5 Best WordPress Slider Plugins - Performance + Quality (Comparison)

There are dozens of WordPress slider plugins available to you on the market. However, not all plugins are created equal. We found that most of them have poor performance or limited customization options.

What is a good WordPress slideshow plugin?

A good WordPress slider plugin should have a good balance between these features:

• easy-to-use: A user-friendly plugin interface is very important. The best slider plugins offer drag and drop generators and visual editors for easy slider creation.
• unresponsiveness: The plugin should offer a fully responsive design so that the slider can easily adapt to any desktop, tablet or mobile device.
• Customizability: The plugin should provide enough customization options to make the slider suitable for the website design. For example, transition effects, font options, custom animations, slider templates, etc.
• performances: Ideally, the plugin should be fast and not affect the page load time of the website. In this way, the site can be optimized for search engines in a fast and friendly way.
• Support for various media types: If you want to create testimonials or video sliders, then the plugin should ideally support media files other than images.

To summarize, the most suitable slider plugin for your WordPress blog or website depends on specific requirements, technical skills and budget. Therefore, it is recommended that you test the plugins you are going to use and see if any of them are suitable.

Now, let's take a look at a selection of the best WordPress slider plugins.

1. Soliloquy

Of all the WordPress slider plugins we've tried, Soliloquy is the fastest and most beginner-friendly.

To test the speed of the plugins, we installed each slider plugin on a WordPress demo site. We uploaded the same image to create a slider, didn't change any other settings, and embedded the slider on a blank WordPress page.

Then, we tested it using the Pingdom Speed Test tool. The result is as follows:

As you can see from the scores above, Soliloquy was the fastest loading WordPress slider in the test, followed by MetaSlider.Also, if you look at the results of the test, you'll see that Soliloquy increased the page size without affecting the speed.

Soliloquy also comes with a simple drag and drop user interface to create sliders. You can then change slider templates, resize images, adjust transition durations, and more.

If you know some code, you can also use custom CSS to further customize the slider.

Soliloquy Benefits.

• You can create various types of sliders without worrying about slowing down your WordPress site.
• Out-of-the-box mobile-friendly slider that supports touch swiping on mobile and tablet devices.
• In addition to images from your media library, you can create sliders using WooCommerce products, Instagram photos, PDF files, and post/page/custom post types.
• Many ways to embed sliders in WordPress posts or pages: shortcodes, Gutenberg editor blocks, old classic editor buttons and widgets.
• Various add-ons enable advanced features such as dynamic content support, lightboxes, right-click protection, thumbnail navigation and more.

SoliloquyThe downside:

• The free plugin can only create simple image slideshows. Therefore, we recommend upgrading to the premium version to take full advantage of its features.

2. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery This gallery plugin comes with a slideshow plugin that turns lightbox galleries into beautiful slideshows. Multiple images can be displayed in a normal lightbox gallery. When the user clicks on an image in the gallery, he can use the slider to browse through different images.

The Slideshow plugin is very easy to use. You can set the slideshow to play automatically when opened, pause the slideshow when the cursor hovers over it, and configure the speed of the slideshow.

Envira Gallery offers several gallery layouts to choose from. You can choose an automatic layout so that the gallery automatically adjusts its layout according to the number of images. Alternatively, the square layout can simulate a social media photo feed.

It is also possible to enable lazy loading so that the gallery doesn't drag your pages down. In this way, you can maintain stable, fast performance and ensure that your website is conducive to search engine optimization.

Envira GalleryThe Pros:

• Easy to use slideshow plugin that converts lightbox galleries into image sliders.
• Beautifully laid out gallery out of the box.
• The delayed loading feature prevents web page slowdowns.
• Phone-specific settings to make sure slideshows look good on smartphone screens, such as setting custom sizes for galleries.
• Right-click protection ensures that unauthorized users cannot save images.

Envira GalleryThe downside:

The Slideshow plugin supports images only.

3. MetaSlider

MetaSlider is one of the most popular WordPress slider plugins on the marketIf all you want to do is create a simple image slider, then the free version will suffice. The drag-and-drop creator lets you create a slideshow or carousel using images from your media library or the free image library Unsplash.

The live preview feature makes it easy to see how the slideshow will look after publishing.

However, its Pro version is the real powerhouse. MetaSlider Pro supports various types of slideshow content, such as images, videos, articles, e-commerce products, and even HTML.

In addition, MetaSlider can hide slides or show different slides when viewed on a mobile device. As a result, you can display slides that work best on small screens.

Benefits of MetaSlider:

• User-friendly drag-and-drop builder with live previews that connects to the WordPress media library and Unsplash.
• Supports various types of slideshow content, including images, products, and HTML.
• Adjust slide show settings for mobile browsing, such as hiding slides or using different slides on mobile devices.
• A variety of professional slide layouts are available.
• The Scheduled Slideshow feature allows slideshows to be visible only on specific dates, which is useful for online stores that want to showcase special offers or seasonal promotions.

Cons of MetaSlider:

• As with Soliloquy, the Pro version is required to use its full functionality.

4. Smart Slider 3

This WordPress slideshow plugin contains 11 free slideshows with support for images, text, videos, buttons and more. It's also possible to layer each content element, such as adding text to images. This makes it a great tool for creating presentations in WordPress.

It's a great choice if you want users to not only browse the slideshow content, but also interact with it, such as clicking a button to read an article or view a product. The user interface itself is very different from the other options in the list. The editing interface looks a bit like a photo editor.

Smart Slider 3merits

• The free plugin offers specialized slider layouts, from full-width sliders to sliders with thumbnail navigation.
• The Layers feature stacks elements together on a single slide.
• Support for dynamic content, which can be sourced from external sources such as YouTube or Facebook.
• Advanced parallax effects make the slider even more compelling.

Cons of Smart Slider 3::

• The rich customization settings and photo editing-like user experience may make it difficult for beginners to get started.

5. Master Slider

Finally there's Master Slider, a free WordPress slideshow plugin. Like many of the other plugins on the list, it comes with a drag-and-drop interface for rearranging slide content.

The free version only supports images, but you can personalize it with your choice of slider controls such as arrows, tabs or bullets. It also includes built-in caching and smart preloading features to make the slider run faster.

On the other hand, the Pro version includes more features such as full-width and full-screen layouts, custom slider templates, tooltips, and even a slideshow video background feature. This last feature can make a great first impression on visitors when they land on the page.

Benefits of Master Slider::

• Drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to move slider content.
• Speed optimization features such as caching and preloading.
• Comprehensive set of professional features to customize sliders to your liking, such as 90+ advanced sliders, advanced transition effects, slideshow video backgrounds, tooltips and more.
• Slideshows from WooCommerce, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo are supported.

Cons of Master Slider:

• Some users have complained that the plugin often asks them to leave comments and ratings in the WordPress.org repository, which is bad and needs attention.

summarize

I hope this article has answered your questions about the best WordPress slider plugin. There are many more articles about useful plugins for WordPress websites that you can learn about.