WordPress site security is challenging, and users can perceive it as a ticking time bomb that can blow off anytime. Unfortunately, WordPress sites are honeypots for hackers and other cybercriminals. Thus, we should take no half-measures to eradicate it.
In short, we must nip this menacing issue in the bud before it becomes a devastating threat. However, you should not lose hope; you can benefit from various robust WordPress security plugins.
Sucuri and Wordfence are the leading WordPress security plugins that allow you to secure your WordPress site.
This blog post will compare Sucuri Security vs Wordfence Security and explain critical features and crucial aspects like ease of use, pricing, and salient features.
WordPress Security Importance
WordPress is arguably the most famous Content Management System (CMS) worldwide. However, its popularity raises security concerns for users. Unfortunately, hackers and other cybercriminals have continually attacked the popular platform in recent times.
Recent research by W3Techs indicates that 43.1% of all sites on the Internet rely on WordPress. This includes websites that run on a CMS, without a CMS, and custom-coded CMS. It means that one-third of the Internet depends on WordPress.
Therefore, users should not undermine the significance of WordPress security, allowing them to beef up the security of their WordPress sites. In this situation, Sucuri Security and Wordfence Security come in handy as these plugins allow businesses of different sizes to safeguard their sites against various security threats.
What Do You Mean By Sucuri?
Sucuri is a notable security plugin that provides users with a cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) facility. Once you activate it, all the website traffic passes through Sucuri’s firewall before it reaches the hosting server.
This way, the Sucuri Security plugin lets you block malicious traffic that can potentially reach your WordPress site. The plugin also enables you to scan your website, blog, and online store for security vulnerabilities regularly. You will be notified through email or Slack if it detects any issues.
What Do You Mean By Wordfence?
Wordfence is a WordPress security plugin that helps WordPress site owners enhance their sites’ security to the next level. The plugin consists of a malware scanner and endpoint firewall that help safeguard WordPress deployments.
In addition, users can benefit from a threat defense feed when protecting sites as it regularly updates the firewall mechanism through the latest malware data.
What Does the Sucuri Security Plugin Offer?
As a leading WordPress protection plugin, Sucuri delights current and potential users with numerous impressive features, including firewall (WAF), malware scan, hardening options, post-hacks, and more.
What Does the Wordfence Security Plugin Offer?
The Wordfence Security plugin offers various enticing features to help users protect their WordPress sites, including a Website Application Firewall (WAF), malware scan, login security, Threat Defense Feed, live traffic views, and more.
Sucuri Security vs Wordfence Security Comparison Snapshot
As you know, Sucuri and WordPress enable you to safeguard your WordPress, but these plugins differ approach-wise. Here is a snapshot of the Sucuri vs Wordfence comparison:
| Features | Sucuri | Wordfence |
|---|---|---|
| Firewall | Cloud-based WAF (reverse Proxy) | Integrated WAF. |
| Free Plugin Available | Yes | Yes |
| Malware Scanning | Server-side and remote scanning | Extensive on-site scanning |
| Vulnerability Scanning | Yes | Yes |
| IP Blocking | Yes, with a focus on the cloud firewall | Yes |
| Activity Log | No | No |
| WP Config File Protection | No | No |
| Performance Impact | It is minimal due to cloud processing | It can be significant |
| Two-Factor Authentication | No | Yes, it is limited to Authenticator Apps |
| SSL Certificate (on WAF) | Yes | No |
| CDN for Improved Performance | Yes | No |
| Cloud-based Platform | Yes, Remote Scanning | No |
| Self-hosted Platform | No | Yes. Local Scanning |
Detailed Sucuri Security vs Wordfence Security Comparison
WordPress website owners must select a protection plugin that secures their sites in the best possible manner. In addition, a security plugin should require minimal maintenance, enabling them to concentrate on expanding their businesses.
We will analyze Sucuri vs Wordfence in terms of ease of use, WAF (Website Application Firewall), security monitoring and notifications, and malware scanners.
Sucuri Ease of Use
The Sucuri Security plugin is user-friendly and does not need technical expertise. Moreover, the installation is easy and can be completed within minutes.
The interface is appealing and lets users implement security hardening settings on their WordPress sites. Likewise, the interface does not look cluttered, and users can access all the required features under one roof.
Wordfence Ease of Use
Like Sucuri, Wordfence is another simple and user-conducive WordPress security plugin. You can easily install this lightweight plugin into your website from the backend and begin using it immediately.
The user interface is attractive and works seamlessly, offering various features in one place.
Sucuri Website Application Firewall
A web application firewall monitors site traffic and safeguards the website from security threats. You can apply a firewall based on application and cloud.
Sucuri delivers a cloud-based website application firewall that helps site owners stop suspicious traffic before it reaches the website hosting server. As a result, they can save crucial server resources and enhance their sites’ speed.
Sucuri offers CDN servers in various regions worldwide, which is a plus for users who want to improve the speed of their sites. When using the firewall, you must change the DNS settings of your domain name. Thus, your website traffic will be passed via Sucuri’s servers.
When you enable the plugin, it will immediately begin safeguarding your site from password-guessing attempts, DDoS attacks, and suspicious requests. Fortunately, users do not have to worry about the basic or extended mode.
When users experience DDoS, Sucuri switches from high-security to paranoid mode to ensure their site servers do not crash.
Wordfence Website Application Firewall
Compared to Sucuri, Wordfence provides a website application firewall that allows website owners to monitor and block suspicious site traffic. As an application-level firewall, Wordfence runs on users’ servers. However, it is not as efficient as a cloud-based firewall.
When you initially use Wordfence, the firewall runs as a WordPress plugin in basic mode. To utilize Wordfence’s extended version, install it manually, allowing the firewall to monitor site traffic.
Wordfence blocks the site traffic as an endpoint firewall once it reaches your hosting server. Furthermore, Wordfence’s firewall runs in learning mode by default once you activate it.
It needs to learn how you and other users access your WordPress website. In addition, various firewall rules are not implemented in this situation, ensuring that genuine site users do not get blocked.
Sucuri Monitoring and Alerts
Monitoring and alerts allow website owners to detect unusual activities on their sites. Therefore, they should not overlook the importance of these notifications when protecting their sites from potential security risks and threats.
Moreover, to obtain these notifications, you must ensure that their WordPress sites can deliver emails. Using the SMTP service to help send WordPress emails is mandatory. Luckily enough, the Post SMTP plugin can supercharge your WordPress email deliverability.
Sucuri does not disappoint its users in this regard, as it shows crucial notifications on their dashboards.
Sucuri has a comprehensive alert management system that you can access by visiting the Sucuri Security Settings page and switching to the Alerts tab.
Likewise, it helps users add email addresses to which they want to be notified. Users can customize email alerts by choosing events, the number of alerts per hour, post types, brute force attack settings, etc.
Wordfence Monitoring and Alerts
Like Sucuri, Wordfence offers users an impactful notification and alerts system. Users can find notifications using the Wordfence menu as they are available next to it.
Wordfence helps users benefit from instant notifications through email. For this purpose, they must activate email alerts. Navigate to Wordfence > All Options > Email Alert Preferences. That’s it.
This way, you can enable or disable email alerts. Similarly, you can select the severity level when sending email alerts according to your needs.
Sucuri Malware Scanner
The Sucuri Security comes with a nifty yet result-oriented malware scanner. The scanner makes full use of Sucuri’s Sitecheck API that automatically examines your website against numerous safe-browsing APIs, making sure your website does not get blacklisted.
The API also follows the same lines when inspecting the integrity of your core WordPress files, ensuring they are not modified.
Furthermore, you can change the scan settings to fulfill customization needs. For that reason, go to Sucuri Settings > Settings > Scanner. That’s how you can change the scan settings without fuss.
The great thing about this free scanner is that it smoothly runs on the publicly available servers on users’ sites. This means that the scanner is not limited solely to WordPress.
It is handy for recognizing malicious code and malware. More importantly, the scanner does not consume much of the resources of the users’ servers, which is an added advantage.
Wordfence Malware Scanner
Wordfence also offers users a powerful malware scanner with various customization options, enabling them to detect security concerns proactively.
If you use its free version, you cannot decide your scan schedule. However, Wordfence schedules its scan timing itself in the free version. To customize the Wordfence scan schedule yourself, get a premium subscription.
Fortunately, you can configure the scanner in several modes tailored to your specific needs. That said, the premium version comes with a multitude of excellent options. On the contrary, the free version has limited options, meaning users cannot take advantage of the Wordfence security plugin with both hands.
The Wordfence scanner also allows users to check their plugins and themes to ensure they match the repository versions.
Both these plugins offer users impactful malware scanners that allow WordPress site owners to proactively and regularly evaluate their sites for malicious codes and viruses.
Sucuri Security Pricing
Sucuri has divided its pricing structure into two main categories to accommodate new and current users appropriately. These two categories are Security Platform Plans and Firewall with CDN Plans.
For users’ ease, we explain the details of Security Platform Plans below:
- The Basic Platform plan costs $199.99 per year.
- The Pro Platform plan costs $299.99 per year.
- The Junior Dev plan costs $999.98 per year.
- Contact support to get a subscription to Multi-Site & Custom plans.
- All these packages have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Security Platform Plans aside, details of the Firewall with CDN Plans are described below:
- The Basic Firewall plan costs $9.99 per month.
- The Pro Firewall plan costs $19.98 per month.
- Contact support to get a subscription to Multi-Site & Custom plans.
- All these packages have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Wordfence Security Pricing
Wordfence offers four attractive plans to its users: Wordfence Free, Wordfence Premium, Wordfence Care, and Wordfence Response. The Wordfence Free plan suits new users who want to test its features and maximize their website protection without fuss.
Here are the details of the other three plans mentioned below:
- The Wordfence Premium plan costs $119 per year.
- The Wordfence Care plan costs $490 per year.
- The Wordfence Response plan costs $950 per year.
Wrapping Up
We expect you to appreciate our detailed blog post analyzing Sucuri Security vs WordPress Security plugins. These security plugins have the ingredients to beef up your site security in the right direction.
As mentioned earlier, Sucuri is a cloud-based WAF (Website Application Firewall) that helps enhance site speed and performance overall. It also allows WordPress users to protect their sites against malicious traffic and brute force attacks.
On the other hand, Wordfence is an application-level firewall that primarily runs on users’ servers. It is a reliable option if users can utilize a server-side firewall and scanner.
However, Sucuri looks more impactful than Wordfence since the notable plugin edges the latter with a cloud-based firewall. In addition, the former safeguards WordPress sites against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks that can force them to go offline, and the latter lacks on this front.
We hope our comprehensive analysis helped you differentiate Sucuri vs. Wordfence nicely and made you an informed decision regarding your WordPress website security.
