There are many slider plugins from which you can choose to make your website more attractive. Thus, picking the right one is not easy, but Slider Revolution and Avada Slider are the most popular plugins.
Both of these options have many handy features. Those that have had a chance to use both know that they are easy to use. Neither of them is free, but they are worth every penny.
Slider Revolution is a great slider plugin for WordPress, and it is very popular among WordPress users. The things that attract most people to the slider plugin are the ease of use and the many features that it includes. It is a great tool for adding responsive sliders to a website, even if you have little experience. Slider Revolution has a handy and robust visual slider editor that makes creating sliders fast and easy. You don’t need any coding knowledge either.
Avada Slider, on the other hand, is a straightforward slider builder. It offers a lot of flexibility allowing you to make the sliders you want. The resulting sliders are responsive, and you can set the dimensions, even making full-screen sizes.
Benefits of Using Slider Revolution
This plugin for adding sliders to your WordPress site has more than nine million users around the world. It contains many slider options that are easy to use, so you can make an endless variety of beautiful sliders. You also get many different themes included in the plugin.
Some of the reasons why people like Slider Revolution are
- Customization options
- Fast loading times
- Responsiveness
- Usability
- User-friendly interface
Version 6 of the slider plugin can now add multiple animations to a slider layer. Creating sliders is easy, even when you want to add complex structures and animation presets.
Practical Interface and Easy to Use
Slider Revolution has a handy visual editor. It has been created with the user in mind because many of the suggestions and observations that customers had were included. The editor allows both professional and inexperienced users to achieve beautiful results. After installation, users only need to select a template, customize it, and post the slider on their website.
There are two main editor features, the timeline, and the canvas editors. Users can drag and drop what they want into either and control the slider’s style and behavior.
The Options and Settings have a logical and practical layout, so you can find the options you want.
More Customization Options than Avada Slider
For most users, it’s crucial that they can customize a plugin to match their branding. Slider Revolution offers hundreds of customization options.
It comes with different styles for arrows, bullets, tabs, thumbnails, and more. Users can modify them and make their own set of navigation elements.
Editing and modifying sliders are very simple and the plugin offers many layout options for this. You can choose from auto-responsive, fixed, full-screen sizes, and custom. Other slider options include
- Media layers
- Navigation arrows
- Slide delay
- Slide transitions
- Slider location
You can add images, links, text, videos, and elegant 3D slide transitions. You are not limited to only one video per slide. You can add as many as you want or make up a slider that has only videos.
Under Fixed and Custom Layout, you will find options for setting the size of your sliders. Under Custom Layout you have various options for setting the slider width at different screen sizes.
If you decide to buy Slider Revolution you will get 20 beautiful templates for any purpose. There is no need to buy an image carousel and a separate testimonial slider plugin. You can make everything with one carousel slider tool for your WordPress sites.
Better Performance and Faster Loading Times
The set of features a plugin offers is one of the most important things at which to look when purchasing a plugin. Slider Revolution is the right tool for many applications. With it, you can make one-page websites, image carousels, hero image sliders, and much more.
The coding behind Slider Revolution is fast and reliable. It optimizes all parts of your sliders and ensures that they load quickly. There are a couple of handy debugging features that help you to address issues you may encounter. Lazy Loading and SEO optimization are perks of this complete slider plugin.
Full Responsiveness
Nowadays, most internet traffic comes from mobile phones. It is thus important that websites are mobile-friendly. They should look good on both large and small screens. With Slider Revolution, you can be assured that your sliders will look good no matter the screen size.
The plugin is optimized for iPhone, Android, and other devices. Additionally, it has several fallback options for displaying your sliders page.
How to Use the Plugin Step by Step
You can open Slider Revolution from the WordPress dashboard. The plugin moves the usual WordPress sidebar to the background, which helps you to focus on your task and results in a more immersive experience.
Now, you will notice three options for making new sliders:
- Blank slider. You can build your slider from the ground up.
- Template. You can choose from more than 200 templates.
- Import. You can use a slider from another site as a starting point.
The template option gives you eight different categories from which to choose:
- Basic
- Carousel
- Hero
- Post-Based
- Slider
- Social Media
- Special FX
- Website
The Slider Revolution Editor
After you have created your so-called “module”, the plugin will take you to the slider editor. If you choose to start from a blank slider, you will first see a start guide that will guide you through the basics, such as slider dimensions.
An extra option is to create a “scene”. This is almost like a WordPress page builder because you will get only a single slide.
Adding Content
You can add content in two different ways. You can add it by adding new layers or widgets, which works like building a WordPress site.
First, to add a new layer, you need to click the + icon at the top left. That will take you to a sidebar where you can set the content and style of the layer.
By using the meta option, you can add interesting dynamic content. You could, for example, automatically add the title of your latest blog post.
When you have added extra layers you will be able to arrange them by dragging and dropping individual layers. The layer interface at the bottom of the screen lets you switch between layers.
From there, you can also add and manage animations. At the bottom, you will see the names of the different layers and how and when you can add animations to the slider’s timeline. Or, if you prefer, you can use the drag-and-drop interface to change the animations’ start time and length.
And finally, you can click the preview button to see what your slide will look like.
Slider Revolution Settings
Now that you’ve installed and activated your Slider Revolution plugin, you’re ready to create stunning sliders. But before you start making your own magic with this wonderful plugin, there are some basic settings you might want to change.
- General Settings
- Google Fonts
- Position
- Appearance
- Spinner
- Navigation
- Thumbnails
- Mobile Touch
- Mobile Visibility
- Single Slide
- Alternative First Slide
- Troubleshooting
Best Use of the Plugin
Slider Revolution offers more than 200 different templates from which to choose. In the template library, you will find eight template categories. The plugin imports a template into the slider editor where you can further customize your slider. You can also take a blank canvas to build your own slider from the ground up.
In the editor, you will find different settings panels. These contain modification options for individual slides and sliders. You can choose from other animation effects, transition styles, and much more.
You can use different sources to add content to your slides, like the WordPress media library, social media posts, WooCommerce shop products, and more. The control panels give you complete control over the way you present the content in your slideshow.
After creating the slider in the editor, you can further manage it from the WordPress dashboard. Each slider gets a shortcode to add to your WordPress pages or posts. Another way to publish your sliders is by using a widget, which is useful if your theme has widget areas.
The power of this slider plugin is the ability to work with layers. These layers allow you to add any kind of content to your Revolution slider. For example, utilize the HTML/text box to add text.
You can even go a step further in beautifying your slides by adding custom CSS. The editor can show previews of your progress or the finished product whenever you want. You no longer need to save your work and refresh your site to see what it looks like.
As mentioned before, you can add animated layers too, which is one of the most exceptional features of Slider Revolution. The preset animations alone are enough to impress your website visitors. By default, you can choose from simple slides, boxes, curtains, fades, webGL transitions, and more. The plugin gives you space to let your creativity blossom. Some other things you can make are
- Keyframe animations
- Customizable background animations
- Animated parallax effects
- Scrolling animations
Another nice feature is the import option. With this feature, you can import slides from other sliders, and the plugin comes with a few ready-made examples.
Comparison of Slider Revolution with Avada Slider
The rest of this article will compare Slider Revolution and Avada Slider to show the specific tools of each plugin. Both can make beautiful sliders but each specializes in certain features.
Slider Revolution has a very visual user interface that will add a professional graphic designer effect to your site. It has powerful hero header options that will help your website to stand out from the competition. Converting visitors into customers is the aim of most commercial websites; these tools will help you to achieve that.
Slider Revolution has a lot to offer besides the technical features. Their customer support is great, and the plugin comes equipped with many ready-made templates. You can get a range of add-ons that expand the plugin’s capabilities.
Features that Make Slider Revolution a Top WordPress Plugin
- Visual editor. This drag-and-drop editor allows you to manage text and layers. There are countless settings that make this one of the most powerful slider builders on the market. It is almost as robust as Photoshop.
- Templates. The plugin offers over 200 templates in categories like carousels, slides, hero slides, and special effects.
- Add-ons. There are additional add-ons for bubble morphing, paintbrush, and other image effects.
- Media library. There is a complete media asset library with animations, images, icons, and videos.
- Responsiveness. Your sliders will look awesome even on smaller devices. You can turn off sliders for small screen sizes.
- Timeline. In the timeline, you can edit animations, slider lengths, and movements.
- Preview. This feature shows you right away what your slide looks like on different screen sizes.
- One-click updates. Get new updates at the instant of their release.
- Social media links. You can link your social media account, so people will always see your latest updates.
- Video and photo layers. Rich content layers have full support in this slider plugin.
- History module. Move back to older versions of your sliders with one mouse click. You can review the slider’s history and see which version works best.
- Image optimization and Lazy Loading. These will reduce the loading times of your website and obviate the need for other plugins
Believe it or not, this is only a summary of Slider Revolution’s features. This list should give you a good idea of what this plugin can do for you.
The depth and extent of this list illustrate one of the big selling points of the Slider Revolution. It gives you a lot for your money. And, above all, it gives you full control over your content. Few WordPress plugins give you as much as this slider plugin does.
Features of the Avada Slider
Avada Slider is the other slider plugin that you will learn more about in this article. It uses the Inside Fusion Builder for making slides. There are two slider themes for making custom posts, Fusion Slider and Elastic Slider. Avada Slider uses Fusion Slider in its theme demos.
Avada Slider is smaller and lighter compared to Slider Revolution. But it’s a viable alternative for making image and video sliders.
Avada sliders are responsive, and you control the height and width of each slide. Full-screen and full-width sliders are possible with Avada Slider. You can include images in your slides or use videos, including Vimeo and YouTube videos.
To each slide you can add captions, a title, and buttons. There are various options for setting your Avada sliders’ styles, controls, and typography.
The goal of Avada Slider is not to compete with complete slider plugins, like LayerSlider or Slider Revolution. Rather, it offers a simple and lightweight alternative to these heavyweight plugins. Still, it offers enough features for making beautiful sliders.
Advantages of Slider Revolution vs Avada Slider
The biggest selling points of Slider Revolution are:
- Features. The wide range of features makes it an all-in-one tool for making sliders for your website.
- Ease of use. The visual editor uses a drag-and-drop interface and accessible customization options.
- Technical support and documentation. The supporting documentation is clear and extensive. If you don’t have a technical background, you will be able to use it.
- No coding. This is a plug-and-play plugin. You don’t need any coding for installation or use. The drag-and-drop interface allows you to add animations without any hassle. You also get many templates to give you a head start.
- No previous experience is needed. You can install it and start making slides right away. There is no steep learning curve as with other software, like Adobe Photoshop.
- Regular updates. The developers continue to issue updates and improvements.
- Security. Millions of websites use Slider Revolution. In-depth security audits add accountability and transparency. These audits show where there are security issues and how to fix them.
There are many things that Slider Revolution has over Avada Slider. On top of that, Avada Slider is very slow. Sites that use Avada Sliders often don’t perform well on Google PageSpeed Insights. As a result, these websites rank low on Google itself. If you want your website to be a success, it is better not to use Avada Slider.
According to Avada, you will need to buy Avada Slider every time you use an Avada slider on a different website. So, if you build or maintain different websites, you will need to buy multiple licenses.
Conclusion – Should You Continue Using Avada Slider?
Slider plugins are so much more than basic tools for making simple slideshows. You want to be able to show more than basic information about your page or blog in a slider or carousel.
Should you continue to use Avada Slider, or try something different?
Without a doubt, Slider Revolution is the best slider plugin you can get. Many satisfied users recommend this tool for making sliders and similar website features. If you want to use a layer-based approach, you need Slider Revolution.
Slider Revolution offers a lot, and it keeps its prices reasonable. The price advantage is even clearer if you have more than one website. With this tool, you can make what you want faster than with similar tools. Using one of the many templates jump-starts the process.
Many WordPress themes include Slider Revolution. So, it is smart to look for this combination if you are planning to buy a WordPress theme.
If you enjoyed reading this article about the Avada slider, you should check out this article about websites with carousels.
There are also similar articles discussing plugins better than the Divi slider, plugins better than the Elementor slider, testimonial carousels, and LayerSlider alternatives.
And let’s not forget about articles on the best WordPress sliders, WooCommerce slider plugins, carousel sliders, and full page sliders.
