For WordPress developers, security is a major concern, and the situation is only getting worse.
Many WordPress websites are hacked every day.
In order to avoid a potentially dangerous situation, this must be addressed immediately.

The first step in protecting your website is to find a secure, Optimized WordPress hosting service with a proven track record of adhering to industry best practices.
Step two is to secure your WordPress site with additional security measures.
You can, however, increase the overall safety of your website by paying for a third-party security service.

Wordfence and Sucuri are particularly popular WordPress security plugins.
Your website will be protected by a robust set of security features provided by these companies.
Although they share many similarities, they are still distinct.

Who’s the best?
Which security software do you prefer, Sucuri or Wordfence?
It’s up to you to decide which of these two options is best for your website, and this article will help you do so.
To understand a better plugin, one must have had some experience with the other one first.
Various features, performance, pricing, and overall value can all be compared one-on-one.

What is the significance of WordPress security?

An unprotected WordPress site can have a negative impact on your company’s revenue and public perception of your brand.
In order to gain access to your users’ passwords or other personal information, hackers may use social engineering techniques.

Because they don’t believe their company is large enough to pose a threat to hackers, many small business owners may believe their website is safe.
For hackers, it makes no difference how big or small your company is as long as they can make money off of selling personal information.
For this reason, you need to protect your website and install the necessary WordPress plugins as soon as possible in order to keep your business safe.

If you have an eCommerce website or blog, you can take a variety of precautions to prevent hackers and vulnerabilities from infiltrating it.

Wordfence vs Sucuri

WordPress security plugins Wordfence and Sucuri are the most popular.
Both of them offer comprehensive protection against brute force attacks, malware infection, and data theft, among other threats.

It’s your job as a website owner to pick a security plugin that keeps your site safe and secure.
If you want to focus on growing your business, you need a system that doesn’t take up a lot of your time and energy.

In order to keep your website safe, you should choose a security plugin that is easy to install and maintain.

The Basics of Sucuri

When it comes to web application protection, Sucuri is an excellent choice.
Anti-malware and DDoS protection are included in their service.

The cloud proxy firewall provided by Sucuri intercepts all traffic to your website before it reaches your hosting provider.
That allows them to block all of the attacks and send only legitimate visitors your way.

Its most important features include malware detection, integrity monitoring, and security hardening.
As everything is scanned from a remote location, a server-side scan is not performed by Sucuri.

Websites are protected, performance is enhanced, hacking indicators are tracked, and unlimited support for security incidents is available with Sucuri (for premium users only).

That being said, Sucuri isn’t a one-stop-shop for your website’s security needs.
To get the most out of it, pair it with your current web security measures.
You can have greater peace of mind and greater security awareness with Sucuri, which provides you with a wide range of tools for mitigating risks.

You should be aware of Sucuri’s three levels of protection when discussing the company.

• As a free WordPress security plugin, Sucuri Security has all of the standard security features you’d expect.
  There is no firewall included in the free version of the plugin.

• It is possible to use the Sucuri Firewall (WAF) with the Sucuri Security plugin for a fee.
  The firewall can also be used without the plugin.
  All of these tools are included in the package, which includes web application firewalls (WAFs), CDNs for performance optimization, load balancing, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and DDoS mitigation.

• At a reasonable price, the Sucuri Platform offers an array of high-quality cloud-based security services.
  Additional features such as monitoring, detection, and incident response are also included, in addition to the ones found in Sucuri Firewall as well.
  You can request that the Sucuri team “remove all malware and blacklist warnings” from your website by signing up for the Sucuri Platform.

By using Sucuri, your website’s security is significantly improved.
You’ll save money on your hosting costs as well since the firewall cuts down on the amount of traffic your website receives.

The Basics Of Wordfence

It’s powered by WordPress
It is a free security plugin that includes an endpoint firewall (WAF) and an anti-malware scan for your website.
Login security, Live Traffic, and advanced rules-based blocking are also included in this package.

Unlike Sucuri, Wordfence does not have a global firewall.
Because it’s hosted on your web server, it’s not considered a cloud service.
As a result, server-side scans can be performed in greater depth, and end-to-end encryption can be provided.

In exchange for this perk, however, performance suffers as a result.
Your server’s resources analyze the traffic and, if necessary, discard it if they detect any malicious intent.
Web hosting on shared or low-cost managed servers may cause your site to load slowly. This is certainly relevant for e-commerce sites.
Your web hosting provider should be chosen carefully.

Your website’s security is directly impacted by the hosting service you choose.
Optimized WordPress from Hostnats gives you everything you need right out of the box, including lightning-fast loading times, top-notch security, and an intuitive user interface.
The world’s fastest CDN and global website firewall and malware protection can improve your site’s speed and security.

The sheer volume of malware on your server during a DDoS attack can cause it to become overloaded.
A local security plugin can’t handle that.
Compared to Sucuri, this is Wordfence’s most glaring flaw.

Ease Of Use

Securing a website is a difficult and time-consuming task that necessitates extensive technical knowledge.
The ease of use of both plugins will be the first point of comparison.

Ease of Use with Wordfence

Installing and configuring Wordfence is a breeze.
You’ll be prompted to enter an email address as soon as the plugin is installed so that you can receive security alerts and warnings.
The terms of the service agreement would also be required of you if you wanted to use their service.

After that, you’ll be presented with an onboarding wizard that will help you familiarise yourself with the Wordfence dashboard.
You can use it to find out where security scans and alerts will be shown.

While in the learning mode, the plugin will activate the website application firewall and perform an automatic scan in the background.
In some cases, you may not receive an email notification when the scan is complete.

When you click on a notification, you’ll see more information about it, including any recommended next steps.

By default, the firewall is set up to run as a WordPress plugin, which makes it inefficient for most purposes.
To get the most out of Wordfence, you can activate the extended mode and configure it manually on your computer or laptop.

Configuring the Wordfence plugin in its most basic form is simple and doesn’t necessitate much involvement on the part of the user.
Because of the cluttered user interface, it may be difficult for beginners to locate specific settings or options.

Sucuri: Ease of Use

Easy-to-use security software is Sucuri.
To put it another way, the user interface is current and functional.
A single click is all it takes to implement Sucuri’s recommended security hardening settings.

An API key must be generated after the plugin has been installed. This can be done right from the WordPress administration area.

It’s possible to set up Sucuri’s security features once and forget about them for the rest of your life.
Additionally, you won’t have to be concerned about updating or maintaining the plugin.

Alerts are sent to you if Sucuri detects a breach.
For those who prefer manual control, there are numerous options available.
Because Sucuri’s WAF is hosted in the cloud, you won’t have to worry about any technical maintenance.

Website Application Firewall (WAF)

Protecting your website from common security threats is the job of a web application firewall.
Implementing a firewall can be accomplished in a number of ways (application-based vs cloud-based).
When it comes to the long-term viability of a security system, cloud-based firewalls outperform traditional ones.

Website application firewalls are available from both Sucuri and Wordfence.
Let’s take a look at the differences between them.

Wordfence: Website Application Firewall

Wordfence offers malware monitoring and blocking services in addition to its website application firewall.
Because the cloud-based firewall does not run on your server, it is more efficient than an application-level firewall.

In Wordfence’s default mode, it is activated in the “basic” setting.
In other words, the firewall is a WordPress plugin that must be loaded before an attack can be stopped.
As a result, server resources are used inefficiently.

Manually configuring the Wordfence firewall in extended mode is required for this change.
In order to protect your WordPress site, Wordfence has a firewall in place.

Wordfence can only stop traffic from reaching your hosting server after it has already arrived there because it is an endpoint firewall.
Attacks like DDOS and brute force will deplete your server’s resources, resulting in a decrease in the performance of the site.
It may even come to a complete halt at this point.

Wordfence’s firewall is always in “learning mode” when you first turn it on, so it’s always picking up new information.
As you and your visitors interact with your WordPress site, it collects data.
A number of firewall rules are not enforced during this time to ensure that legitimate website visitors are not accidentally blocked from accessing the site.

Sucuri: Website Application Firewall

Cloud-based website application firewalls, such as Sucuri’s, block potentially harmful traffic before it reaches your hosting server.

Saving server resources while improving website performance is now possible thanks to this technique.
Another benefit of Sucuri’s CDN servers is that they are geographically dispersed, allowing for faster loading times for the company’s website.

Changing your domain name’s DNS settings is required to use the firewall.
As a result of this change, Sucuri’s servers will be able to handle all of your website traffic.

This game does not have a basic or extended mode.
Your website will be protected from malicious requests, DDOS attacks, and password-guessing attempts after Sucuri’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) is configured.

They’ve developed a sophisticated machine learning algorithm to avoid false positives.

In the event of a DDoS attack, you have the option to switch from High Security to Paranoid mode with Sucuri.
This prevents an unplanned outage of your website’s server.

Security Monitoring and Notifications

Website owners should be alerted immediately if there is an issue with their site.
A security breach can result in the loss of customers and revenue.

If you want to receive these notifications, make sure your WordPress site can send emails.
Sending emails from WordPress is easiest when using an SMTP service.

Wordfence: Monitoring and Alerts

Wordfence’s notification and alerting system are top-notch.
The Wordfence menu in the WordPress admin sidebar and dashboard will be highlighted with notifications.

The severity of the problems is indicated by the color of the font.
Notifications can be opened by clicking on them to learn more about what’s going on.
However, if you logged into your WordPress dashboard, you would be able to see this.

Wordfence also includes immediate email notifications.
To access the ‘Email Alert Preferences’ section, scroll down to the bottom of the Wordfence > All Options page.

This page allows you to turn on and off email notifications.
Additionally, an email alert can be sent at a specific severity level.

Sucuri: Monitoring and Alerts

The Sucuri dashboard shows you important alerts.
The top right corner of the screen is reserved for this purpose and displays the status of core WordPress files.

Notifications can be sent to one or more email addresses that you specify.
After that, you’ll be able to further customize your email alerts.
It’s also possible to customize the notifications you receive, such as which events you want to be notified about, the number of alerts you want to receive per hour, the settings for brute force attacks, post types, and the subject of alert emails.

When something goes wrong, you’ll receive high-level alerts via email from their website application firewall.

Sucuri Security, a free WordPress security plugin, lets you keep an eye on your site and implement some basic security measures.
Even so, it isn’t meant to protect your site from major cyberattacks.

Scanner for Malware

These two plugins have built-in security scanners that will scan your WordPress site for malware, corrupted or deleted files, as well as malicious code.

In the following comparison test, you’ll see how Wordfence and Sucuri look for malware and other problems.
Checking Protection Power’s malware scan history is as simple as following these steps.

Wordfence: Malware Scanner

With Wordfence, you get a powerful scanner that can be configured to meet your hosting environment and security requirements.
There are only a few scan options that are included in the standard scan configurations (to save server resources on shared hosting plans).

You can use Wordfence’s free version to set up an automatic scanning schedule for your site.
Premium subscribers have the option of customizing their scan schedules to suit their particular needs.
The scanner can be set up in a number of different scanning modes.
Only with the premium version is it possible to use certain scanning options.

It’s also possible to use the Wordfence scanner to verify that your plugins and themes are compatible with the repository’s most recent release.

Sucuri: Malware Scanner

The Sucuri Site check API is used by the Sucuri Malware scanner to perform a malware scan.
Using this API, you can ensure that your website does not appear on a blacklist of safe-browsing APIs.
It performs regular integrity checks on your WordPress core files to make sure they haven’t been tampered with.

Selecting the Scanner tab on the Sucuri Security » Settings page allows you to alter scan settings.

For a nominal fee, Sucuri offers a free scan of your website’s public files.
Even though it isn’t a WordPress-specific scanner, it can detect any malware or malicious code, no matter the platform.
It also has the advantage of being less of a drain on your server’s resources.

Hacked Website Clean Up

Hacked WordPress websites are difficult to restore.
It is possible for malware to affect multiple files at once, insert links into your content, and even lock you out of your website.
When it comes to manual cleaning, the vast majority of beginners will be incapable of completing the task.

Websites can benefit from both Wordfence and Sucuri’s malware removal and website cleanup services.

Wordfence: Site Clean Up

Wordfence does not include a site cleanup service in their free or premium plans.
It can be purchased as an add-on service for an additional fee.
You’ll also receive a premium Wordfence license for use on a single website in addition to the website cleanup services.

Fortunately, removing malware is a straightforward process.
They’ll run a scan on your website to look for infections and malicious code, and they’ll clean up anything they find.

Additionally, their team will investigate how the hackers were able to gain access to your website in the first place.
It is expected that an exhaustive report on the cleanup process and recommendations for future preventative measures will be produced by them.

The following are included in their WordPress site cleaning service:

Ensure that the infected website is free of malicious code and links by removing them.

Examine the circumstances that led to the site becoming infected with malware.

On the investigation and infection removal procedures, please provide an in-depth report

Please use this form to request removal from anti-malware and anti-spam blacklists.

Set up a checklist to help prevent future incidents.

Sucuri Site Clean Up

All paid Sucuri plans include website cleanup as part of their basic functionality.
Website sanitization, blacklist removal, SEO spam repair, and WAF security.
They’re among the most effective when it comes to removing malware, spam, and backdoor access files.

Step-by-step instructions are not required for this procedure.
Once you’ve submitted a support ticket, someone from your team will get to work on the cleanup.
Your login credentials will be used to grant FTP/SSH and cPanel access.
Every time they touch a file, it is recorded and backed up automatically.

In a nutshell:

Two cybersecurity companies, Sucuri and Wordfence, are engaged in a head-to-head competition.
Do you know what’s best for you?

While Sucuri can provide high-level web security and performance, Sucuri is the best option for mission-critical business or eCommerce websites.

When it comes to free web security, Wordfence is the better choice.
If that’s your preference, then a free content delivery network (CDN) like Cloudflare is a good choice.

It all comes down to who you choose to host your website.
For the most part, a reputable hosting provider will handle most of the security measures.
Their servers and service aren’t worth the inconvenience caused by third-party plugins, they understand.

In a perfect world, your host would only allow code to run in specific locations and instances.
Any subsequent uploads will be restricted to the code’s specific folder.
Additional server-level security hardening measures, such as those described above, would make WordPress security plugins obsolete.
Always remember that website security is an ongoing process, not an endpoint.