A website slider is a common visual element among website owners and for good reason. They’re a dynamic way to showcase content, whether it’s a carousel of product images, rotating testimonials, or a visually engaging header. A quality slider plugin lets you create these displays, offering various layouts and options.
WordPress users looking to add sliders to their sites often encounter Smart Slider and Depicter. Both plugins aim to solve the same problem: creating engaging visual content. And, they share some basic features, like layer-based editing and template libraries.
Both Smart Slider and Depicter aim to provide robust slider solutions for WordPress, but they approach the task with different capabilities and features. While they share the goal of creating eye-catching sliders, their editing experiences, feature sets, and approaches to responsive design vary. In this article, we’ll examine these differences to understand why Depicter stands out as a strong alternative to Smart Slider.
Do Depicter and Smart Slider have anything in common?
Depicter and Smart Slider share some core functionalities. Both are WordPress plugins designed to create visual sliders. They allow users to build different types of sliders, including but not limited to a content slider, offer layer-based editing, and provide template libraries. And, they both address responsive design, though with different approaches. So, while they offer similar basic features, how they implement those features, and the additional tools they provide, differ significantly.
Editor
In the Smart Slider editor, the layout uses a row and column system, similar to common page builders.
We need to clarify whether this is an advantage or a limitation. It might be stated that because this system is used in page builders, it’s an advantage for the slider editor experience. However, in practice, due to the inherent difference between a page and a slide, freedom of movement, resizing, repositioning, and design are the most important issues. After spending some time with Smart Slider, you’ll find that you don’t feel comfortable with its editor, because it hinders creativity for creating the visual effects needed for a modern slider. Yes, it’s true that a feature like Absolute Position exists, which allows you to take layers out of their default state and move them freely within the slide, but this feature is very weak and implemented with many limitations. The default state in Smart Slider is called ‘default layers’.
Default layers can’t move on top of each other and will push other layers lower when their own content needs more space.
This editing experience is similar to page builders.
For example, if you’ve created a row and two columns in a slide, added some elements, and briefly prepared your slide, and then decide that the slide structure needs to change (for example, add another column and add a few more elements outside the current layout structure), you’ll have a lot of trouble changing the row and column options to implement the new changes. These issues together make the Smart Slider editor experience a tiring and limiting one.
A True Drag & Drop Editor
On the other hand, Depicter, with a completely drag-and-drop editor, provides a completely free and comfortable experience for novice users to create slides with different designs. It allows you to implement elements in any framework you like.
In this process, you have key features like Snapping, Resize, Rotate, and the important ability to group slides, which has several advantages. One of them is moving and even resizing multiple elements together, preventing an element from changing position relative to other elements, and most importantly, the Auto Layout feature. By enabling the Auto Layout feature, you can have a layout based on Flex and Grid layouts for grouped elements.
This isn’t the only advantage of the Depicter editor over the Smart Slider editor; the entire Depicter editor experience is more modern and intuitive. The placement of the assets panel, options panel, canvas, functional buttons, settings menu, and dedicated right-click menu all together provide an excellent user experience for both novice and professional users.
Lack of CTA features
Here, we also mention the CTA (call to action) topic, which is an important feature for sliders. In Depicter, you can set completely separate operations with different triggers for any element on the page using the dedicated Action menu. For example, when you click a button, it can display or hide an element, go to a specific slide, play a video or sound, or even execute your custom JS code. So, you can imagine how seriously the entire CTA topic is considered in the Depicter editor, while in Smart Slider, you can only assign a link to a button, that’s it.
Also, easy layer swapping, resizing, positioning, coloring, and even rotating different elements in different responsive modes, changing the slide background image for different responsive sizes, the ability to choose between Responsive Resize mode and normal mode for the behavior of individual layers when resizing the slider, and the ability to customize the width and height of a specific slide for a specific responsive mode are other advantages of Depicter.
Available Layers
When you talk about layers, you’re talking about different elements with different features that a user gets to make a slider. Smart Slider says it has 24 layers, but when you look at the list, you see things like “Row,” which is a layout element, listed as a layer. And you see each of these listed as separate layers:
- Text
- Heading
- Animated heading
- Highlighted heading
- List
But those are all just text. And these are listed as separate layers:
- Image
- Image Box
- Image Area
- Caption
And those are all basically images.
Depicter has everything Smart Slider has in its element set, plus these:
- Masks
- Shapes
- Navigation arrows and Control sets
- Stories Progress Bar
- Line Time
- Slideshow Play/Pause
- Scroll down Indicator
- Lottie Animation
- Shortcode
- Coupon Box
- From
- Number Timers
- Before After comparison
And each of those has its own features and is separate from the other Depicter layers.
If you compare the two, Depicter gives you more options for making different kinds of sliders than Smart Slider does.
Dynamic content
Both of these plugins support Dynamic Content for crating a content slider. Smart Slider introduces support for various WordPress plugins as separate sources. For example, support for Events Manager or NextGEN Gallery is introduced as separate sources. While they are all actually Custom Post Types, in Depicter, all default and basic items like Post, Page, and Product are available to users, and support for any other plugin is available to the user in the form of a source called Custom Post Type.
Also, Depicter’s unique feature is its support for the ACF plugin (Advanced Custom Fields) for creating an ACF slider. In fact, using this plugin, any post type that the user creates, along with any custom field and custom taxonomy it may have, can be used in Depicter to create dynamic content. Both of these plugins support Dynamic Content. Smart Slider introduces support for various WordPress plugins as separate sources.
For example, support for Events Manager or NextGEN Gallery is introduced as separate sources. While they are all actually Custom Post Types, in Depicter, all default and basic items like Post, Page, and Product are available to users, and support for any other plugin is available to the user in the form of a source called Custom Post Type.
Also, Depicter’s unique feature is its support for the ACF plugin (Advanced Custom Fields). In fact, using this plugin, any post type that the user creates, along with any custom field and custom taxonomy it may have, can be used in Depicter to create dynamic content.
And of course, the very useful Google Reviews option is also among the sources available in Depicter.
Responsive Design
When it comes to responsiveness, both of these plugins offer similar and different capabilities to the user. But the main question is, can the user have different structures, layouts, and designs for the slider’s layers for different device sizes?
Smart Slider has some good features in this area, like text replacement for different responsive modes, or the Font Size modifier capability, and also Custom Breakpoints. But with a closer look, you’ll see there are limitations. For example, for text, other than size, you can’t change any other typography options.
Layout Design for Different Responsive Modes
The most important thing is that you can’t change the layout design for different responsive modes. Basically, you have to say that due to how the elements are implemented in Smart Slider, which relates to how its editor works, you can’t have an optimized layout for a responsive size, or that this isn’t easily possible.
Yes, it’s true, there are different options like ‘Hide On’ and Align in Smart Slider that are specific to responsive design. But the main issue, which is having different layouts and different designs for sizes other than desktop, isn’t well covered in Smart Slider.
On the other hand, Depicter, with all the capabilities that Smart Slider has, can also do these things in the area of responsive design:
- Completely separate layer layouts in each responsive mode. This means you can make changes for each responsive mode completely separate from what you designed in desktop mode, and have a completely separate and independent design, not just changing the layer positions.
- Changing the size, position, color, and even rotation of different elements in different responsive modes.
- Changing the slide background image for different responsive sizes.
- The ability to choose between Responsive Resize mode and normal mode for the behavior of individual layers when the slider size changes.
- The ability to customize the width and height of a specific slide for a specific responsive mode
Template Library
When we talk about ready-made templates, we’re considering fast development, skipping the design stage, and overall user convenience. In this area, variety and giving the user freedom of choice are key factors. Smart Slider offers about 180 templates, which limits user selection, and it doesn’t look like this collection gets updated regularly with more items.
On the other hand, Depicter, with over 550 templates, provides a very high-quality and extensive collection of diverse WordPress slider templates with different categories for various purposes and occasions. And despite having a wide variety and a large number of templates, this collection is constantly updated. Depicter provides up-to-date designs that match current trends and also seasonal occasions for users.
Depicter Unique Features
After all the comparisons we’ve made, we should now talk about Depicter’s unique features. These are capabilities Depicter has that Smart Slider doesn’t, which is another reason to choose Depicter over Smart Slider.
Each of these features could be examined in a separate article, and here, we’ll just give a brief overview.
AI Slider
Using the AI Slider Wizard, the entire slider creation process is optimized with artificial intelligence. Content related to your topic and what you entered in the prompt stage is loaded for you. Finally, with just a few simple clicks, a slider is created and ready for you.
Popup Builder
Completely separate from its slider capabilities, Depicter, if not the best popup builder available for WordPress, is certainly among the best. It offers a distinct output compared to its sliders, with its own unique features, settings, outputs, and templates.
Notification Bar Builder
With Depicter, you can also create a WordPress notification bar for your website. This is another type of output from Depicter’s visual capabilities, with its own options, features, details, and templates.
Leads
Using Depicter’s Leads feature and combining its Form element with sliders, popups, or notification bars, Depicter becomes one of the best lead generation tools. Powerful marketing capabilities are provided here.
Pricing
The starting price for purchasing Smart Slider 3 Pro is $49 for the Standard plan for one website, while the starting price for Depicter Pro for one website per year is $39.
Given all the details, Depicter’s advantages in shared areas and its unique features not found in Smart Slider mean Depicter offers higher purchase value.
Conclusion
In the end, while both Smart Slider and Depicter offer tools to build sliders, their differences become clear. Depicter provides a more flexible editing experience, allowing for greater creative freedom. Its wider selection of layers and a rich slider template collection, with robust responsive design capabilities, gives users more control over their slider creations. And, Depicter’s unique features, like the AI Slider and integrated popup builder, add value beyond basic slider functionality. Considering these points, along with its competitive pricing, Depicter emerges as a strong and versatile alternative to Smart Slider, offering a more comprehensive solution for WordPress users looking to enhance their websites with dynamic visual content.
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