11 Best WordPress Slider Plugins for Beautiful Sections 2021

Are you looking for the best WordPress slider plugins for your website? If so, then you’ve landed at the right place.

Sliders are visually appealing and instantly creates an impact whenever a visitor visits a site. It’s a good choice for engaging visitors.

But on the flip side, its inclusion can slow down your site which negatively impacts your SEO and conversion rate. Thankfully with the right plugin, you don’t have to face such issues.

With that, you might be wondering how to choose the one that will be handy for you. Don’t worry! We’ve handpicked some of the best WordPress slider plugins for your WordPress site. So, let’s get into it!

Things to Consider While Choosing WordPress Slider Plugins

There are several things to look for in a WordPress image slider plugin. Some of the major ones are here. So, make sure your favorite plugin has it.

• Speed: Often it’s said that the use of the slider plugin makes the website slower. But that’s not always true. Some plugins are speed optimized, so won’t affect your site speed. Make sure to choose a fast-loading slider plugin.
• Responsive Design: Another crucial factor is responsive design. Responsive design means the ability of a website to adjust to all the screen sizes. So, make sure that your slider plugin is fully responsive and fits well on all devices. If it doesn’t then, you’ll surely lose your potential customers.
• Easy to Use: Lastly, it should be easy to use. Your go-to plugin should be user-friendly, and it shouldn’t give you a headache. If it isn’t easy to use, then it should be avoided.

So these are the main 3 things that you should check out before committing to a slider plugin. Let’s now dive into the list and get to know about the best 11 slider plugins.

11 Best Slider Plugins for WordPress (Free + Paid)

1. Slider Revolution

We’re getting started with our list with the Slider Revolution. It’s a premium plugin that is fully responsive on all devices. In terms of sales, it’s the most selling slider plugin in CodeCanyon. And, it’s one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever built.

No coding knowledge is required! It comes up with an optimized visual editor so you can create and customize the slides easily. The plugin includes an eye-friendly user interface and has tons of slider templates. It has improved loading speed. Plus, it’s a multi-media support slider.

Features:

• Ability to add multiple animations
• Many new templates and add-ons
• Live help within the editor
• Instant solutions at your fingertips
• 200+ Templates

2. Slider, Gallery, and Carousel by MetaSlider

With the active installation of over 800000, MetaSlider is one of the popular slider plugins of WordPress. It allows you to create an SEO-optimized slider, slideshow, or carousel in no time at all.

You can select the photos, images, or videos and just drag and drop them in one place. It’s as simple as that! Plus, it’s responsive on all screens. MetaSlider is a freemium plugin. And it’s compatible with the WordPress block editor(Gutenberg). Increase your site’s charm using MetaSlider!

Features

• Simple and easy-to-use
• Support for every type of content
• Optimized For Speed
• Powerful Editing Options
• Unsplash Integration

3. Smart Slider 3

By Nextend, Smart Slider 3 is yet another popular freemium WordPress plugin for creating sliders. It’s fully responsive, SEO-friendly, and works with any WordPress theme. How cool is that!

No need to worry about codes, simply select a slider template from the collection. And build however you want with its live editor. It has great features such as dynamic slides, layers, a slide library, and much more. Plus, it supports all the popular page builders.

Features

• Live Slide Editor
• Unique Layouts with layers
• Customizable Controls
• Beautiful sliders to start with
• Excellent Support

4. Master Slider

One of the most popular WordPress touch slider plugins is Master Slider. Basically, it supports touch navigation with a pure swipe gesture.

It’s a free slider plugin that is SEO optimized. Along with that, it’s fully responsive on all devices. The plugin works well on all the WordPress themes.

Features

• Easy-to-use interface
• Works well on all the popular browsers
• Touch Swipe Navigation
• Extremely User-Friendly Admin Panel
• Shuffle Ordering Slides Option

5. Slide Anything

Just another top-notch freemium WordPress carousel slider plugin is Slide Anything. With it, you can create beautiful, touch-enabled, responsive carousels and sliders.

If you switch to its pro version, you’ll get the extra features. Such as Modal Popups, Hero Slider, Thumbnail Pagination, and Showcase Carousel. It’s handy if you’re looking for a lightweight slider plugin.

Features

• Touch and Drag Support
• New Lazy Load Images
• New Transition Effects
• Slide Link Feature
• Drag and Drop Interface

6. Slider by Soliloquy

Soliloquy is one of the best slider plugins of WordPress. It allows you to create beautiful images and video sliders in a moment. 

It’s a drag and drop builder so it’s so easy to use. And it’s compatible with the new WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg block editor. Soliloquy is responsive, SEO friendly, and optimized for speed. Plus, you can get even more advanced features in its premium version.

Features

• Drag and Drop Responsive Builder
• Great for WooCommerce Products
• Featured Content
• LightBox
• Transition effects

7. Slider by 10Web

If you are looking for a responsive slider plugin for WordPress, then Slider by 10Web is the best one. You can add fast-loading, mobile-friendly, and SEO-optimized sliders to your site with this one.

This slider plugin is easy to set up and customize the way you want. Its free version comes up with unlimited sliders, multiple transitions, and layer effects, and much more. Take your website’s attraction to the next level with this slider plugin.

Features

• Unlimited Slides and Sliders
• Image Watermarking
• Parallax and Customer Support
• Slider Export/Import
• Supports Social Sharing

8. Ultimate Responsive Image Slider

True to the name, it’s a responsive image slider plugin for WordPress. The plugin is suitable for blogs. It lets you add infinite image slides in a single slider using a multiple-image uploader.

The best thing about this plugin is it gives you tons of features in the free version. It comes up with auto-play slides, slide thumbnails, navigation buttons, and much more. You can add unlimited slides to your blog and tweak it the way you want. With Ultimate Responsive Image Slider, you can do pretty much anything!

Features

• Fully Responsive Slider Plugin
• Image Slider Setting Dashboard
• Show Multiple Sliders Into Single Page/Post
• SEO Friendly Slider
• All Major and Latest Browser Compatible

9. LayerSlider

Another highly-rated WordPress responsive slider plugin is LayerSlider. It’s the ultimate solution for creating beautiful animations, breathtaking designs, and rich content for your site. This premium slider plugin is all-in-one, so with it, you can build almost anything!

It’s by far one of the most loved plugins for creating sliders. Forget coding and start using drag and drop! With it, you’ll save plenty of time. It comes up with 120+ slider templates and 200+ slide transitions. The plugin works with any web browser, WordPress theme, and page builder. Without any doubt, you can create professional-looking sliders with this plugin.

Features

• Cutting Edge Technologies
• 7 Layer Types
• Visual Transition Builder
• Responsive
• SEO friendly

10. WordPress Carousel

With the freemium WordPress Carousel, you’ll be able to create carousels with Images, Posts, and WooCommerce Products. You simply need to drag and drop the images or videos into one place.

WordPress Carousel is fully responsive, SEO friendly, and works well on all modern browsers. You can display Image carousel, Post carousel, and WooCommerce Product Carousel with this plugin.

Features

• Fully Responsive and Touch-friendly
• Lightweight, Fast and Powerful
• Extremely User-friendly Admin Panel
• Multiple Carousels
• Multisite Supported

11. WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel

Lastly, in our list, we’ve got a freemium slider plugin named WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel. With it, you can display multiple slick image sliders and carousels using shortcodes with category.

It comes up with features like swipe enabled, desktop mouse dragging, and infinite looping. The plugin is fully responsive and optimized for search engines.

Features

• Touch-enabled navigation
• Fully accessible with arrow key navigation
• Display unlimited number of slider and carousel with the help of category
• Added Gutenberg block support
• Given shortcode and template code

Should You Use Sliders? (Pros & Cons)

A slider is a popular web page feature. It’s a great way to display images, videos, audios, or add other various effects. Just like any other feature, it has its pros and cons.

Pros of Using Sliders

• A slider makes it a lot easier to fit the information in a small area.
• It draws attention.
• It’s a good option for engaging visitors.
• It’s effective for websites like photography, art, nature, etc.
• Highly beneficial for showcasing product photos.

Cons of Using Sliders

• Only 1% of people click on a slider.
• There is a higher chance of an important message getting ignored.
• It slows down the site, impacting SEO and conversion rates.
• It takes up too much space.
• Some sliders don’t work well on mobile devices.

Conclusion

So, that’s it! In this article, we’ve tried our best to shortlist some of the finest WordPress slider plugins for your site. We hope you liked it!

Sliders are a must if you’re a photographer running a site or you sell something online. Apart from that, we don’t think it’s that mandatory. Even if you had to use them, do it with the right plugin.

The right plugin will take care of everything so it won’t hurt your site. All of the plugins mentioned here are equally good, so you can pick one of them.

Also, check our article on best WordPress speed optimization plugins and also SEO plugins.

Still, you’ve any queries regarding the slider plugins? Then leave a comment below.

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