If you are looking for ideas on how to improve the visitor experience on your WordPress website, why not getting a slider plugins. Not only do they assist to highlight the central content on a page — but they also display it in a visually and interactive format. Furthermore using a slider plugin isn’t that hard the only real big issue is finding a plugin that works seamlessly with your theme.

So if you are curious in adding a slider to your site, start with knowing how to use a slider so it will not cause problems on your website. Then, take a look at the top features we like and the best WordPress slider plugins to choose from.

What to Look for within a Slider Plugin

Firstly not all slider plugins are coded equally. There are many slider plugins for WordPress, so you are bound to come across a few failures.

This WordPress Wednesday post is here today so you don’t choose and pay for a slider plugin that comes with unnecessary tools that is found on the interface. While on the other hand, this post is here so don’t settle down and select a plugin that is a limited slider just because it’s more affordable or its the first option you find.

Here are some features that are most valuable:

• There are slider templates that provide designs for many industries that help you get started immediately.
• Drag and drop, or at least visual page builders that allow for beautiful slider designs without coding.
• Responsive elements that either looks good on all devices
• A library of design elements such as background images, icons, videos that are here to transform your ideas into striking visuals.
• Compatibility with WordPress themes and major plugins, along with add-ons and integrations that link to the software.
• Social media integrations to instantly share your recent posts and send people to your social media accounts.
• Numerous animations to bring user eyes to certain areas of the slider.
• Support for media and rich content like video and images.
• Optimisation tools such as lazy loading and image optimisation.
• Previews to see exactly what the slider looks like before publishing it on your site.
• Quick image editing, such as cropping.

So let’s start with the 6 WordPress Slider plugins.

1. Master Slider

Master Slider is one of the most popular slider plugins for WordPress. It is a responsive, and high-quality slider plugin. This plugin offers quite many features and has over 25 ready-to-use templates.

Talking more about the features Master Slider has a super smooth interface to build slides with animations on a timeline. The drag and drop builder offers a simplistic design process for newcomers and the real-time previews give full control.

Master Slider has a free, for the core plugin. Like many other plugins on the market they do have a premium versions that starts at $17.00 for it’s jQuery Edition or$24.00 for WordPress Pro Edition, also there are updates and support which are free forever, so there is no need to pay for a annual renewal fee.

Other valuable features:

• Support for YouTube and Vimeo videos.
• SEO-friendly elements with fields for markups and headings.
• Visual style editor with access to Google Fonts and an import feature for bringing in custom CSS.
• WooCommerce Integration, so you can have sliders that showcase your products.

2. MetaSlider

MetaSlider is widely used, essentially because it offers an easy option to create a beautiful slider with images directly from your WordPress media library.

Features include templates and have a few preset modules, include a post feed, layer slider, and video slider. This is one of the more popular WordPress slider plugins, notably due to the free version, but also because the plugin provides intelligent image cropping and other editing tools. There is unrestricted support for all types of images and slides, including captions and alt text.

The back-end incorporates visual building features, sadly it doesn’t have a full drag-and-drop builder. But you can modify the theme, effects, and sizes. The MetaSlider plugin enables the users to begin from scratch and present a basic gallery that jumps from one image to another.

MetaSlider offers a free version or you can upgrade to the premium version for $39.00, this price is for 1-2 websites, pricing will increases as you add more sites.

Other valuable features:

• SEO support for tagging images and inserting metadata
• YouTube and Vimeo integrations
• A library of templates and demos to start the slider process

3. Royal Slider

Royal Slider takes a practical approach, rendering features that are essential for making a simple slider. You will find advanced options such as Flickr integration and simple HTML slides.

Also, this plugin includes a feature that let you connect to services like Flickr, so it can leave all the work for Royal Slider to place them in your sliders and make them look good.

Other features include over ten templates and five skins. So you can pair that with hundreds of options so it appears like Royal Slider is a fairly feature-packed WordPress plugin. And it’s a straightforward slider creator that also allows for custom CSS styles with the click of a button.

You purchase Royal Slider from Code Canyon so you know it only has one price point: at $19.00, the only change is due if you want to extend your customer support.

Other valuable features:

• Built-in editing tools, some of which function automatically, while others are meant for manual adjustments
• The plugin also supports embedding with PHP.
• UX boosters such as smart lazy loading and auto-playing.
• Integrations with eCommerce platforms.

4. Slider by 10Web

Slider by 10Web has a myriad of features for enhancing your user engagement with sliders. The customisation tools help with adjusting colours, effects and CSS elements. Also, with this slider, you can grab a user attention by adding blog posts or adding optimised preset designs.

This is an easy to configure plugin that has support for unlimited slides and sliders, and you can include multiple layers and add all the transitions you want.

The preset designs from Slider by 10Web provides a portfolio of layouts to select from, including filmstrip, carousels, 3D sliders, and zoom sliders. The video sliders link to outside services, and the parallax functionality adds a bit of creativity without the bulkiness of other effects.

Like others on the list of slider plugin, the core of this plugin is free, while it also does offer premium version starts at $20.00 and goes up to $40 depending on the features and amount of support you need. All plans come with one year of support and updates, so renewing is required.

Other valuable features:

• A drag and drop interface for managing slides
• Video slides that integrate with popular services like YouTube and Vimeo.
• Customisable tools for all sliders.
• Over 23 effects that are included with the plugin.

5. Smart Slider

Smart Slider contributes a clean designer, various pre-made templates, and an editor with drag and drop modules.

The plugin offers responsive elements, beautiful themes and integrations like YouTube and WooCommerce. Smart Slider has animation effects where it comes in handy for constructing timelines, allowing you to add animations etc.

The plugin has a niche in the eCommerce function, as it gets products and helps with adding a button to sell those items.

Smart Slider sells for $35.00, this supports one site and is a one-time payment, while the Business plan goes to $150 for ten sites, and there is an unlimited plan is $250 for no restrictions on the number of sites. How ever there is also a free version for WordPress and also Joomla here

While you can find documentation and a community group to chat with others.

Other valuable features:

• Multiple project types to extend your range of designs.
• Dynamic content linking
• Well over 180 templates for various industry and design categories.
• SEO-friendly tools to optimise your images
• A drag and drop editor with a modern and clean interface.
• Live previewing and responsive editing
• Export/import features

6. Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution is one of the most popular slider plugins for WordPress, with just under a half of million of sales and great user reviews through CodeCanyon. You can also purchase the plugin over on the ThemePunch website who are the developers of this plugin.

The plugin features unbelievable visual elements and themes made to look just like an expert designer was on the job. The Slider Revolution plugin encompasses every element of a slider plugin you’ll ever need, this plugin was primary been built for developers as a beginner can try it out, but there’s a learning curve.

Pricing starts at $29.00 per year for one website, while there is other plans include the $70.00 per year option and goes up to thousands per year depending on how many websites you plan to use it for. While featuring on the CodeCanyon site it lists the Slider Revolution at $59.00, so you are better off purchasing it directly from the ThemePunch website.

Other valuable features:

• Over 200 templates for slider categories like hero slides, special effects slides, and carousels.
• Full media asset library to add all types of layer groups, images, videos, and icons.
• Responsive sliders that snap into place on smaller devices.
• A timeline to customise your animations, movements, and slider lengths.
• Preview tools
• One-click updates.
• Linking to social media accounts.
• Image optimisation and lazy loading.