WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) powering over 30% of websites on the web (Source). It’s easy to use, free, and allows you to build any kind of website you want. However, simplicity comes at a cost. With WordPress, you are responsible for all aspects of security.
To keep your WordPress site secure, maintaining a solid WordPress security plugin is a must. A good plugin will help safeguard your WordPress site from brute force assaults, viruses, and spammers.
If you’re looking for the best WordPress security plugins to protect your website against online threats, this guide will help you select the best security plugin to fit your needs.
In this article, you will find a list of the top most popular WordPress security plugins to keep your site safe.
Do I Need A WordPress Security Plugin?
Yes! One of the most crucial features of any internet business is security. It makes no difference if you have a large corporation or a small business website. Everyone is a target for hackers.
Every week, almost 18 million websites are infected with malware.
While the WordPress core program is quite secure, the plugins and themes you use can expose your website to security risks.
Let’s look at the top WordPress security plugins and how they may help you keep your website safe.
1. Sucuri
Sucuri is the industry leader in WordPress security. Although the Sucuri Security plugin comes in both free and paid editions, the free version is also enough for the majority of websites.
A firewall protects your WordPress site from brute-force and malicious attacks.
Even before it reaches your server, the Sucuri website firewall blocks out malicious traffic. They also use their CDN servers to serve static material.
The plugin’s free features include security activity auditing, which allows you to see how successfully the plugin is protecting your website. File integrity monitoring, blacklist monitoring, security notifications, and security hardening are among the features.
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Most significantly, they offer to clean up your WordPress site if it gets affected by malware at no additional cost. You can even bring them a website that has already been infected with malware and have them clean it up for you.
Average Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars from 345 reviews.
Pricing: Free or $199/ year for the Basic plan.
2. Wordfence (Editor Choice)
Another popular WordPress security plugin is Wordfence. They provide a free version of their plugin that includes a strong malware scanner, exploit detection, and threat assessment functionality.
The plugin will scan your site for common threats automatically, but you can also do a complete scan at any time. If any symptoms of a security breach are found, you will be notified and given information on how to repair them.
Wordfence also has a WordPress firewall built-in. This firewall, on the other hand, is activated on your server right before WordPress is launched. As a result, it’s not quite as effective as a DNS-level firewall like Sucuri.
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars from 3600+ reviews.
Pricing: Free or $99/ year for one site.
3. iThemes Security
The developers of the famous BackupBuddy plugin have released iThemes Security, a WordPress security plugin. iThemes Security, like all of their products, has a good, clean user interface with a lot of options.
It includes file integrity checks, security hardening, login attempt limits, strong password enforcement, 404 detections, and brute force protection, among other features.
A website firewall is not included with iThemes Security. It also lacks its malware scanner, instead of relying on Sucuri’s Site check malware scanning.
Average Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars from 3800+ reviews.
Pricing: Free plugin is available on the WordPress repository. iThemes Security Pro plans start at $80/ year.
4. All In One WP Security
All in One WordPress Security is a robust security auditing, monitoring, and firewall plugin for WordPress. It makes basic WordPress security best practices simple to implement on your website.
This is a highly visual security plugin that uses graphs and meters to explain metrics like security strength and what needs to be done to make your site more secure to novices.
The features are broken down into three categories: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced. As a result, if you’re a more experienced developer, you can still use the plugin. The main functions of this plugin are to safeguard your user accounts, restrict brute force login attempts, and improve the security of user registration. The plugin also includes database and file security.
Average Rating: 4.8 Out of 5 stars.
Pricing: All In One WP Security & Firewall is free.
5. WPScan Security
WPScan is a one-of-a-kind WordPress security plugin since it makes use of its own manually curated WordPress vulnerability database, which is updated daily by WordPress security experts and community members.
They look for over 21,000 known security flaws in WordPress plugins, themes, and core software on your site.
You can set up automated daily scans and receive email notifications when the findings are available. They have a free security API that is suitable for most websites, but if you have a larger site or use a lot of plugins, you may upgrade to the premium plan.
Average Rating: 4.1 Out of 5 stars from 20 reviews.
Pricing: The free plan is suitable for most WordPress websites. Paid plan starts at $5/month for 75 API requests.
6. Google Authenticator
Setting up two-factor authentication for added protection is a great way to ensure that your website remains safe. That’s exactly what Google Authenticator allows you to do. It’s also on our list because most security plugins don’t have it. Additionally, it provides:
- IP address blocking
- User login monitoring
Pricing: Premium versions of Google Authenticator include more authentication options, numerous login options (including “passwordless”), and different authentication methods for different user roles. The cost of a license is as little as $5 per year.
Conclusion
If you’re a WordPress user, then it’s critical for you to have a strong WordPress security strategy in place.
With so many options and features to choose from, deciding on the best tool(s) for your site can be a daunting task. By following this guide, you should be able to find the best plugins to fit your needs so you can protect your website from hackers, malware, brute force attacks.
