wordpress slider

Best WordPress Slider Plugins Compared - 2024

Last modified: May 28, 2023

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If you look at the majority of the professional built WordPress sites of the past few years, you will probably see a lot of similar design elements. One of those similar elements are sliders.

What is a slider?

If for some reason you don’t know what a WordPress slider is, here’s a short explanation. The phrase “Slider” comes from the word “slideshow” where images continuously appear and disappear for new ones. Sliders on websites are usually images set across the width of the site and automatically “slide” from one image to another every few seconds. In most cases, a user can click an arrow to scroll through the images if the slider is going too fast or slow for them. Additionally, there might be a few circles representing the amount of slides in the slider, clicking one of them will move to the one you want to see (according to the slider’s order).

Why Should You Use a Slider on WordPress Sites?

The fact that most websites use image sliders doesn’t mean they should be used. Many CRO companies are now very much against using image sliders on websites, claiming that they destroy websites’ conversion rates. See this article for example.

So the answer might actually be – you should not use a slider on your WordPress site.

Not convinced? I didn’t think so. Lets get to the list.

Top WordPress Slider Plugins

# Name Image
1
Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin
Slider revolution
More Info
2
LayerSlider Responsive WordPress Slider Plugin
LayerSlider Responsive WordPress Slider Plugin
More Info
3
Smart Slider 3
Smart Slider 3
More Info
4
RoyalSlider - Touch Content Slider for WordPress
RoyalSlider
More Info
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Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 seems to be the most powerful Free WordPress slider available on the WordPress repository at the moment.

Here is a tutorial to show you its abilities:

Some of Smart Slider 3’s abilities are:

  • A live editor that will help you get your slides in just right
  • Highly customizable – each layer can be uniquely designed to perfection
  • Mobile responsive
  • A variety of slide templates to begin with
  • Font manager
  • And much more

If you are looking for a simple plugin that gets the job done and best of all – is free, this is what you are looking for.

Download for free from the WordPress repository.

Conclusion

Even though CRO companies are against it, it will probably be many years until sliders disappear from the WordPress world, so if you are going to use a slider on your WordPress site, it’s probably best you use one of the plugins suggested here. Seeing as there are lots of slider plugins out there, if you use a plugin the you feel is better than the ones we suggested, let us know and we will take it into consideration.

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