Smart Slider is something which is really good for simple sliders, but once you get in-depth it starts to fight with you.

So, I'll list out my grievances.

1. You can add css to your sliders, then smart slider will somehow reset. Now, all the css you added is still there, but the text/names and all that are not, meaning the css is stuck to what you get it to and then you can't change it.

2. Height -> Using a vertical carousel, why is it so hard to get smart slider to follow the height I set? It seems the slider height has to be pixel perfect, otherwise the slides will clip off. I have to pay attention to slide height, slider height, and distance between slides. I had to go pixel by pixel to figure out the perfect height which will 1. not entirely remove a slider from the section and 2. not cut off the top of the slider. Even then, I still couldn't get it to work perfectly, I had to have the top of my slider cut off by a couple pixels to avoid having a whole slider section left out.

3. Viewport zoom -> If you zoom out past 100% (110% zoom etc), the sliders glitch out. The first slider in my vertical carousel becomes a blank space. If you zoom back to 100%, it's fixed... but why is my zoom level affecting sliders? There is no way to fix this, meaning everyone who comes to my site with a lower zoom level will see a broken slider.

4. Carousel drag --> If you try and drag the carousel, it does not spin and keep spinning until it slows down and stops. It stops on the first slider it can stop on. Does not feel good for people trying to view and skim through the sliders.

I have many more issues with smart slider, but these are the main ones. I feel ripped off that I payed for Pro. To me, this slider is not very smart.

I'm using Smart Slider Pro for years (nearly 7+ years) and it is the best. There is no other plugin that can do similar things! Thank you Smart Slider Team! It is really great!

Been using it on many websites, both Joomla and Wordpress. Needs some time (like many good things) to learn all features, but once grasped it allows many things.

On the whole......this is a very clumsy plugin for someone that wants to create a really simple slider that doesn't make the main image a background image. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of other simpler options so I'm at your mercy until I can create a slider of my own. But every time I spend multiple hours on 1 slide AND THEN I have to make sure its responsive. I could do this layout with just css in my sleep and it would be responsive right away.

It works perfect and the support is amazing!

Thank you.

I was using Slider Revolution then tried another number of the top downloaded ones on WordPress. This one is incredible. It is quick, easy, has every option you could imagine, is nearly bug free. This is exactly what software is supposed to be.

There is noting on the free version.

I optimized every image and tried the same images with other sliders. No Slider slowed down my page that much.

Pagespeed Performance without SS3 ist 99% and with SS3 is around 68 - 73%.
I read the documentation, activated lazy load and optimized, what was possible.

It has an option to change where the images pull. I was able to swap from the testing domain to new domain and used a setting in the free version. I simply added the new path and it updated across the plugin. Great work and thanks for making my life easier!

Picking through WordPress plugins is generally a dreadful experience of installing and uninstalling half-baked and strangely designed candidates, but this plugin came up first on my search and has been a pleasure to work with from the start.

I did find it difficult to locate the option to automatically generate slides based on WordPress posts, but a quick tutorial video by the plugin authors thoroughly explaiend how to accomplish that task, even showing how to use an existing, static slide as a template for dynamic, post-based slides.

Also, the plugin performs well. The Gutenberg/Block editor team have a lesson or two to learn here regarding how to develop a visual HTML editor that doesn't slow down the page, freeze, or crash. Throughout weeks of toiling work in setting up a WooCommerce shop that looks and behaves as intended, this plugin has always been a constant, looking good and behaving predictably.

I can strongly recommend Smart Slider. Well done.