Sliders are one of the parts of websites that increase the user experience (UX) as well as the beauty of the website. Many websites still use sliders as a powerful marketing and content delivery tool. In fact, sliders are a part where you can display various information in just one part of the website. Therefore, many WordPress website administrators are looking for the best WordPress slider plugin for their websites.
In this article, the best WordPress slider plugin will be introduced and reviewed so that you can use them on your website according to your needs. The main limitation of many free slider plugins for WordPress is that they only offer image sliders with limited layouts and animation effects.
Many WordPress slider plugins have many options that reduce the quality of the user experience. But sometimes webmasters design websites that have many sliders. Therefore, the need for a powerful and at the same time optimized slider is strongly felt.
Images, as well as videos (especially if they are hosted locally on your website), are one of the bulkiest items on your site and can greatly impact website performance. Make sure you optimize your images and other media files before uploading them to WordPress and creating your WordPress slider.
What is the WordPress image slider plugin?
Slider plugin is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add multiple images, videos, etc to your site and display them in a sliding gallery. Typically, the slider displays one large image with visual effects at a time and moves from one image to the next.
How to choose the right WordPress slider plugin?
Just as adding a slider to your WordPress website can improve the user experience and make it look more beautiful, it can also affect the speed and performance of your site. Therefore, you should research the plugin and use it carefully before deciding to use the slider plugin.
Here are 6 keys to consider when choosing a WordPress slider plugin:
- Responsiveness: The slider plugin must be responsive and display properly on small screens such as mobiles and tablets. If it is not mobile-friendly, you can lose visitors and potential customers who visit your website through mobile devices or tablets.
- Ease of use: Choose a plugin that is easy to set up and use. If the slider plugin is too complicated, it will waste your time. Plus, overly complicated plugins usually have a lot of features you’ll never use.
- Running speed: Many plugins slow down your website and increase your web page load time. This can affect your site’s ranking in search engines, so choose a high-performance plugin and optimized code to keep your site as fast as possible.
- Layouts and Sample Templates: Some plugins may let you create only simple image slides, while others may give you a range of options when it comes to layout and design.
- Customization: Not every plugin gives you the same options for customization. Some are flexible and allow you to edit almost every detail, while others only provide you with pre-made designs.
- Price: Price is an important factor to consider when choosing a WordPress slider plugin. Some are free, while others charge you for premium features.
We will continue to introduce free and paid WordPress slider plugins to you, so stay with us.
The best free WordPress slider plugin
Stratum slider for Elementor page builder
Stratum Slider is a very powerful, lightweight, and semi-free widget for Elementor. This slider is very flexible so you can change the typography, colors, alignment, background, direction, speed, animation effects, and more. This plugin supports multi-column layouts and sliders to display content.
If you are building your site with Elementor page builder and need an affordable yet modern and powerful slider solution, you can use this plugin.
MetaSlider
WordPress slider plugin MetaSlider is one of the most popular plugins with many features that it offers in the free version. It’s easy to get started with this plugin so you can easily create slides by drag and drop, link slides, use built-in slideshow themes, and more.
MetaSlider plugin has various effects that you can use to display your content. This plugin helps you design beautiful slides as much as you can with the facilities it gives you to edit images.
If you need a versatile image-based slider with multiple built-in effects and templates, along with smooth integration with translation plugins, this is the plugin for you.
Smart Slider 3
Smart Slider 3 plugin is one of the fast and quality sliders. It has everything you’d expect from a slider plugin, including beautiful animation effects and customizable layers, touch navigation, background animation, full-width responsive modes, and more.
This plugin has pre-designed slides, most of which can be used in the paid version. By using typography and various settings, it brings ease of use. The paid version of this plugin is widely used by designers and developers.
If you need an all-in-one layer-based professional WordPress slider plugin with support for WordPress videos and posts in the free version, you can take advantage of this plugin.
Slider – Ultimate Responsive Image Slider
The Ultimate Responsive Slider plugin is a great solution among free slider plugins for WordPress. Its free version is primarily for those who need to make image sliders.
The slider created with this plugin is fully customizable, including the ability to update to add additional elements, customize navigation bullets, font styles, colors, and more.
Soliloquy
Soliloquy Slider is a long-standing plugin in the WordPress slider market, so you can be sure that it has everything you need for simple and advanced slideshows. It allows you to create an SEO-optimized slider through a drag-and-drop interface.
This plugin stands out thanks to multiple tools for creating image and video sliders with animated effects. It even lets you start with a pre-made template for static design. This plugin is also optimized to work with Gutenberg.
Slider by 10Web
Sliderby10Web’s Responsive Video Slider is another really great solution with a focus on modern design while still being the first slideshow experience with functionality. The free version allows you to display both images and videos (including direct links from video hosting platforms such as YouTube) on slides, plus it gives you the opportunity to add transition effects, Add hotspots, marketing buttons, social media buttons, etc.
If you need a slideshow plugin with premium design, social media integration, and parallax effects for your portfolio or blog, you can use this plugin.
Slide Anything slider plugin
Slide Anything plugin is one of the most used slider plugins for WordPress. Along with Slide Maker to create free WordPress sliders with touch functionality. This plugin also uses the Lazy Load images approach to help you improve SEO.
One of its outstanding features is a huge collection of transition effects that help you make your slides more dynamic.
Crelly Slider
Many WordPress slider plugins have integrated element animations – similar to those you see in PowerPoint. Crelly Slider was one of the first WordPress plugins to use this feature. This free, open-source plugin is designed with ease of use as a top priority, and it takes very little time to install.
Without any coding skills, you can use the drag-and-drop interface to set and customize the screen background and add transition effects. All elements are fully responsive, so you don’t have to worry about designing a look that works for both mobile and desktop, Crelly Slider does it for you automatically.
The plugin is also compatible with iOS and Android browsers and devices and is accessible to developers who want to extend the functionality of the tool. So, no matter what device your visitors are using, your site will look the way you want it to look.
WOW Slider
WOW Slider is a fully responsive and free WordPress slider plugin that has many stunning features and effects. It comes with a point-and-click wizard that helps you create image sliders in seconds without coding or image editing.
With over 30,000 downloads, WOW Slider is one of the most used free slider plugins out there. As far as effects and features are concerned, WOW Slider is one of many top slider plugins.
Some additional features include fast and light design, touch and drag navigation, and 25 different transitions and animation effects.
WordPress Carousel
WordPress Carousel gives you more than just a simple carousel image slider. With this plugin, you can also create post carousels and product carousels.
Post carousels show the latest posts you’ve published on your website or blog. These slides contain the post name, author, publication date, and a thumbnail.
The product carousel highlights the various products available in your online store. This feature uses WooCommerce and allows you to add the product name, price, and product image to each slide. You can also install an “Add to Cart” button so viewers can add the product to their cart and then continue browsing your store.
PickPlugins slider for WooCommerce products
PickPlugins Slider for WooCommerce products as the name suggests, you can use this free WordPress slider plugin to display WooCommerce products. It allows you to create a slideshow using product details from your WooCommerce store.
This plugin comes with several tools specifically tied to WooCommerce, so you can selectively display product information that is automatically sourced. It saves you time since you probably only have to take care of the layout.
WP Responsive Recent Post Slider
WP Responsive Recent Post Slider is a great plugin to help website visitors easily find and click on your latest posts. While there is some coding involved in this plugin, it can be used by anyone from WordPress beginners to expert webmasters.
To add a post slider, you just need to configure the shortcode. This WordPress slider plugin offers a post carousel and four unique layouts to enhance the look and feel of your sliders.
You can also set the number of posts you want your slider to show and the speed at which the carousel loops. You can hide specific posts you don’t want to be featured in, and you can display information such as the author’s name, publication date, and more for each slide.
WP Logo Showcase Responsive Slider
WP Logo Showcase Responsive Slider helps you create logo sliders for your web pages. If you want to showcase your main clients or partners on your website, you can do it with a slider instead of static images. This plugin helps you do this by creating interactive and eye-catching modules designed specifically for logos.
Slider by WD plugin
WD is one of the top WordPress slider plugins that is used completely free to create responsive sliders. In addition to creating sliders, this plugin allows you to quickly load and SEO, which you can easily add your sliders to posts, pages, titles, sidebars, and other places.
You can add your own video and video sliders with different display effects. But more advanced features such as effects and multifunction sliders are not available in the free version.
Slider by WD also supports the slider feature for touchscreen devices, which is one of the strengths of this plugin. However, it should be noted that the built-in slide options are not as convenient as Soliloquy. To embed a slider in posts and pages, you need to copy the slider shortcode and paste it wherever you want, while Soliloquy lets you add it directly to your site via the post editor itself and the “Add Slider” button.
Wonder Slider plugin
Wonder Slider WordPress Slider is a simple and responsive WordPress slider plugin. This plugin is available in both free and premium versions. If you choose the free version, a watermark or brand of this plugin will be added to your slider, which will lead to a link to the main site of this plugin.
WonderPlugin WordPress Slider supports images, YouTube videos, Vimeo, mp4, and WebM as well as WordPress posts. You can create horizontal and vertical slides with thumbnails and easily embed them on your site.
The great thing about this plugin is that it has a very special user interface that helps you to create your slider easily step by step.
Smooth Slider plugin
Using the Smooth Slider plugin, you can create beautiful and attractive sliders with a rotating structure for your WordPress sites. This program is designed specifically for WordPress CMS, so this plugin provides a very simple and user-friendly interface to WordPress users.
This plugin helps you to create a variety of sliders such as text, video, and video sliders. You can easily use the images in your WordPress media gallery and create slides. To make your sliders look unique, this plugin lets you customize typography, transfer speed, effect, background color, slider height, width, and more.
After creating the slider, you can add them to your site using a shortcode, widget, or template tag. You can also transfer sliders to other sites with full settings.
The best premium WordPress slider plugin
Slider Revolution plugin
Slider Revolution is a best-selling slider plugin for WordPress. It has an intuitive editor that allows you to easily create custom sliders for your site.
This plugin is fully responsive, so any slider you create is fully compatible with all screen sizes. It also offers true multimedia support.
One of the problems that can be considered for this plugin is the problem of user comfort. So that compared to other plugins, it has a complex design and settings.
Depicter slider plugin for WordPress
Most WordPress slider plugins today are several years old, while Depicter was just released in 2022. It uses advanced technologies such as Pure React, which makes it a new generation of sliders.
Depicter is a new semi-free plugin from the popular plugin author Master Slider. They have a lot of experience in creating slider plugins and from what we can see at Depicter they really know what their customers need. It offers a modern and easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor with all the features you need.
Responsiveness of this slider is created in the best way. And you can easily make sure it looks its best on all devices, whether desktop, tablet, or mobile. It gives you the option to edit your slider and apply changes only on mobile, tablet, or desktop.
By using the pre-designed templates of this slider, you can easily and in the shortest possible time set up a beautiful and light slider. It is possible to create and edit slides through drag and drop so that the user can easily create or edit them.
LayerSlider
LayerSlider is a high-quality, responsive WordPress slider plugin that offers easy-to-manage, customizable options and a wide range of useful templates.
This plugin offers more than 200 preset 2D and 3D slide transitions, easy drag and drop slider builder, simultaneous previews, timeline view, Google fonts, and a transition builder for custom animations.
This plugin also has built-in lazy load options that ensure your slider doesn’t affect your site’s load time. There are 13 built-in skins you can use for your sliders and three navigation styles as well as several slider styles to choose from.
RoyalSlider
RoyalSlider is a high-performance SEO-optimized WordPress slider plugin. This plugin helps you create a modern slider with both feature-rich and performance-oriented features.
You can use data from Flickr, 500px, or Instagram to populate your slider and add a featured image from your blog posts or WooCommerce store.
This plugin supports YouTube or Vimeo videos and allows you to create video galleries. The smart lazy loading feature ensures that your website is never slowed down by these sliders and you can add multiple sliders on the same page.
Master Slider
Master Slider is one of the most popular WordPress slider plugins. It’s a responsive, high-quality tool that offers a number of great features as well as dozens of ready-to-use templates.
What really sets Master Slider apart from the other slider plugins on this list is its ability to add HTML content in layers. This way, you can add text and images to your slider for further customization.
You can also use this WordPress slider plugin to create a full-screen slider with a video background. It helps you create an impressive web page with several interactive elements on it.
WordPress Slider Plugin by Supsystic
WordPress Slider Plugin by Supsystic is an easy-to-use and fully responsive WordPress slider plugin that helps you create and display professional-looking slides for your images and blog content.
To add sliders, just select the images or content you want to add and enter their title and description. You can then decide if you want them to appear as a post feed slider, video slider, or carousel.
The main features of the Supsystic slider plugin include a drag and drop interface, custom themes, shortcode support, subtitle support, and thumbnail slider. The pro version gives you additional features including a carousel, video, HTML layers, and post feeds.
Theia Post Slider for WordPress
With Theia Post Slider, you can add sliders to your WooCommerce pages, multi-page posts, and product descriptions.
There are over 200 slider themes and four transition effects to choose from. You can add headers and titles to your slides, and the interface offers a live preview to check your design before publishing.
Some additional features include unique slide URLs as well as AJAX and preloading to optimize speed. This helps SEO because users don’t have to reload pages every time an event is triggered. Instead, the page content is automatically updated using AJAX.
SlideDeck
With SlideDeck, you can create image slideshows using media content from WordPress, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Dribble, and Google Plus. This means you don’t have to download a file from one source and then re-upload it to another. SlideDeck simply loads the image from its original source.
This plugin offers a fully responsive design so that your sliders can easily adapt to any screen size. There are vertical and horizontal layouts as well as an image carousel that you can install on your page.
There is also an option to create a small slider that shows visitors a preview of your slides. This keeps users engaged as they see what’s on the next slide and click through your other slides to get to the one they want.
Social Slider Widget PRO
Social Slider Widget PRO allows you to display Instagram feeds anywhere on your WordPress site using shortcodes. You don’t need a license, so you don’t need an API key. All you have to do is enter a username and the results will be displayed.
You can adjust the size, number, and spacing of images and columns. You can display images as thumbnails or in full. The sliders created by this plugin are responsive.
GS Logo Slider
GS Logo Slider is another WordPress logo slider plugin. This plugin is very lightweight and won’t slow down your site, but it’s powerful enough to get the job done.
If you’re an agency, freelance photographer, or creative professional, this is a great tool to show potential clients and client partners you’ve worked with. E-commerce websites may use this slider to display the brands they have in their store.
WP Testimonial Slider & Showcase Pro plugin
If you want to improve customer trust in your brand, add testimonials to your site using the WP Testimonial Slider & Showcase Pro plugin. This excellent WordPress slider plugin does all the work for you and displays a slider layout or a grid of reviews and customer reviews in a sleek and modern design.
This plugin is fully responsive and works seamlessly on all screen sizes. It’s highly customizable and allows you to create unlimited shortcodes, set the color, specify the number of descriptions displayed per row, and add pagination.
You can also display testimonials at strategic points throughout your website to make them more visible to potential customers. This is possible because the plugin also supports widgets.
WordPress slider blocks plugin for Gutenberg
With the booming Gutenberg plugin market, there is often no need to have multiple plugins for sliders and multipurpose content tools.
Getwid plugin
Getwid plugin is a large library of WordPress Gutenberg blocks for different needs. Among the unique blocks and ready-made design templates, you can use several slider-based blocks.
