Slider Revolution: An In-Depth Review on the World’s Most Popular Slider

As of this article, Slider Revolution has over 174,000 sales on CodeCanyon.

Pair that with 6,400 ratings for a 4.8 average star rating and you’ve got yourself the most successful WordPress slider ever.

This popularity, and the fact that many WordPress theme developers bundle Slider Revolution with their themes (giving away Slider Revolution for free after you purchase the theme) makes it interesting when completing a review.

Over the years I’ve been using Slider Revolution on blogs, eCommerce sites, business platforms and portfolios. For some of them it’s made complete sense, but for others I would never recommend Slider Revolution.

Since the plugin is considered and used by hundreds or thousands of people each day, I figured it’s about time we dive deep into the Slider Revolution plugin to uncover its strengths and weaknesses.

Slider Revolution Features

Seeing as how Slider Revolution doesn’t have a free version or any distinct payment plans, all of the features are included with the plugin. Some of the more impressive features are listed below.

• Dozens of wonderful add-ons for getting new effects for your sliders. You don’t have to pay extra for these. For example, some of the add-ons include a typewriter effect, related posts and a WordPress gallery.
• A full object library with items like font icons, SVGs, background images and transparent PNG objects.
• 3D parallax effects with full mouse control.
• A onepage website designer for rapidly pumping out landing pages with full slider support.
• Support for all mobile devices.
• A backend drag and drop visual builder for slides.
• A complete navigation designer for building and adjusting items like buttons, tabs and arrows.
• SEO optimization, performance optimization, lazy loading and a secure build.

Slider Revolution in Action

Over the years I’ve been able to train myself with Slider Revolution. However, I’d be crazy to say that it wasn’t intimidating starting off. I tend to compare it to Photoshop, where once you learn the ropes it can be an incredible tool. But for the average person the tool looks way too complicated.

In short, the Slider Revolution plugin is made for experienced developers. The backend works wonders, but I can’t ever imagine trying to train one of my clients on it. That said, let’s explore what it looks like.

The Drag and Drop Builder

This is where you’ll spend most of your time, with editable content from text to buttons and links to overlaying images. It’s not anything close to a rudimentary drag and drop editor like from WIX or something made for beginners. But you can pretty much edit anything as long as you learn how.

Stunning Templates

If you’re a beginner or even intermediate designer, going with a template is by far the best route. You don’t have to start from scratch, and you can generally just replace a handful of items to brand it for your own company.

For example, the template below is for a WooCommerce slider, presenting a product with call to action.

The one below is for a food blog, revealing a carousal with lots of images and buttons to view recipes.

Slider and Content Types

Pulling content for your slider can be done with the use of Instagram streams, WooCommerce products, specific posts and more. This speeds up the process of making your slider, since you can make a default design, then automatically pull content.

Slider Revolution Pricing and Support

There’s a decent chance you can find a ThemeForest WordPress theme that gives you Slider Revolution for free.

Here’s how it works: The developer pays $120 to use in a single product that’s sold (ie. a WordPress theme). This is a pretty solid price for the developer, and all of the theme’s customers receive Slider Revolution for free.

Alternatively, the Regular License price to use on one site is $25. 

Therefore, if you already have a WordPress theme and would like to still grab the Slider Revolution plugin, the price of $25 keeps things easy on your wallet.

But What About Support?

Theme Punch knows what it means to give customers what they want. Dedicated Theme Punch support only lasts for six months after buying the plugin, but you can pay to extend that license to 12 months for $7.88.

Theme punch provides tons of documentation for getting installed and setup. They have plenty of product docs and video tutorials for the visual learners out there. Theme Punch has a newsletter, blog and social media presence if you like getting updates and reaching out to the support team through places like that.

Theme Punch doesn’t help out with installations or custom work, but you can submit a support ticket for just about anything else. Don’t expect any sort of live chat or phone support in the future. All they have now is the ticket system, and I don’t see that changing.

Is Slider Revolution the Right Slider Plugin for You?

I like bonuses. Slider Revolution often comes as a bonus when you buy a WordPress theme from places like ThemeForest. You have to verify that by looking at the theme’s feature list, but quite often you’ll get Slider Revolution. It’s almost as if Slider Revolution has become the official slider of ThemeForest and WordPress Themes everywhere.

Keep in mind that Slider Revolution is actually sold on CodeCanyon (part of the Envato network of marketplaces,) but quite a few theme developers opt to buy extended licenses to Slider Revolution to package in with their themes on ThemeForest.

So basically you can pay $25 to use the plugin on one site or $120 to use in a single product that’s sold (like in a theme). What’s nice is that this favors theme customers, since the theme developer has already paid the license for them.

Therefore, I would recommend the WordPress theme + free Slider Revolution route to people making an individual website. It’s also nice for theme developers and the customers of those developers.

Beginners might find the plugin too intimidating if only looking for a basic slider, but there are other options for those folks.

If you have any questions about this Slider Revolution review, let us know in the comments below.