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There’s not enough space!
This is a common complaint for WordPress users.
You have multiple eCommerce deals to promote or important stories to feature on the homepage, but there’s not enough space for all of them.
That’s where the slider comes in.
Sliders allow you to reuse the same space with multiple offers.
And if you’re familiar enough with WordPress, you’ll know by now that there’s a plugin for everything. Sliders are no different.
In fact, there are a ton of slider plugins to pick from. In this post, I’ve selected the slider plugins for WordPress that I think stand out from the rest in terms of functionality and ease-of-use.
If you want a great design to go with the slider, consider getting one of these slider WordPress themes.
Best WordPress slider plugins
This collection includes free, freemium, and premium slider plugins. You can use any one of them to add image sliders and slideshows to your site.
These are my top picks for the best slider plugins in 2019.
1. Smart Slider 3
Plugin Description
Smart Slider 3 is the most advanced free slider plugin on the market. It comes jam-packed with customization options and features, but really stands out due to its design quality.
The sliders in Smart Slider 3 look awesome out-of-box. Even better, the style editor is very intuitive and easy to use. You can preview your customizations live as you make them which helps to streamline the styling process.
Smart Slider 3 is mobile-friendly and even allows for swiping on mobile devices to navigate sliders instead of simply tapping the arrows and navigation buttons. If you want to take things to the next level, there is a premium option available with even more slider types, effects, and more.
2. Ultimate Blocks
Plugin Description
Ultimate Blocks is a free Gutenberg blocks plugin that comes with several useful content blocks for the Gutenberg editor. One of these blocks is an Image Slider, which lets you create beautiful sliders and slideshows on your website.
The image slider block in the plugin is highly customizable and lets you change the slide transition, pagination style, image wrapping, slider height, and more. It’s also fully responsive so that your image slider looks perfect on mobile devices too.
Overall, the image slider in the Ultimate Blocks plugin is perfect for Gutenberg users who want to create sliders natively inside the editor and not use any shortcodes or PHP.
3. Soliloquy
Plugin Description
Soliloquy is a premium and feature-rich WordPress plugin. It includes every feature you could want from a slider including:
- WooCommerce product sliders
- Lightboxes
- Instagram feeds
- Carousel gallery sliders
- and more
The menus are well-organized and making new sliders is quick and painless. And of course, all images are presented beautifully in fully responsive sliders.
If you don’t mind paying for a solution, Soliloquy may be the best slider plugin available on the market.
4. Meta Slider
Plugin Description
Meta Slider is an awesome slider plugin and one that I’ve recommended to many of my theme users. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and the sliders look great.
Meta Slider actually includes four different sliders in it:
- Flex Slider 2
- Nivo Slider
- Responsive Slides
- Coin Slider
This way, you can pick the image slider that looks and works best for every slideshow you add to your WordPress site.
The premium version includes some awesome features like post feed sliders and Youtube video slides.
5. SlideDeck
Plugin Description
SlideDeck is a special kind of slider plugin. Instead of just creating standard image sliders, you can use this plugin to create slide decks from presentations.
This SEO-friendly gives you a complete interface to create your slides. You have full control over the design of every slide including the template, typography, and images you use. You can even pull in content from social media and display videos from Youtube and Vimeo.
6. Text Slider
Plugin Description
Text slider is a bit different. This slideshow plugin creates sliders with text, rather than with images. It may not be appropriate for your slideshow, but it is a great plugin for anyone looking for a text-only slider.
You can add the sliders you create to any page or post on your site with the simple shortcode. Developers will also appreciate the PHP function for outputting sliders. This mean you can create the slider entirely in Text Slider and then retrieve and output it in a template file without needing to entirely code the slider.
7. Revolution Slider
Plugin Description
Revolution Slider might be the most full-featured and advanced slider plugin on the market.
As a premium option, it comes with more customization tools than Soliloquy but is more complex. There is a lot to learn with this plugin, so if you want a plugin to quickly set up and start using, you’re probably better off with Easing Slider or Meta Slider. However, you can’t beat Revolution Slider in terms of options and flexibility.
8. Nivo Slider
Plugin Description
Nivo Slider is a premium slider plugin offered by Theme Isle. It includes 16 different transition effects and four themes to choose from. It adapts well to mobile devices and can automatically crop images to ensure they fit all screen sizes well.
While you can get Nivo Slider from the Meta Slider plugin, you’ll get support and new updates from the developers at Theme Isle if purchased from them. Ongoing support and updates ensures the Nivo Slider plugin stays compatible with WordPress as new versions come out.
9. Easing Slider
Plugin Description
Easing Slider is a beautifully made slider plugin. It’s been designed to be the easiest slider plugin to install and use with WordPress. The admin menus are well-designed and intuitive, so you can get up and running with this plugin fast.
The sliders have a handful of style options available and work on desktop and mobile devices. There are also some nice additional features like lazy loading for the sliders which can enhance your page speed.
10. Responsive Slider
Plugin Description
Responsive Slider is a reliable image slider plugin from AlienWP.
The sliders include all the essential options such as dot and arrow navigation, as well as linkable text overlays. While you don’t need to write any code to make this plugin work, it doesn’t come with any built-in style customization options. WordPress users who are comfortable with CSS will find it easy to customize the sliders with a bit of code.
Which slideshow plugin is best for you?
With so many options available, it can be tough to pick out the best solution for your site.
The slider plugins showcased above are the top options available, and cover a wide variety of uses.
If you’re having trouble selecting a WordPress slider plugin for your site then post a comment below.
