Are you looking to make a great first impression on your website visitors? A WordPress carousel plugin might be just what you need.
Whether you’re running an eCommerce store and want to display new arrivals or a blogger looking to showcase your latest articles, a carousel slider can significantly enhance your website’s visual impact and visitor engagement.
We’ve done the heavy lifting — researching and testing tools to bring you the best WordPress carousel plugins on the market, saving you time and effort. In this article, we’ll compare their top features, pricing, and more to help you choose the perfect one for your needs.
What is a WordPress Carousel Plugin?
A WordPress carousel plugin is a tool designed to enable website owners to create interactive and visually appealing carousels on their WordPress sites. These plugins offer a variety of features aimed at enhancing the user experience by displaying multiple pieces of content, such as images, posts, products, or videos, in a rotating manner. These versatile tools serve multiple purposes including:
- Creating visually appealing image sequences
- Filling potentially awkward space on your pages
- Providing a visual break in your content
- Showcasing new products, latest blog posts, and testimonials
Many carousel plugins offer a variety of advanced features affecting speed, ease of use, and customization options. The right plugin can help you create carousels that are not only beautiful but also functional and optimized for performance.
Want to make a slideshow instead?
You can use Envira to make a gallery slideshow with thumbnail navigation! Check out our step-by-step tutorial to learn how.
How Do I Choose a WordPress Carousel Plugin?
With the number of carousel plugins available, it can be a daunting task to select the right one. Here are three things that you should consider when picking a plugin:
- Speed: Opt for a plugin that won’t slow down your website, as this can impact user experience and SEO. WPBeginner ran a test on various sliders plugins using the same images and settings. The results showed that Soliloquy (our #1 pick below) was the fastest, followed by MetaSlider.
- Ease of Use: Look for a plugin with a drag-and-drop feature for easier customization, especially if you’re new to WordPress. Most plugins offer a free version or trial for testing.
- Features and Pricing: For very simple carousels, there are a number of free plugins are available. If you need advanced functionalities like video slides and premium support, investing in a paid version with Pro features may be worthwhile.
Top WordPress Carousel Plugins
So, now that we understand the importance and versatility of carousel sliders, let’s explore some of the best options available to help you create stunning, interactive content displays.
1. Soliloquy
Soliloquy is our top choice among slider plugins, offering a perfect blend of user-friendliness and powerful features. This drag-and-drop carousel builder allows you to quickly create stunning, responsive image sliders and carousels that work flawlessly on all screen sizes.
Simply create a new slider and select the photos, galleries, videos, or other content you want to include. Then, check the box to enable the carousel layout and customize it to your liking. Soliloquy’s native slider block for Gutenberg makes embedding one or multiple carousels a piece of cake.
You can easily rearrange the order of your carousel items by clicking and dragging elements to your desired position. The plugin also includes several design templates that you can conveniently select from a drop-down menu, allowing you to match your carousel’s style to your website’s aesthetic.
The plugin also offers well-structured HTML, quick loading times, and touch-swipe support ensures your carousels are SEO-friendly, look great on any device, and won’t slow down your site.
What we like about it: Soliloquy’s intuitive interface and powerful features make it suitable for both beginners and advanced users. The plugin uses a technique called dynamic asynchronous Ajax preloading, which makes it much faster than the majority of carousel plugins on the market.
- Versatile media support, including photos, videos, and PDFs
- Supports dynamic sources for creating featured blog post sliders, testimonial carousels, and recent post sliders for your Instagram or Pinterest content.
- Extensive customization options for appearance and functionality including automatic transitions, lightbox display, thumbnail navigation, captions, and more
- Auto-play and customizable controls for video content
- Seamless integration with WooCommerce for product carousels
- Timed sliders for promotional events
- Enhanced image security options
- Various addons for expanded functionality
Pricing: Starts at $19.50 per year (lite version available).
2. Smart Slider 3
Smart Slider 3 distinguishes itself with its interactive live preview feature, allowing users to visualize their sliders across different screen sizes to ensure optimal display on all devices. The plugin offers versatile navigation options, including arrows, thumbnails, and dots, which can be easily customized within the editor. Users can also enable autoplay mode for seamless slideshow transitions.
One of Smart Slider 3’s strengths lies in its centralized dashboard, providing a convenient hub for managing and monitoring all sliders in one location. Additionally, the plugin boasts an extensive library featuring a variety of images, backgrounds, vector graphics, icons, and pre-designed slide templates to enhance slider creativity.
The Pro version unlocks the ability to incorporate content from social media posts, WooCommerce stores, and external event plugins. Users can access an expanded collection of slide templates, diverse layer types, additional background animations, and advanced customization settings.
What we like about it: Smart Slider 3’s user-friendly interface and interactive live preview makes building carousels extremely easy. You’ll be able to drag and drop layers onto your slider the same way you would use a WordPress page-builder. Plus, the plugin’s support for vector graphics and icons makes it particularly useful for creating logo carousels.
- Versatile navigation controls including arrows, thumbnails, and dots
- Comprehensive library of images, backgrounds, vector graphics, and icons
- Extensive collection of slide templates and layer types
- Integration with social media, WooCommerce, and external event plugins.
- Premium background animations and advanced setting options
Pricing: Starts at $49 for 1 site (lite version available).
3. WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel
WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel is a versatile, free WordPress carousel plugin that offers an impressive array of pre-defined layouts and customizations via shortcodes. The plugin’s shortcode generator makes setting up image carousels straightforward and user-friendly.
WP Slick Slider’s swipe-enabled functionality ensures smooth navigation on mobile devices, while the variable width and center mode design options allow for flexible and appealing carousel layouts that adapt seamlessly to different screen sizes.
What we like about it: WP Slick Slider and Image Carousel stands out for its extensive use of shortcodes for customization and its compatibility with popular drag-and-drop page builders for WordPress, such as Elementor, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, and Divi.
- Swipe-enabled functionality for mobile use
- Variable width and center mode design options
- Desktop dragging and infinite looping for enhanced user engagement
- Shortcode generator tool for easy embedding and customization
- Responsive sliders that adapts to various screen sizes
Pricing: Free (premium version available as part of a plugin bundle starting at $99 per year)
4. Slider Revolution
Slider Revolution extends beyond mere carousel functionality, offering users the ability to create captivating hero blocks, content templates, and even complete web pages with its diverse set of tools.
With a robust and user-friendly visual editor, Slider Revolution makes slider creation a breeze, even for WordPress beginners. The plugin provides a vast selection of images to choose from, enhanced by the option to incorporate parallax and 3D effects. These effects add an interactive element that responds to user mouse movements or page scrolling.
Slider Revolution’s control panel includes a real-time load monitoring feature, allowing users to track the impact of the plugin on website performance, particularly in terms of page speed. This valuable metric provides insights for optimizing site performance and ensuring a seamless browsing experience for visitors.
What we like about it: Slider Revolution’s comprehensive feature set and customization capabilities make it an excellent choice for advanced users looking to create dynamic and engaging carousels, hero blocks, and more.
- Extensive capabilities for creating hero blocks, full web pages, and content templates
- User-friendly visual editor for easy slider customization
- Robust object library and options to incorporate parallax and 3D effects
- Real-time load monitoring for optimizing page speed
Unfortunately, Slider Revolution doesn’t offer a free version, but there are more than 20 pricing options to fit your needs.
Pricing: Starts at $35 / year.
5. LayerSlider
LayerSlider offers a vast range of more than 200 animations, 3D effects, and filters to enhance carousel functionality. The plugin includes numerous customizable templates that are free for commercial use, simplifying the creation of a stunning slider.
LayerSlider’s integration with Adobe Creative Cloud is a unique feature that enables you to edit images via a user interface similar to Photoshop. The image editor opens as a pop-up, ensuring that users do not have to leave their current window within the editor.
What we like about it: LayerSlider’s vast range of animations, filters, and effects provides users with a highly customizable slider. The plugin’s built-in integration with Adobe’s image editor enhances its capabilities further.
- Intuitive visual editor
- Over 200 animations, 3D effects, and filters
- Multiple layouts and support for featured page/post sliders
- Customizable templates, built-in skins, and a custom shape builder
One potential downside to LayerSlider is the lack of a free version. However, the plugin’s pricing includes six months of support. Additionally, users can extend their support period for an additional fee.
Pricing: Starts at $25.
6. MetaSlider
MetaSlider is a highly popular carousel plugin for WordPress, boasting nearly a million active users. Setting up and creating a carousel with MetaSlider is quick and straightforward, allowing users to add carousels to widgets, pages, and blog posts.
The plugin offers multiple pre-built themes, or you can use the live theme editor to create and save your own carousel themes with various effects. Users can easily populate carousels by accessing the free photo database Unsplash directly through the editor or by uploading their own images and videos.
MetaSlider includes additional features such as thumbnail navigation, WooCommerce support, scheduled carousel slides, and integration with YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok videos.
What we like about it: MetaSlider’s user-friendly interface, variety of slideshow types, and integration options for images and videos make it a versatile carousel plugin for WordPress users. It’s particularly well suited to those looking to add TikTok content to carousels.
- Simple setup and easy creation process
- Integration with Unsplash for finding and adding images
- YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok video integration
- HTML slides, CSS3 animations, and more
- Comprehensive premium support with the Pro version
Pricing: Starts at $39.50 / year (lite version available).
7. Master Slider
Master Slider is a freemium plugin that offers mobile-friendly, responsive WordPress carousels where users can easily navigate between slides using touchscreen swiping gestures.
The plugin provides various customization options, allowing users to set autoplay preferences and duration for each slide. Master Slider’s intuitive drag-and-drop mechanism makes carousel design accessible even for WordPress beginners.
The paid version of Master Slider introduces additional features, including full-screen mode, integration with Facebook for image sliders, animations, and HD video backgrounds, enhancing the plugin’s functionality and visual appeal.
What we like about it: Master Slider’s extensive template library and user-friendly interface are a plus for beginners, and we like that it has built-in optimization features like preloading and caching to help with speed.
- 90+ easy-to-use templates
- Drag-and-drop visual builder
- Supports WooCommerce, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo
- Insert and embed HTML, links, formatted text, and video into slides
Pricing: Free (premium starts at $39 per site).
BONUS: Dynamic Social Media Carousels with Smash Balloon
Let’s talk about Smash Balloon – the hands down best social media plugin for WordPress. It offers an extremely user-friendly way to showcase your social media content on WordPress.
With seamless integration across popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and even review sites like Yelp, Google Business, and Trip Advisor, Smash Balloon makes it a breeze to create custom post carousels from your social content.
Smash Balloon automatically syncs with your social accounts, ensuring your feeds are always up-to-date with your latest posts, photos, and videos. No more manually updating content – your website stays dynamic and engaging with minimal effort. Check out this Instagram feed made with Smash Balloon:
Plus, you can use their Social Wall to combine all your feeds into one cohesive, responsive WordPress carousel!
Smash Balloon gives you complete control over every aspect of your design, from layout and color scheme to navigation and post selection. The plugin is optimized for speed and delivers a smooth experience across all devices.
In short, if you’re primary focus is social media carousels, Smash Balloon is the way to go. It’s versatile, customizable, beginner-friendly, and downright impressive.
Pricing: You can purchase the plugin for each social platform separately – Instagram Feed, Facebook Feed, Twitter Feed, YouTube Feed, TikTok Feed, and Reviews Feed starting at $49 per year (lite versions available). Or, you can get all the plugins along with the Social Wall starting at $299 per year in the All Access Bundle.
How to Use Image and Video Carousels on Your Website
Carousels serve several purposes and fill the gaps left by traditional design elements. Here are a few of the popular ways to use a carousel on your WordPress site:
- Squeeze a lot of information into a small space: Think of your website space as valuable real estate in Manhattan. What does Manhattan do to make the best use of its space? It stacks layers of space in a high-rise building. Similarly, carousels stack layers of information without taking up too much space.
- Keep visitors from leaving: Studies show that 61% of website visitors expect to find what they’re looking for within 5 seconds. Autoplaying carousels can provide a quick way for visitors to find the information they want without having to scroll.
- Help users compare: Listing the items vertically doesn’t always allow effective comparison, but it can be difficult to fit multiple horizontal comparisons on the screen. Carousels come in handy, allowing you to compare products or services side-by-side.
- Show recommended or similar products in your online store: I know I’m not the only one who uses the “similar products” section on Amazon, and there’s a reason it works. Providing multiple, tailored options helps buyers focus in on they’re search and make a purchase decision quicker.
- Display related or featured blog posts: Showing relevant blog posts can help keep visitors interested in your content and encourage them to explore your site further.
- Showcase testimonials: People love to read reviews — in fact, 99.9% of people read reviews when they shop online. It gives us a sense of trust and security in a product or brand. Displaying your testimonials in a carousel is a great way to showcase your social proof in an interactive way.
Best Practices for Carousel Design
Although carousels have a bad reputation among some web designers, a lot depends on how you use them. When used purposefully, carousels can enhance the user experience and contribute to a visually compelling website. Here are some things you should consider while designing a carousel:
- Give users the power to control: Nothing is more annoying than a carousel you can’t control. Give your users the ability to skip, revert, or pause a slide. Your visitors read and process information at different speeds, so you should use arrows or dots in your carousel design to make it easily navigable.
- Don’t move slides too fast or slow: Slides that are too fast prevent users from full processing the information on each slide. On the other hand, programming them too slowly hinders momentum and engagement. The optimum time depends on the information presented and how much attention it requires. The safe range is usually 3-5 seconds.
- Have a user-centric approach: Carousels have gotten a bad rep because some designers treat them as a medium for advertisements. On the flip side, you don’t want to cram all your product features and buying recommendations into one slider just because it “looks cool.” Before you opt for a carousel, ask yourself it really makes it easier for your users to find the information the need.
- Enable swiping: With the boom in mobile browsing, we’ve seen a rise in swiping features in all industries — from dating apps to cat food marketplaces. Make your mobile carousels touch-friendly by enabling swiping, which is much more intuitive than tapping on a touchscreen.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best carousel plugin for WordPress?
Soliloquy is the overall best carousel plugin for WordPress, offering a user-friendly interface, outstanding performance, and key features for versatility. With Soliloquy, users can effortlessly create visually appealing, responsive carousels that are tailored to their website’s design and preferences. The plugin’s comprehensive feature set includes customizable layouts, transition effects, navigation, captions, and more.
Soliloquy supports a range of different content types including photos, galleries, videos, PDFs, featured blog posts, WooCommerce products, Instagram posts, testimonials, and more. It prioritizes speed and efficiency, guaranteeing fast loading sliders across all devices.
Should I have a carousel on my website?
Having a carousel on your website can be an effective way to showcase multiple pieces of content or featured products in a visually engaging manner. Carousels can help improve user engagement by providing a dynamic and interactive element to your website’s design. However, it is essential to consider factors such as page load times, mobile responsiveness, and the relevance of the content within the carousel.
When used purposefully, carousels can enhance the user experience and contribute to a visually compelling website. It’s important to ensure that the carousel content is relevant, easily navigable, and optimized for performance to maximize the benefits.
What can I use instead of carousel on my website?
Instead of a carousel, you can incorporate alternative elements such as static hero images, a video or photo gallery, a featured post grid, or a product grid for WooCommerce. These alternatives provide opportunities to display content in a visually compelling and accessible manner without the potential drawbacks associated with carousels.
Consider using Envira Gallery as an alternative. The plugin offers a versatile array of gallery layouts including grid, fullscreen, masonry, and more. It offers a built-in lightbox, supports content from various sources like Instagram or YouTube, and comes with tons of advanced features to showcase your visual content, engage visitors, and streamline your workflow.
What’s the difference between a slider and carousel in WordPress?
In WordPress, both carousel and slider plugins serve the purpose of displaying multiple images or content items, but the primary difference lies in the number of items displayed at once and the method of navigation. The terms are often used interchangeable since a carousel is technically a type of slider. However, traditional sliders or slideshows typically focus on one item at a time with manual or timed transitions, while carousel sliders offer a wider view with both manual and automatic rotation capabilities.
Many of the best slider plugins also offer carousels, but the decision on which one to use depends on your website’s needs and the type of content being presented:
- Carousels are suitable for presenting a range of options or content snippets, such as recent posts, portfolio items, or promotional offers, where the goal is to give viewers a quick overview of several items.
- Sliders are ideal for showcasing a single piece of content in detail, such as highlighting a featured product, post, or service on a homepage.
Most of the debate on using carousels revolves around whether you should use them at all. However, it’s worth noting that leading brands like Apple and Amazon use carousels effectively on their websites, proving that image carousels can be a great tool, as long as you know how to use them.
We hope this article helped you better understand how to design and use carousels on your site. No matter which carousel plugin you choose, make sure to track your site performance to see how it affects users’ activities and conversion rates. Don’t have tracking set up? Check out The Best Google Analytics Plugins: Decode Your Traffic Like a Pro.
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Do you love using carousels? Have a full-blown vendetta against them? Let us know in the comments below!
