can also create a custom layout and add elements, like stock quantities or statuses, to your sliders without having to code.
Unfortunately, the plugin’s interface is not as user-friendly as the other WordPress slider plugins we’ve looked at. Users need to place a shortcode whenever they want to add or customize a slider on their website.
PickPlugins Products Slider offers a premium version that starts at $19/year. However, if you’re already using WooCommerce for your online store, choosing the lifetime plan for $69–$119 may be more valuable.
7. Royal Slider
- Ease of use: 4.5/5
- Customizability: 4.8/5
- Design options: 4/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: smart autoplay, touch-swipe navigation support, lazy loading
Built for beginners and advanced users, this slider plugin offers an intuitive WYSIWYG editor that will help you make an image slider effortlessly. Royal Slider also features a smart autoplay slideshow option to make slides play without user input.
You can create more than one slider per page – this will help showcase multiple posts on a WordPress site.
The plugin supports bulk image uploading and is integrated with Flickr, Instagram, and 500px, enabling you to pick images from these platforms.
What is more, Royal Slider features a responsive and adjustable slider that works on all screen sizes. With touch-swipe navigation support, your sliders will be easy to manipulate on any device.
Other than that, the thumbnails are controlled by swipe gestures and can be positioned vertically or horizontally or resized separately from the main slider area. Sliders can be customized and dynamically resized via CSS.
Since this WordPress slider plugin supports lazy loading, it doesn’t have a large impact on site performance. Its sliders will only be loaded when visitors need them. As lazy-loaded images are also indexed by search engines, Royal Slider won’t hurt your WordPress SEO.
Unfortunately, Royal Slider doesn’t offer many templates and animation effects. It is also a premium WordPress plugin – it has no free version. You can purchase a regular license for $24.
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8. Slide Anything
- Ease of use: 4/5
- Customizability: 4.8/5
- Design options: 4.5/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: infinite loop, slider popup, owl carousel
Slide Anything allows you to create sliders by using all post types such as text, HTML, and shortcodes. It is a fully responsive WordPress slider that is built on the Owl Carousel 2 jQuery plugin.
With this WordPress slider plugin, you can feature looping slideshows. Plus, it contains many style options to set up custom slides – users can change the slider’s border, padding, and height for a dynamic and eye-catching look.
Moreover, Slide Anything offers various slider transition effects, like rotation, bouncing, rolling out, and sliding down. These effects employ hardware acceleration with CSS3 Translate3d transitions for smooth operation on any browser.
This WordPress slider plugin lets you build hero sections with thumbnail images using a shortcode. Since this slider plugin supports Owl Carousel, it’s suitable for developers who need more flexibility to create a complex layout carousel.
To add images, videos, or HTML code into a popup, you will have to purchase Slide Anything’s premium version starting at $10 for one site.
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9. Layer Slider
- Ease of use: 4/5
- Customizability: 4/5
- Design options: 4/5
- Responsiveness: 5/5
- Notable features: drag-and-drop support, seamless transitions, unlimited styling
Layer Slider will help you create an elegant and professional slider with any type of content. It is a fully responsive plugin that is optimized for mobile devices.
This WordPress slider plugin features a drag-and-drop editor for quick custom slider creation. Also, you can preview a slider to ensure it will look nice on your WordPress website.
Even though Layer Slider doesn’t have as many special effects as the other slider plugins, it offers smooth 2D and 3D transitions and various style options. As it supports CSS3 transitions, you can create stunning video and image slideshows that can be paused on mouse hover.
Layer Slider has an integrated YouTube and Vimeo video player, enabling you to add videos to sliders by simply pasting the URL. It also supports touch-swipe and keyboard navigation.
Moreover, this slider plugin allows you to create sliders with an unlimited number of images and layers. Adding videos, images, and shortcodes with 50+ smooth transitions will help you create a dynamic and engaging slideshow.
If you have an issue using this WordPress slider plugin, reach out to its 24/7 online customer support. Unfortunately, the free version doesn’t offer many design customization options. You will need to upgrade to the premium version to get all the features. It costs $23.
Conclusion
By using a WordPress slider plugin, you can make your content more engaging for visitors. In addition to featuring images, videos, and buttons, you can share your social media and blog posts on slideshows.
Finding the best WordPress slider will depend on your budget and the features you need. Here is a quick summary of the best WordPress slider plugins to choose from:
- Smart Slider 3 – has the best visual editor for creating a unique slider. This WordPress slider plugin provides various design tools with customizable animations and effects.
- Meta Slider – provides the most user-friendly interface. With its simple and intuitive dashboard, site owners can build a beautiful slider in a few minutes.
- Soliloquy – offers the best value for money. Its pro version has a wide range of add-ons and configurable hooks and filters.
- Slider Revolution – has the most design options. This slider plugin for WordPress provides over 200 pre-made templates and lots of animation effects.
- Master Slider – the most responsive WordPress slider. It works well on different devices and supports touch-swipe navigation.
- Pickplugins Product Slider – the best WordPress slider plugin for an eCommerce site. It offers high customizability for creating product sliders.
- Royal Slider – the most SEO-friendly slider plugin. It comes with a lazy-loading feature that will improve your WordPress speed and SEO.
- Slide Anything – the best WordPress slider plugin for web developers. It uses Owl Carousel 2 and allows users to build a complex carousel.
- Layer Slider – the best WordPress slider plugin for creating unlimited style slideshows. It allows you to add many types of content and layers to slideshows.
We hope this article has helped you choose a WordPress slider plugin for your website. If you have any other slider plugin recommendations, do not hesitate to share them in the comments section below.
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