Using a slideshow plugin is an easy way to show off the work your company has been doing. WordPress Slideshow plugins have become a massive part of the modern web development world in the past few years. They serve as a great way to engage with your potential clients right from the get-go. There are so many factors when considering what is the best possible slideshow plugin for your website. Chief among your concerns should be responsiveness. Is the plugin you’re using responsive and functional on all devices? Because even if it looks great on mobile, you will want to make sure your main website isn’t suffering.
The inclusion of a slider plugin may be a common occurrence for the average designer, but for a lot of general website users it can really help show off your entire story in an easily digestible format. They are the best way to promote a lot of picture content in a very short amount of time. But actually finding the best WP slider plugin can be a real hassle, and finding the great ones with a lot of functionality like responsiveness and widgets can be even harder. Luckily we are here to give you a list of our top 5 plugins for your WordPress site:
5. Smooth Slider
The smooth slider plugin really does live up to its name. It provides a smooth experience for the developer as well as for the users on your website. The slider options are great and provides as large variety of carousel options to use when customizing what displays. The plugin is built entirely with WordPress users in mind, so you may have trouble using it on different platforms. We would recommend considering a different option if you’re looking for the same thing on a different CMS.
Smooth slider features all of the same features you will find with any of the top slider plugin options. You can pull images from your WordPress media, use short codes, add in customized text, as well as separate code. It will all fit together to look great in almost every case. However, it doesn’t quite have as many features as the sliders further down in our list. They do take a solid position at number 5!
This slider supports short codes, widgets, and tags. It will embed automatically in a page builder, but you have other options for integration as well!
4. Slider WD
Slider WD is great because the free plugin has almost all the features any new WordPress user could possibly want for their website. Their premium option is something for advanced users, so you don’t need to worry about breaking the bank with Slider WD. It is also one of the easiest slider plugins to embed into your page even outside of WordPress, so this is our go to when working in a lighter theme or something without a page editor. It functions incredibly well compared to many of the other alternatives. Which is why it has made it to the number four spot out of the hundred alternatives.
They are well-known for their video sliders which have great transitions and effects without doing too much to slow down your page speed excessively. The paid version expands on these features even more with buttons, social sharing options, and much more. So this plugin stands as one of our favorites for responsive video sliders. The only downfall with this plugin is that a lot of work has to be done to get the slider onto the page as it only uses short codes and doesn’t have the functionality that other sliders like Slider Revolution and Soliloquy have where you can link directly onto the page from your WordPress dashboard.
3. Smart Slider 3
Smart slider 3 is the latest iteration of the smart slider family, and it certainly boast a solid modern features list. Smart slider is known for continuing with all the best features of the past while innovating into the future and Smart slider 3 shows that off to the fullest extent. It holds the spot right before the two titans of our list for good reason. It has a free and premium versions which both offer all the features previously mentioned included support for SEO related embeds that are necessary for anyone that wants to make a difference in their site traffic. It is only really beaten by our top two because they are easier to use. We may very well see smart slider 3 at the top of the list in coming years!
Smart Slider three is a great WP plugin for news and blogging sites. They have a built in system which allows you to promote your recent articles anywhere on the web page. This is probably one of the best features in this plugin and played a significant role in why we ranked it third. Smart Slider 3’s premium version takes all the features listed and brings their customization levels up to unstoppable levels. Letting users customize everything in multi-layer formats. A really great slider plugin all around.
2. Rev Slider
Slider revolutions shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has worked with WordPress sliders in the best. Slider revolution will absolutely top many of the lists online when it comes to best WordPress slider plugin, however recently some issues with the plugin have dropped it down to number two on our list. While is is still one of the best slider plugins to have ever graced WordPress sites around the world it lacks some of the responsive aspects that push Soliloquy one notch above it. Many of the problems with rev slider are impossible to see unless you’re a developer, so the average WordPress user will never have a single issue with this titanic plugin.
Their built in responsiveness systems are nearly unparalleled, with support from the moment you install that will make all of your build function on devices in a huge range. The way they handle breakpoints makes those small tweaks even easier, and rev slider has saved us a lot of hours that would otherwise require more in-depth tweaking.
But, it tends to fail in some places on user friendliness and we’ve noticed that it can occasionally make an abnormal level of requests that severely slow down your website. So a lot of our clients have come to us asking why their website is so slow, and rev slider plays a role in those issues. Which is why there is a new slider at the top of the pile.
1. Soliloquy
Our winner and an all around excellent slider! It has every feature that you can find on the rest of the list while still being one of the easiest and most responsive options. It has great in-depth customization that is only found in the very pinnacle of slider plugins. We are huge fans of Soliloquy and what they’ve been doing to make sliders more functional and more reliable as an option on web pages. We nerd out over how well this slider has been coded for use in WordPress, it keeps your website fast while still letting you create stunning visual masterpieces in WordPress. If you’re worried about page speed there is a full list of slider plugins with their page speed.
It is extremely user friendly and will let you directly embed your built slider right into the page, with none of the hassle from equivalent plugins. Soliloquy is our winner and we expect to see even more cool things from them in the future!
Conclusion
A slider is a great to way to breath new life into a page meant just for the boring world of sales. You can add in visuals that really capture the attention of your users and show off whatever amazing product you’ve been working so hard on. Ignoring the revolution in sliders in the last few years is an absolute tragedy. Make sure you keep up to date on your slider plugin, get that responsiveness going and build something awesome. We would love to see some of your creations, contact us with what you’ve made and we would be happy to feature it in a future blog!
