TOP WORDPRESS SECURITY PLUGINS

Can you imagine living in a house without a lock in the front door? I’m sure you don’t really like this idea as everyone wants to feel safe at home. And if we talk of the online world, the reasons to lock the website are stronger, as the risks of someone getting into your site grow higher.

The question of WordPress websites security is of the greatest importance. Why? Being the most popular website platform, WordPress became a great target for hacker attacks and malicious infections. So, if you care about safety, choosing a good security plugin must be among your priorities.

The majority of problems with WordPress are connected with unsafe plugins. Note the important point that if you buy the license, the chance your site is secured would be higher. You can find a lot of such plugins on the Internet and for you not to get confused, we compiled five the most popular and reliable alternatives in our opinion, outlined their advantages and drawbacks.

Why You Need to Use WordPress Security Plugins

Sure, you can maintain your WP site manually, but it will take much of your time, effort, and no one guarantees you that your data will be secured.

As a rule, when users choose which security plugin to install, they pay attention to the number of downloads and installations of them, read people’s reviews. In such a way older plugins are more popular, as there are many features improved with the time and approved by users’ experience.

Most of the website security plugins nowadays can check your data and notifies you in case some changes are found in the files. Almost all of them have free and paid versions, in our review we will outline the features of the paid versions because that’s what we choose for our clients.

1. Wordfence

Let’s start by looking at the most downloadable security plugin. The main advantage of WordFence is that it is constantly updated, so it can protect you from the latest malware and other threats. This plugin investigates the files and notifies you via e-mail if some changes are found. In addition, the chances that your feature suggestions will be considered are much higher in comparison to other plugins.

As for the drawbacks, waiting for tech support sometimes may take longer, as there is a great amount of Wordfence users. Therefore, when the plugin scans deeply through your website, it may cause some speed problems. If you are not experienced in working with plugins, a great number of Wordfence features may confuse you at first, but you will get used to it.

2. All in One WP Security and Firewall

The other plugin that is popular due to a wide range of features is All in One WP Security and Firewall. This one is really easy to use even without coding or development experience. This plugin provides its users with the strong brute force protection, detecting and notifying about weak password choice and failing login attempts. It also monitors the account activity of all users and keeps track of username, IP and login date time.

A great plus of All in One WP Security and Firewall is that it has divided its features into three categories: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. Depending on your skills you can choose the appropriate features set to work with.

The disadvantages are the same as at any other plugin-based firewalls: inability to stop a DDoS attack, overloading of the web server and caching of data.

3. iThemes Security

Besides scanning and automated fixing the security issues, iThemes Security (formerly known as Better WP Security) detects and bans bots, spam, and users who have attacked other websites. By limiting the number of failed login attempts it prevents from brute-force attacks. Buying a premium version gives you more security features such as scheduled malware scans, a dashboard widget for managing all functions and strong password generator.

Even though iThemes security provides about 30 ways to secure your WP site, the GeoIP banning feature is not available yet.

4. Sucuri Security

This plugin offers various security features like security activity auditing to see how efficient the plugin is working, file integrity monitoring, malware scanning, blacklist monitoring, and website firewall. The other plus of this plugin is that if you need some assistance or have any questions, the customer service is available in the form of instant chat and email.The greatest advantage of Sucuri Security is that no other security plugin offers a DNS-level firewall.

The biggest disadvantage of this plugin is that the security of your website greatly depends on your budget as most features are available only in the premium version.

5. Jetpack