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Slider Revolution Review – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Do you want to add beautiful sliders with images, videos, posts, social media, and other content?

Want to configure every detail of the slider’s animations and appearance? Then you need a plugin like Slider Revolution.

Find out how you can get control over every aspect of your sliders in our Slider Revolution review.

Slider Revolution

About Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution was first released in 2012, developed by ThemePunch, a qualified team of web enthusiasts. Since then, it’s been constantly improved and is currently powering over 7 million websites all around the globe.

These days, Slider Revolution is shipped with 250+ slider templates, 25+ free addons, along with a powerful visual editor to help you create beautiful presentations on your WordPress site.

Currently, Slider Revolution is one of the most popular slider plugins in the CodeCanyon marketplace and has received a whopping 85% 5-star ratings.

Why Slider Revolution?

If basic image sliders just won’t do the trick and you need a much more advanced solution, take a look at the Slider Revolution plugin.

Slider Revolution is one of the most popular slider plugins for WordPress, and is used on over a million sites.

With Slider Revolution, you can create:

  • image sliders and carousels
  • featured posts sliders
  • social media feeds
  • media galleries
  • hero blocks and front pages
  • …and more

It includes a powerful visual editor with an enormous amount of features and settings so you have control over every detail of your sliders.

How to Set Up Your First Slider

After installing and activating the plugin, you’ll be brought to the Slider Revolution » Slider Revolution menu screen.

To start building your first slider, click on the New Slider link.

Slider Revolution Review - new slider

Now, select the type of content you’d like to display in your slider. You can choose from posts, images, social media, etc.

To create an image slider, choose Default Slider.

Slider Revolution Review - default

In step 2, enter your slider’s title and a shortcode to use.

You must complete Step 2 first and click save before adding your images or doing anything else, or your settings will be lost.

If you click anywhere else without first entering a title and saving, all your chosen settings will be erased and you’ll have to enter them again, so be sure to do this first.

Slider Revolution Review - title

After saving, you’ll be brought to another page. Don’t worry; you can go back and edit the other settings later if you choose.

In the Slide Editor, there’s already a slide added for you, but it’s empty.

Slider Revolution Review - empty slide

Select Main / Background Image to add an image to this slide. Then click Change Image to upload or select an image from your media library.

Below, you’ll see your image. There are a huge amount of options for editing your slide, adding animations and layers, etc.

Slider Revolution Review - all the buttons

You can add more images by clicking Add Slide at the top of the page.

To display your slider, just use the shortcode shown on the settings page.

Creating a Slider With Templates

Instead of taking time to figure out all the complicated options, you can use templates.

When you click Add a Slider With Templates, you’ll be shown a variety of templates to choose from, both free and premium.

Click the template you want, and then click the Install Slider button.

Slider Revolution Review - install slider template

It will ask you if you want to “Import Slider from local or from ThemePunch server.” You’ll have to activate your license to choose the online option, or you can download the zip file from the Free Slider Exchange and click on Local to upload it.

Slider Revolution Review - idk

Then you can edit the slider as above.

Documentation and Support

Slider Revolution does feature a lot of tutorials with screenshots on their website, walking you through each feature of the plugin. They also have a number of video tutorials.

Product support includes feature suggestions, bug fixes, and troubleshooting when the plugin doesn’t work as it should. However, it doesn’t include installation, customization work, or help with issues caused by third-party themes or plugins. After activating your plugin, you’ll have access to their support ticket system, with tickets usually responded to within a day or two.

Slider Revolution vs. Soliloquy

Our top recommended slider plugin for WordPress is Soliloquy.

But Slider Revolution is one of the most popular and best selling slider plugins. Is it right for you?

Slider Revolution is a very powerful plugin full of a huge amount of features. If you need to create a very advanced slider, you may need Slider Revolution.

But most users will not need all the features it offers, and the vast amount of them can be overwhelming and confusing. It can take quite a while to figure out how to create sliders the way you want them.

If you don’t have hours to invest in learning to use a plugin, and just want a simple and beginner-friendly tool to create a beautiful responsive slider, we recommend Soliloquy.

Soliloquy is the easiest to use, and the fastest out of all the sliders we tested:

Slider Plugin Page Load time Requests Page size
Soliloquy 1.34 secs 26 945 KB
Nivo Slider 2.12 secs 29 1 MB
Meteor 2.32 secs 27 1.2 MB
Revolution Slider 2.25 secs 29 1 MB
Kreatura Slider 2.12 secs 30 975 KB

Read our full review of Soliloquy for more details.

Slider Revolution Review: Pros and Cons

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the Slider Revolution plugin.

Pros:

1. All-in-one Solution:

If you’re looking for a complete, all-in-one solution to create a slider, carousel, hero image or video scene, Slider Revolution is the best bet.

It comes bundled with 250+ ready-to-use examples to help you easily create a presentation for your website. Unlike other popular WordPress slider plugins, all features are packaged with the core plugin.

If you want a plugin that gives you loads of features out of the box, without having to install any addons, Slider Revolution could be the best choice.

2. Affordable:

You can purchase the regular license of the plugin for as low as €35 per year. Addons are not sold separately, so you get all the features out of the box with the regular license.

Considering the number of features you get for the price, Slider Revolution is, without a doubt, one of the most affordable slider plugin in the industry.

3. Loads of Customization Options:

Customization possibilities are endless with Slider Revolution. Its powerful visual editor provides you endless options to create a slider the way you want.

You can easily change the style of your slider within the visual editor, including fonts, animation, background, border, etc.

Cons:

1. Bloated Interface:

Just like most other products in the CodeCanyon marketplace, Slider Revolution’s interface is also bloated with too many overwhelming options. Due to the bloat, there is a bit of a learning curve to create your siders with the plugin.

2. Speed:

Speed is an important factor when it comes to choosing a WordPress slider. If a slider plugin’s not been optimized for performance, it can slow down your website, hurting your SEO and online reputation.

To analyze the performance, we’ve tested Slider Revolution against many other popular WordPress plugins. From our test, it’s evident that Slider Revolution isn’t the fastest slider plugin.

3. No Free Version

Slider Revolution doesn’t offer a free version to try out the basic features. If you’re a person who always want to test drive the lite / free version before investing on the full plugin, Slider Revolution may not be for you.

Slider Revolution Pricing

You can purchase the regular license of Slider Revolution for just €35 per year. The regular license allows you to install the plugin on a single site.

For access to more site licenses, plans start at €89 for 3 websites and increases with the number of site licenses you want. It costs €1,999 per year for 100 site licenses and you’ll need to get in touch with them for a custom quote for anything higher than that.

You can also buy one-time licenses between €87 and €5,333 depending on the number of sites you wan to use it on.

Our Verdict: Should You Purchase Slider Revolution?

Slider Revolution is the best choice for users who want an all-in-one premium slider plugin that comes under budget.

With Slider Revolution, you get all features out of the box, no need to install any addons. However, this also means that your interface will be bloated with too many unwanted options. There’s a bit of learning curve to create your sliders with Slider Revolution.

The plugin’s constantly been maintained and updated since 2012. So if you’re looking for a reliable WordPress slider plugin, you’ll need to give Slider Revolution a try.

We give Slider Revolution 4 out of 5 stars. Here is the breakdown of our review scores:

Overall
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Half   4.2 / 5.0
Features
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Performance
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star EmptyRating Star Empty   3.0 / 5.0
Support
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
Ease of Use
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star EmptyRating Star Empty   3.0 / 5.0
Pricing
Rating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star FullRating Star Full   5.0 / 5.0
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Comments   Leave a Reply

  1. I’ve been using RS from its inception and at first it was nothing but heavenly. then they came and made a massive overhaul. I sucked it up, knuckled down and learntbnthe ropes; however, it feels like each update is a major overhaul and options are moved, renamed, interface changes and all. I really do not know what the devs over there are thinking, users need to be efficient; once you learn to use a tool, you should not have to be relearning from scratch.

    Further development of a tool should be iterative and build upon the previous version. If the devs at RS want to compete with the likes of Adobe then that should be theor focus and they shouldn’t be drveloping plugins for WP.

    In v6, even basic formatting feels like a whole day’s job. I’m done and will look into Soliloquy

    1. Thank you for sharing your experience. Do tell more about Soliloquy when you use it. 🙂

  2. Slider Revolution causes never-ending headaches. With WordPress 5.5, SliderRevolution will break if you edit any slides unless you’ve updated to the latest version of the plugin, but if you’ve updated to the latest version of the plugin, that will also break your slides by breaking any relative links you’ve used and losing the images.

    You can’t even copy slides from one slider to another without going into the slides and copying over all the layers.

    It is terrible. Try any other slider before you even consider Slider Revolution.

  3. There is NO customer support.
    I paid for premium and after TWO months I still NOT have received the activation key. I keep going in circles, no one to complain to, to talk to.
    Lost my patience

  4. I felt the same way at first but after using it on a number of my sites, I love it. It does take some time to learn and I suggest beginning with easier tasks and working up.

  5. I canceled my subscription after 4 days of trying to edit it and work with my website with no success.
    Customer support is a non-existent.30-day cancellation policy as in Elementor and other sliders are non-existent. I am seriously disappointed. Never again!!

  6. Slider Rev 6 is very customizable. I get that it will slow down some load times but optimizing content and a pre-loader can fix that. It does have a learning curve I admit. Once I got through some trial and error I have been able to make some cool customized content though. Full background Video embedding as well as the slider effects work well on mobile which is a total plus in my book. “to each their own”

  7. Paul Kazmercyk July 6, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    I’ve used Slider Revolution for several years and have always had good luck with it. Until version 6. SR6 is a huge overhaul from previous versions. On first glance, the user interface is a vast and overwhelming cornucopia of options. It meant going back to square 1 to learn how to make it work for me. It’s impossible to start out up-and-running. I assumed that once I got over the initial re-learning curve, I’d be all set. That turned out to NOT be the case. I’ve wasted many, many hours trying to make sense of the interface, but I’m barely any further along. That cornucopia of options turned out to be a bottomless pit of frustration. There is NOTHING intuitive about the interface. It looks gorgeous but it’s IMPOSSIBLE to use. It’s great to have options but useless if you can’t figure out how to use them. There are a huge number of beautiful demos on the plugin’s site. I installed several of them hoping to just modify them for my use, but once you start making even small changes, it’s very easy to break the whole slider and have to start again from scratch.

    And lastly, the documentation is awful. It’s VERY difficult to search it for answers to even the simplest challenges and in many cases I simply couldn’t find a solution.

    I would avoid this slider plugin at all costs!

  8. Revolution slider will make your website load time way much more slower, the rev slider will add a minimum of 3 seconds to your load time and that if we upload optimized compressed images, if not, it slow down your website for up to 8 seconds.
    I wish I can get a refund, what a joke.

  9. My advice is to try other sliders’BEFORE Slider Revolution. It is not easy to use, it can slow down your site and support is not helpful at all. I would only recommend this plugin to developers, but it’s is not for newbies in my opinion.

    My honest opinion is, do not buy this one. Try others first.

  10. Slider Revolution V6 Is just garbage! I purchased week ago and purchase code invalid. Reached out their support no response. Their website looping me back to their purchase link.

  11. Slider Revolution isn’t simple to use. Often their update aren’t stable and can damage your site and if the 6 month support has expired the damage you keep it because they do nothing to resolve it. I am very disappointed. I don’t recommend it. There are better plugin.

  12. From their presentation, I was thinking that Slider Revolution is easy to use, but I found out that I cannot do anything. They don’t have enough videos or documents to explain the main steps, so definitely not a product to use for people without technical skills.

  13. Wow! I was considering it for a client project who liked one of their website templates, but think I’ll decline now, having read these comments. Thanks for saving me the headache and frustration (I think..)

    1. If you’re a designer, their templates can help you to build great sliders for your clients. Maybe its better to just learn it, Anything can be learned!

  14. Version 6 is very bad…lots of bug !!! What happen to the frontend. VERY DISAPPOINTED

  15. Version 6 is a joke. Used this for years, V5 was OK. V6 is just a joke.

    1. Could not agree with you more. This new version is just crappy. From the shitty UI to how things look different on the frontend. They must add the option to switch to classic UI.

  16. Revolution slider just recently wasted a lot of my time. It’s so complex though I’m a web developer. I’ve tried so many image sliders but this one is the worst. Waste of time and money.

  17. Steve "Q" Quinn October 9, 2019 at 1:17 pm

    I’ve been struggling with revslider 6 for weeks and frankly wish I never started with this frustrating turd.

    My biggest beef is that support is terrible. Every ticket takes 3+ days and when they do finally reply, the response is always so cursory that you have to write back again and wait another 3 days. I’ve done this idiotic dance 3 tickets and each issue took 9 days or more to finally resolve. WHO THE HELL HAS 2 WEEKS TO SOLVE A SINGLE ISSUE?

    Issues with the poor UI have already been covered by others so I’ll only agree and move on.

    Because of RevSLider 6 I will probably need a therapy hedgehog to lower my stress and ward off the stroke it’s about to give me.

  18. The new UI makes this a terrible choice. It is a big over bloated tool, but was pretty handy, post its 6.0 update it has some gutenberg style anti UX UI.

    1. Exactly. They should just go back to earlier version immediately. It is horrible to say the least. Lousy lousy interface design.

  19. Slider Revolution 6.0 is a frustrating nightmare. The developers have shown their failure on this 6.0 version. We have over a 100 clients wanting a refund after the update. It’s way to complicated, especially for the average end user, and they’re the ones that pay the bills in any business. Every developer I know is telling me this 6.0 is a disaster we don’t need and is causing serious problems with their business.

  20. David Barczak July 9, 2019 at 3:01 pm

    Slider Revolution 6.0 has been a nightmare and should not have been released. And their support is slow.

    1. Metuge mesape cleantin November 8, 2019 at 2:21 pm

      I wanted to purchase it but from the comments am see ? its better a keep my money ?

  21. revolution slider is the most bloated, most complex and incredibly overcompensated piece of trash i’ve ever had the displeasure of dirtying my laptop in eleven years of coding. whoever made this garbage owes me a week of my life. i tried to make it work because i wasted money on it. if you’ve done the same, just forget about it and move on. this slider is truly and utterly shit. i could have built a whole new slider from scratch in the time it took me to forsake this one. there i even give you my email address, maybe the creator of this plugin would like to visit me at my home, thanks

  22. I tried this plugin and worked with it a couple of hours. The only thing what I found was it does not work properly, is diffucult to use and not really good documented. I will delete it and never use it again!

  23. rev slider is a piece of junk. it doesn’t work and theme punch will not refund your money once you purchase even if the product does not work! do not buy!

    1. Hello, it works, although there may be some compatibility conflicts with other plugins, for example, with the “wp-webp” plugin.

      You can not put texts in slides, with both plugins active.

      1. I see you’re a satisfied user, can you tell us the pros, cos all Im reading here are the cons…

  24. What a piece of trash…seriously, i’ll had to instal internet explorer to find out that this slider does not support video backgrounds in chrome… what the hell?

  25. Slider Revolution is a constant cause of problems on many of the sites I’ve worked from over different agencies I’ve worked for. Usually causing the site to slow down or conflicting with other plugins. WP Engine support also said something similar. Normally just build a slider myself, but clients sometimes just like to install this themselves and then contact us when problems start happening shortly after!

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