Introduction
WordPress is one of the most popular used content management systems (CMS), which means it’s also often the target of attacks. If you have a WordPress website and want to keep it safe and running, installing a security plugin is a great place to start.
There are a variety of security plugins, and in this list, we will show you our recommendations for the top security plugins to use to keep your website safe.
1. Sucuri
Sucuri is one of the top choices for security plugins for good reason. Sucuri offers a free plan boasting excellent threat scanning and protection, file integrity monitoring, blacklist monitoring, and security hardening. This means that your website will be clear of any security vulnerabilities and safe. The free version of Sucuri will keep you mostly protected. But, if you want to step up your security to the next level with more advanced features, we recommend trying out the premium plan.
With the Sucuri premium plan, you will get a powerful DNS firewall and CDN. A DNS firewall protects your site from malicious and brute force attacks by stopping them before they reach your site. These attacks are blocked when they reach the DNS firewall before reaching your website. On the other hand, a CDN creates copies of your website on servers across the world. This makes your site load fast for users no matter where they are.
Whether you choose to go with the free or paid version, you will get top-tier protection that will help keep your website safe. Try out the free version, and it will significantly help your site’s security.
2. Wordfence
Wordfence is also a very popular security plugin. They have a free version with malware scanning, threat assessment, and country blocking. The country blocking feature allows you to block users from accessing your site from certain countries. You can also set up email notifications to get notified whenever Wordfence stops attacks or blocks users from certain countries.
Overall when you set up Wordfence, it is very user-friendly. Their dashboard is simple to navigate, and they provide a tutorial for the setup. This plugin can also stop brute force attacks by requiring two-factor authentication. You will rarely find this for free with other security plugins.
Another excellent feature of Wordfence is that it tracks traffic trends for your site. You can see if someone attempted to hack your website and track where your website traffic is coming from, whether from people, Google Crawlers, or bots.
With the Premium version of Wordfence, some of the best features you get are real-time updates on any threats happening to your website, better spam filtering, and scheduled scans. Premium users also get priority when contacting Wordfence. The firewall they offer isn’t as secure as the DNS level of the firewall on Sucuri but it is still pretty strong.
3. iThemes Security
iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) uses various methods to keep your site safe from web attacks. Their interface has lots of options and is clean and easy to navigate. This security plugin was built to fix common security vulnerabilities and ensure your password is always secure. When iThemes detects any suspicious activity, the system triggers an automatic lockdown on your WordPress site to keep it safe and unharmed from further attacks.
iThemes is suitable for beginners and experts as it is user-friendly and has a single click installation process. Once you have finished setting up this plugin, it will run a security check to ensure that the vital security settings have been set up correctly.
With iThemes, you will get immediately notified of any compromise due to changes made in the file system. You also get 404 detections, limited login attempts, brute force protection, etc. The only downside is that it does not come with its own firewall for your website, and it doesn’t have a malware scanner.
4. All in one WP security & firewall
All in One WP Security plugin boasts security auditing, firewall protection, IP filtering, file integrity monitoring, user account monitoring, etc. It’s user-friendly, and it’s free. This security plugin protects your PHP code (what WordPress is built with) from being edited. You will also get essential firewall protection and automatic file backups if you need to restore your website.
This plugin is for beginners or those at an advanced level. It will let you pick basic, intermediate, or advanced for different feature levels. With this plugin, you get an incredible number of features for free.
5. Bulletproof Security
Bulletproof Security may not be the best-looking plugin, but it does what it is designed for, and best of all, it’s free. After installing this security plugin, you can view a video highlighting how to set up the plugin. This plugin has malware scanning, protection from brute force attacks, database backups, etc.
Installing this plugin is easy, and once everything is configured in the setup of this plugin, you will be well protected. It includes backups of your website data in case anything happens to your site and you need to restore it.
If you are looking for more advanced functionalities, you can use manual mode. There is a paid version of this plugin if you want even more advanced features, such as an assortment of 16+ Pro Tools and a Heads up Dashboard. You can use the pro version on as many of your sites as you want, and it has free lifetime upgrades.
Conclusion
No matter which one of these you choose, you’ll be way more protected than if you don’t have one on your site. What’s important is making sure that whichever one you choose fits the needs of your business.
If you don’t know which one to choose, test them out one at a time. See which is easy to use, and see if you like what each security plugin offers. Don’t forget to keep everything up to date as there are lots of new updates to make sure your site is safe.
If you have any questions about site security, feel free to reach out to us. We are here to help.
