8 Best Slider Plugins

Why a great slider is key? 

Websites are all about attractively and effectively showcasing your business or products. The more engaged a visitor is on your website, the better are the chances of conversion. A research for Consumer WebWatch, conducted by Stanford University, 46.1% assessed the credibility of sites based, in part, on the appeal of the visual design. With this in mind, it is critical to have a unique and appealing landing page. Most of these pages are made with a slider. With the best slider plugins, you can get a variety of different sliders for your website.

In this article, we put up the list of the eight best slider plugins that we feel can give your websites a fantastic look.

We will get into all the details, and pros and cons of these plugins so that you know exactly which is best for your website and purpose.

Soliloquy

The first on our list of the best slider plugins is Soliloquy. There’s no doubt that the type of functionality this plugin offers is next level. The coding done on this slider plugin is one of the best and doesn’t mess with the page load time at all.

One great thing about Soliloquy is that they’ve literally paid attention to all the details. They’ve made sure that you have full control over what you do with your slider, so you can resize it or even make it SEO-friendly.

They’ve even thought of things like if the slider is touch-friendly or not, etc.

Pros

• Allows you to schedule specific slides at specified times
• Comes with various pre-built themes for sliders
• The sliders are mobile and touch-optimized as well
• You can create dynamic sliders using different types of content

Cons

• The free version doesn’t come with the best features
• The settings only have a few options

Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 is also one of the best slider plugins that offers you full control over what you do with your sliders. The good thing about the sliders is that they are customizable and fully SEO optimized. You can use them on any WordPress theme.

The Smart Slider 3 plugins come with a free and a paid version. The paid one comes with an intuitive page builder tool that lets you customize your sliders. Moreover, it also offers you six different types of layers that you can incorporate in your sliders to make them look even more appealing.

Pros

• Comes with many different templates
• Offers an easy to use interface
• Features a template library that has many different slider designs
• Has a tool to build customized sliders

Cons

• Smart Slider 3 doesn’t have as sleek of a dashboard as Soliloquy
• The starter plan only offers basic features

Revolution Slider

Revolution Slider is included in most of the themes you get on envato. This slider plugin is compatible with most other plugins, so you get a lot of functionality out of it as well. You can easily integrate it with WPML (which is a translation plugin) and many other WordPress plugins.

This plugin is not just limited to WordPress; you can also use it on sites like Prestashop or Concrete5.

Pros

• Offers an all in one solution
• Comes with affordable prices
• Offers many customization options
• Easy to use interface

Cons

• Doesn’t offer good speeds
• Doesn’t have a free version

LayerSlider

LayerSlider is one of the most advanced options in the market. It’s a great plugin, especially for professionals because of all the features that it offers. You can create sliders with various effects and images.

Moreover, LayerSlider isn’t just confined to making sliders. You can also create incredible landing pages, and even entire websites, using this plugin. To build sliders, you can do that using the drag and drop builder that is easy to use and gives you many customization options.

Overall, LayerSlider is one of the best slider plugins that you can use on your website.

Pros

• You can add transitions and animations in your sliders
• Comes with 200 pre-designed animations and transitions
• Also has premium templates for sliders
• Not only limited to the creation of sliders

Cons

• There is no free version available
• You can’t use full-width videos

Meta Slider

Meta Slider is a great and affordable option for people looking to add beautiful design elements to their site. The plugin offers sliders that are fully SEO-optimised and responsive. It also comes with amazing video integration and the ability to customize your sliders to your taste.

Meta Slider is great for people running small businesses who have a limited budget but want great looking and highly functional websites.

Pros

• All plans come with automatic updates
• It also offers premium support on all plans for a year
• Easy to use interface
• Gives you several customizable options

Cons

• Meta Slider’s full potential lies in the premium version

RoyalSlider

RoyalSlider is also one of the best slider plugins available for you to install on your WordPress website.

This plugin offers all the necessary and standard features that you would need to have stunning sliders on your websites. Through RoyalSlider, you can easily create touch-friendly ans SEO-optimized sliders.

It also offers integration with Flickr and Instagram photos, and you can also directly integrate it with Youtube and Vimeo to display video content.

Pros

• The pricing is affordable
• Comes with all the standard features
• Integrates well with all vital software and apps
• Easy to use interface

Cons

• Doesn’t have a huge variety of slider designs
• Might lack some extra features

Nivo Slider

Nivo Slider is one of the most sophisticated and beautiful-looking slider plugins. With Nivo, you can create amazing sliders that look clean, have great transitions and are visually appealing.

This plugin allows you to easily select images and turn them into a slider which means that even beginners can work on this plugin with no problems at all.  

The slider is open source, so most of the bugs have already been taken care of by the developers.

Pros

• Very easy to understand and use
• Hardly takes any time to set up
• It’s highly responsive
• One of the fastest slider plugins

Cons

• Offers lack of options
• Most of the good features are on the paid version

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SlideDeck

SlideDeck is a popular WordPress slider plugin. The reason for its popularity is that it offers some great design elements that will make your website sliders stand-out. Since SlideDeck can support dynamic content as well, you can use content from other websites like Youtube, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram and more.

Furthermore, SlideDeck also allows you to add your content using your WordPress editor manually. All in all, you have a wide range of options when it comes to displaying content. The pricing that SlideDeck offers can be considered a little above par, especially for small business.

]Overall, SlideDeck comes with a lot of features that will help you in creating visually appealing website content that will definitely stand out.

If you can pay the slightly higher price, then SlideDeck can prove to be one of the best slider plugins you have ever used.

Pros

• Comes with many attractive slider designs
• Allows easy integration with most applications
• Also allows you to add content manually using the WordPress editor
• Easy to use interface

Cons

• Can be a bit expensive for some businesses
• You cannot mix custom and dynamic slides

Conclusion

With attractive looks and elements, you can increase your engagement and conversion rate. Therefore, it’s important that you use your site’s real estate wisely.

The plugins mentioned above are some of the best slider plugins that you can have on your website. We hope that this article helps you find one.

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