5 Best WordPress Security Plugins [Reviewed]

Website hacking is one of the common cyber crimes occurring these days. According to some statistics, 26% of overall websites are using WordPress. There are numerous features that make WordPress the first choice for a user. Not only WordPress is easy to use it allows you to protect your website from getting hacked using plugins. Choosing the best plugin, a user can rely on for security is a quite difficult task. So, in this article, we would be reviewing the 5 Best WordPress security plugins.

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Best WordPress Security Plugins

1. Wordfence Security

With more than 2 million active installs Wordfence Security is surely one of the best WordPress security plugins developed. Above all features, the plugin is free and is an open source plugin. Though it has a premium version that allows you to receive instant updates. In case you are using a free version, you will receive updates one month after premium users. Also, you would not be able to use features like country block, two-factor authentication. Important features of Wordfence Security include

• Firewall protecting your website
• Protection from brute-force attacks
• Elegant dashboard that keeps you updated with all activities
• Plugin has a learning ability and you can allow it to be trained according to the nature of traffic your website receives for first 7 days, this makes plugin detect hacking activities on your website in a better way
• Blocks fake Google Bot’s from crawling your website

2. All in One WP Security & Firewall

It is also one of the top-rated plugins in the security category. The plugin has a user-friendly environment. Can be used by a naïve user as well. It comes in different languages including English, German, Spanish and French. This is free and the best thing about All in One WordPress Security plugin is that it takes care of your website security without affecting the performance of your website.

• Gives you protection against brute force attacks
• If your website allows users to create accounts, it helps you enable manual approval for accounts
• Using the plugin, you can add captcha to your website that helps in detection of robotic behaviour
• Takes care of database and file system security
• IP blocking service allows you to ban IP’s either a single IP or a range of IP’s
• Blocks fake Google Bot’s from crawling your website
• You can monitor activity on the dashboard

3. iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security)

With more than 800,000 active installs and a rating of 4.4, it is also one of the best WordPress Security Plugins. iThemes Security creators allows you to protect your website with 30 different features. So, in short, iThemes Security is an all in one toolkit for your security related issues. Although WordPress itself keeps on updating things, there is still always a risk of vulnerabilities. iThemes Security is always in the hunt for those vulnerabilities so they can never become a trouble for your website. Its features include:

• Two Factor Authentication that helps to make secure logins
• It allows you to make a schedule for malware scans
• Allows you to enforce users to use strong passwords
• It helps you make your users change passwords after regular intervals as it has a password expiration feature that makes a user’s password expire after a certain period
• It has a dashboard to show all activities
• Allows you to give someone “admin access” to your website for a limited time. Session expires automatically when the specified time limit exceeds.
• It is also a free plugin.

4. Sucuri Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Security Hardening

It has 300,000 active installs and is available only in the English language. If you want to keep a track for every activity taking place on your website, then Sucuri Security is right here to do the job and that too without charging a penny. As the great WordPress Security Plugin is free to use except for premium features. Its features include:

• Blacklist monitoring
• File Integrity Monitoring
• Remote Malware Scanning
• Effective Security Hardening
• It analyses the activity and takes Post-Hack Security Actions
• Provides you security notifications keeping you alert
• Website Firewall: It a premium feature and you will have to pay for it

5. BulletProof Security

If we consider number of active installs the plugin has got more than 90,000 active installs. That is far less number of active installs as compared to other plugins on the list. But if we consider functionality and features as the criteria for comparison then surely this is one the best WordPress security plugin. It has got a wide list of features but not all of them are free. Many of the features are only available to premium users. Its features include:

• Login Security & Monitoring
• Idle Session Logout (ISL)
• Auth Cookie Expiration (ACE)
• It allows users to manage backups either user wants to have a complete backup, Email Backup or any other
• It is a combination of 16 other plugins

Its premium features include features like Malware scan, HTTP error logging, PHP error logging, 3 different skins for users and many others. Many important features are only available to premium members, that is why most users do not prefer this plugin and go for other plugins which are mentioned above. But performance wise, this is a really good security plugin for WordPress.

Conclusion

All of the above-mentioned WordPress security plugins have pros and cons and are dependent on the requirements of a user. So it is quite difficult to say which one is the best. Still, if we consider the availability of maximum features for free then Wordfence Security would be the best choice. As it allows users to have access to maximum features for free. Still, it totally depends on the requirements of the users that which plugin best suites their needs.

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