Have you ever thought of adding a beautiful slider to your WordPress site? When done in the right way WordPress sliders can bring amazing results for your site and make it more engaging, interactive and popular. So the question arises, which one to choose? As there are so many options in the market that one doesn’t know which one is better than others. You don’t make to make the wrong choice as doing so can bring bad consequences for your site. Here is a list of best WordPress slider plugins to choose from.

Before reviewing the list remember the comparison parameters that can help you make the right decision. Yes, sliders help in increasing the attractiveness of your site but in some cases, it can even slow down your site and create other problems for you as well.

Responsive plugin–  You have to make sure that your plugin if fully responsive as more people are using small-screen handheld devices to browse the internet your sliders must be compatible with mobile handsets. It allows user to operate their site anytime and anywhere. If you don’t do it for you probably with loose a lot of opportunities.

Easy interface– it is an old saying that always keep things simple, there are several plugins in the market but only a few plugins offer user-friendly interfaces. There is no need to pretend smartness and choose a complicated plugin as that will create a lot of confusion and you’ll lose a lot of important things during the learning process of how to use the plugin. This is not smart it is just wastage of time and effort as you are not here to be a techie, you simply run a website so why don’t you stick to your part and bring the best out of it.

Speed–  this is something you can never compromise on, as slow speed means no traffic. It’s often reported that slider plugins slow down websites and increase loading time for your webpages. This will affect the SEO, user experience, and the overall growth of your business.

Soliloquy (premium)

Let’s start with the best option in the market, Soliloquy. Based on the test done on above-mentioned parameters, it gave excellent results. It’s fully responsive, easy to use and comes with good speed.

Soliloquy is created with a user-friendly interface that helps you create sliders with ease. It allows you to use images from your media library on Word press and permits to configure your slider settings and publish them. Once you have created your slider, you can insert the slider in your pages and post easily without any hassle. Moreover, you can add the slider in different parts of your website by using various tools. Soliloquy Lite is the free version of Soliloquy, available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You can test it out for free and make upgrades. Soliloquy Lite was created for those who just want to get some user experience of slider plugin. So it is limited to a certain limit. Soliloquy offers paid plans as well, personal plan at $19, multi-plan at $49, developer plan at $99 and master plan at $249. Based on the plan you choose, your features will either increase or decrease.

Pros

1. Soliloquy Lite is its free version to new users
2. Mobile optimization
3. Easy user-interface
4. High speed
5. Various plans to choose from

Cons

1. Soliloquy lite is just a slider for namesake, you wouldn’t have access to add-ons and advance features
2. Plans offered lacks a lot of features and you will get high performing features only if you buy expensive plans

Download and Demo

Slider Revolution (premium)

Slider Revolution is the most popular WordPress slider plugin in the market. It is empowered with a powerful visual editor using which you can easily create, and customize sliders in WordPress. It is fully responsive and shows amazing results in both desktops and handsets. One noteworthy point is its multi-media support slider feature, using which you can use images, social media feed, videos and more from your WordPress. Contrary to this, it is less user- friendly. You may have to struggle by going to the list of your sliders to find a code for adding a slider. So it is quite difficult to use for the beginners and they may need to invest both time and efforts to understand its features and functions.

Pros

1. If you’re looking for a complete, all-in-one solution to create a slider, images and videos than Slider Revolution is the best
2. Its basic plan starts at $26, including ads ons
3. Slider Revolution comes with endless customization possibilities

Cons

1. Lacks speed and may cause the website to slow down
2. No free version

Download and Dem

Layerslider (premium)

Layerslider is a popular Slider plugin for WordPress. It is a bit advanced plugin than others on the list and comprised with lots of powerful features to create sliders, animated landing pages, image galleries with effects,  page blocks, or even a full website.

Layerslider comes with its drag and drop interface for building sliders.  Its interface is not for beginners so be prepared to spend some days to understand its know-how.

One of the best things about this plugin is that that it permits you to add a variety of transitions and animations in your sliders. Roughly around 200 slide transitions and animations are available for you to choose from. Not only this, but it also provides you with premium slider templates that can be used for both personal and professional websites. Its pricing starts at $25 and is available at CodeCanyon marketplace.

Pros

1. Full width, responsive images on the slider
2. Easy to rearrange slide order
3. A large number of transition and animation effects

Cons

1. Created slides cant be named
2. Cannot use full-width videos
3. No free version available

Download and Demo 

Royal Slider(premium)

Royalslider is another popular plugin in the CodeCanyon marketplace. It has an intuitive interface and better performance as its priority. It allows you to create responsive sliders for easy navigation. Various users have claimed that it gives amazing speed and SEO optimization. You can integrate your social media accounts like Instagram and flicker with it to add pictures in your sliders. Lastly, it supports Youtube and Vimeo for creating more attractive sliders. In respective of, all its good part it has certain drawbacks when it comes to its advance feature. The features related to animation and images editing are not as advance as Layslider.   Royal Slider license comes with 6 months of support and future updates, which can be extended up to 12 months for an additional $7.13. It offers 2 plans;

• $23for Regular License
• $115for Extended License

Pros

1. The slider is mobile-friendly, with touch swipe navigation
2. Offers solid performance, accessibility, and stability
3. Easy interface for beginner
4. Fully responsive and supports touch screen
5.  Amazing tech support

Cons

1. Lacks important features in comparison to its competitors
2. Doesn’t offer timeline mode
3. Only one site per license- no multiple licenses for sites
4.  No free version

Download and Demo

Slider by 10 Web (free+premium)

Slider by 10 web is a freemium WordPress plugin to creating amazing and responsive sliders. This plugin allows you to create  SEO friendly sliders that you can add to your website at various places. You can easily add both images using different transition effects. Its free version is limited in features and you may want to upgrade to higher plans if you want to use features like Filmstrip, carousel and parallax effects. Moreover, its paid version offers you features like creating multi-functional sliders with text, video, image, hotspot and social media layer. It supports swipe control of touchscreen devices which makes it portable to use. However, it doesn’t allow direct adding of shortcode, unlike Solioqu, so its slider embed options can be improved.

Pros

1. Comes with the free version
2. Allows to create SEO friendly sliders

Cons

1.  Features in the free version are very limited, so you have to shift to upgraded plans sooner or later

Download and Demo

Meteor Slides (free)

Meteor Slides is a free slider plugin for WordPress that can be easily downloaded from the official WordPress page. You are allowed to use it on as many websites as you like.

Just like other plugins in the list, Meteor slides offers a mobile-friendly usage and supports touch navigation for mobiles and tablets. You can embed sliders using shortcodes, template tag or widget. Many features need improvement like, you cannot add videos to your sliders.

Pros

1. Free to use
2. Mobile-friendly usage
3. Embed sliders using shortcodes, template tag or widget

Cons

1. Improvement in features can be done
2. User-interface can be improved

Download and Demo

To conclude, sliders help to improve the attractiveness and engagement for your website. However, this is true that all the options in the market are not as good as they claim. This article includes the best Sliders for WordPress that you can choose from. You need to understand what is your need and then see which one is the right one for you. Most of the plugins in the list offer free trails so go ahead give it a try and make a purchase. Some premium plugins come with no trial so you need to make a purchase and then decided which one working good for you.