Good content is the key to a website’s success, but how do you make your visitors interested in your website? You would require sliders, they can showcase your best content, product or services in an efficient and engaging manner. Sliders are a webpage element that gives a dynamic feel to your website and arrests your visitor’s attention instantly.

Not all themes have an option to display a slider, you would require a slider plugin to create sliders for your website. But finding a perfect slider plugin can be very difficult, especially when you have hundreds of options. There are a number of free and premium plugins that are perfect for beginners or even designers. I have rounded up a list of some of the best free and premium slider plugins for your WordPress websites.

Soliloquy Lite

Soliloquy Lite is a responsive, intuitive and easy to use slider plugin that allows you to create sliders in just a matter of few minutes. The plugin is completely responsive and allows swiping for touch enabled devices. The plugin is search engine optimized, it allows you to add metadata within each slides for better SEO rankings. After you have customized your image and published it, the plugin allows you to display the slider anywhere you want in your theme through the shortcode.

The Soliloquy Lite version is packed with necessary features, but the theme also has a premium version ($19+) if you want to go for more slider features.

Meta Slider

Meta Slider is one of the most popular slider plugin, the plugin is fast and pulls images from your WordPress media library to instantly create sliders. Meta slider gives you the option to choose from its four jQuery sliders- Flex Slider 2, Nivo Slider, Responsive Slides, Coin Slider. You can create a slider in a matter of seconds and also optimize it for search engines. The slides can be inserted into widgets or you can also include anywhere on the site with the shortcodes.

The free version has enough features to make it worth trying out but, you can also upgrade to the Meta Slider Pro ($19+) to get features like video slides, HTML Slides, animated layer slides, thumbnail navigation and much more.

Cyclone Slider 2

Cyclone Slider 2 is an intuitive and easy to use plugin, designed for the casual users. The plugin comes with a drag and drop interface which allows everyone to work around the plugin with ease. Cyclone Slider 2 is quite flexible and comes with endless customization possibilities, you can add unique settings for each slides, add transition effects, create unlimited sliders and display anywhere. The plugin allows you to create responsive slides and also supports HTML, video and testimonial slides.

This free plugin is a great alternative to premium sliders to a similar set of features, certainly worth a try.

SlideDeck 2 Lite

SlideDeck 2 Lite is a responsive slider plugin, apart from this it offers all the essential features that one requires to create slides. The plugin allows you to pull content from various sources such as Pinterest, Flickr, Youtube, and WordPress posts. The plugin allows you to create sliders out of any content such as images, videos in just a few clicks and you can also apply different styles to each slider with 3 lenses available in the lite version.

The premium version available at $49+ comes with a complete set of 14 content sources and it also has more lenses to change the look and feel of your slides as per your requirement.

Easing Slider

Easing Slider is a light-weight, easy to use, free plugin that allows you to create a beautiful slider that looks great on all devices including iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The plugin is extremely light-weight and features CSS3 transitions, preloading functionality on page load, visual editor to style your sliders, bulk image uploading to create a single slider.

The plugin also has a premium version available at $19.99+, the pro version offers more features such as Vimeo, Youtube playback and technical support.

Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution is the best-selling slider plugin on Codecanyon and it has all the reasons to be there. Slider Revolution is an incredibly powerful plugin, you can create responsive slides from your images, videos, posts, HTML content layer and more. The plugin has drag and drop builder that will enable anyone to create professional looking slides with any coding. The plugin offers tons of customization possibilities and gives you full control over styles, transitions and animations.

The best part is the speed, it loads fast so that your visitors need not wait for the content to appear. The plugin, available at $19 is packed with features and has it all, from SEO optimization to responsive design to YouTube support and much more.

LayerSlider

LayerSlider is a solid package available at $18, not only it allows you to create amazing content sliders, you can also add image galleries and slideshows with must-see effects. The plugin comes with 13 built-in skins, over 200 predefines 2D and 3D transition styles, 3 navigation types. Layerslider offers tons of customization options and lets you to achieve the look and feel you want.

You can any content to the sliders including images, videos, custom HTML, text and more. The plugin is responsive, supports touch navigation, optimized for search engines and it is cross browser compatible for great experience everywhere.

Slider Pro

Slider Pro is a powerful plugin that has an intuitive interface and allows you to create fully-responsive, professional sliders with ease. You can pull content from galleries, Flickr or posts to create sliders. The plugin is available at $29, but it is worth the shot with features like touch-swipe, smooth animation, carousel layout, lazy loading, SEO optimization and much more.

Final Word

Sliders make your website more engaging, I have tried to include the best slider plugins to the list. If you know of an awesome that should make to this list, tell us in the comments section below!