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Soliloquy

Best Responsive WordPress Slider Plugin

Updated on: 21st Oct 2021
Soliloquy is a popular WordPress slider plugin with over 1.5 million downloads. It has an average rating of 4.67 out of 5 stars in the WordPress directory, where you can download a barebones lite version of the plugin. You can use Soliloquy to create SEO-optimized, mobile-responsive sliders for your website. This plugin stands out because of its sliders’ fast load times. It aims to provide users with a simple interface, avoiding bloat by offering additional features as add-ons instead of including them within the package. 

Generally, Soliloquy focuses on providing the user with an efficient and straightforward experience instead of giving you tons of different options. However, the pricing for this plugin is complicated — you don’t get access to all the features when you purchase one of the cheaper two models.

What sets Soliloquy apart

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    Fast loading

    Soliloquy is widely recognized for building sliders that load quickly. This plugin regularly outperforms the competition; its sliders loaded almost an entire second faster than sliders built with LayerSlider and Slider Revolution in one particular speed test. In another test, Soliloquy beat MetaSlider and Smart Slider 3, although only by a few milliseconds.

    Why do these sliders load so quickly? Soliloquy uses asynchronous loading, a process in which your cover slide loads first, followed by the rest of the slides. In practical terms, this means that your slider will ensure that your webpage loads quickly without sacrificing the quality of your slides’ content.

Free plan limitations

Soliloquy Lite is available from the WordPress directory and limits you to constructing image-based sliders. It utilizes the same drag-and-drop editor that the paid versions feature, and its slides are fully mobile-responsive and support touch swiping. This plugin allows you to crop your images and create custom metadata for them. These are most of the free plan’s options, and you can find a complete list of its features on the Soliloquy website.

In addition to limiting you to image sliders, Soliloquy Lite does not offer thumbnail creation, CSS customization, or even themes. Due to its limited functionality, the free version of this plugin may not be able to help you create an appealing slider for a professional website. If you need to build a simple image slider, though, this plugin’s lack of extraneous features could make it easy to do so.

Alternatives

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LayerSlider

LayerSlider

https://layerslider.com/

LayerSlider is a more feature-heavy WordPress slider plugin than Soliloquy. It offers hundreds of templates and transition effects, several layer types, and layer animations. It also provides various features for building and customizing popups for your site.

You can use this plugin to design unique and complex visual content, but its learning curve is higher — especially for beginners. Considering just how many features it contains, LayerSlider is relatively affordable.

However, if you need to use this plugin for more than ten websites, it quickly becomes much more expensive than Soliloquy’s Lifetime package.

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Smart Slider

Smart Slider

https://smartslider3.com/

Smart Slider 3 is another slider plugin for WordPress that is popular and easy to use. It also features a visual editor, and its slides are mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly. This plugin differs from Soliloquy in a few ways, though. Its slideshows don’t load asynchronously and therefore don’t load as quickly.

However, its free version is more well-rounded and functional than Soliloquy Lite is. It comes with two slider types and 14 templates that you can use to build sliders with more than just images.

This free plugin also allows you to incorporate dynamic content into your slides — a feature that isn’t available in Soliloquy unless you purchase the Developer model.

It may not be the most cost-effective option if you want to create sliders on several sites, though; Soliloquy’s unlimited license costs only $20 more than Smart Slider 3’s 10-site license.

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Pricing

Because we have already described most of Soliloquy Lite’s options, this section will focus on breaking down the features available in each of the four paid models. These models are not all-inclusive, and therefore each one offers a different number of features.

Personal- $17/year

Soliloquy’s Personal plan is the cheapest and has the fewest available features. This model allows you to customize your slides with CSS. It also allows you to create an unlimited number of sliders on a single site.

Multi- $44/year

The Multi license lets you use Soliloquy on three sites. It comes with five additional add-ons:

  1. Instagram Add-on: import Instagram images into your slider
  2. Pinterest Add-on: add a Pin It button for easy Pinterest sharing
  3. Protection Add-on: disable right-clicking so that users cannot download your images
  4. Schedule Add-on: create timeframes for sliders or slides
  5. Slider Themes Add-on: access premade templates for your slides

Developer- $89/year

Purchasing the Developer plan will give you access to eight more add-ons as well as priority support. You can add slides from even more sources, including dynamic content, featured WordPress posts, WooCommerce products, and PDFs. This plan also lets you create carousels and lightbox sliders and incorporate thumbnails into your sliders. Finally, the default add-on gives you the option to build sliders faster using default settings.

Lifetime- $269 one-time payment

Soliloquy’s Lifetime plan gives you everything the plugin has to offer, including lifetime updates (the other licenses provide only one year of updates). You also get access to WordPress multisite support and client management features.

Conclusion

Soliloquy is a WordPress plugin that focuses on efficiency and ease of use. Its high-performing sliders have consistently demonstrated faster loading speeds than those built with competing slider plugins. The Lite version allows you to create basic image sliders, while the paid models let you add various types of content into your slideshows.

Soliloquy has a uniquely complicated pricing structure. If you want to, for example, design carousels on a single website, it would be overkill to buy the Developer model simply to access the Carousel Add-on. However, this plugin is an affordable option for individuals who need to create sliders for many websites. Other slider plugins require much higher (and sometimes yearly) payments for use on over 25 sites.

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Soliloquy

Soliloquy

https://soliloquywp.com/
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From their site:
Soliloquy is the best responsive WordPress slider plugin that allows you to create a fast and SEO friendly WordPress slider in 60 seconds.