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Best WordPress Firewall Plugins Compared
The firewall plugin helps you protect your website from hacking, brute force and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This article provides you with the best firewall plugin for WordPress and concerns about the features of each plugin.
Before identifying the firewall plugins, we will get a common functionality and purpose of using a plugin.
What is a WordPress Firewall plugin?
There are alternative name for WordPress firewall plugin such as web application firewall or WAF. Firewall plugin act as a shield between your website and all incoming traffic. These firewalls observe your website traffic. And also it Works to block many common security threats before they reach your WordPress site.
In addition to increase your WordPress website security, it helps to speed up your website and boost performance.
There can be identifying two types of firewall plugins. Those are;
- DNS Level Website Firewall – These firewalls route your website traffic through their cloud proxy servers. This allows them to only send genuine traffic to your web server.
- Application Level Firewall – Through this plugin, it is examine the traffic after it reaches your server but before loading most WordPress scripts. In the reducing the server load, this is not efficient as DNS level.
DNS level firewalls are specific to identify genuine website traffic among the bad request. Therefore it is more beneficiary use the DNS level firewall.
They follow such a procedure through tracking thousands of websites, comparing trends, looking for botnets, known bad IPs, and blocking traffic to page which your uses would normally never request.
DNS level website firewalls have an ability to reduce the load on your WordPress hosting server at significant level and it confirms that your website does not go down.
Now we focus on the best WordPress firewall plugins are available for your WordPress site.
- Sucuri
Sucuri can be identifying as the leading website security company for WordPress. It available DNS level firewall. Through that, it is available intrusion and brute force prevention, as well as malware and blacklist removal services.
Sucuri has an ability to improve performance of your website through reducing server load through caching optimization, website acceleration, and Anycast CDN (all included). And also it can protect your website from SQL Injections, XSS, RCE, RFU and all known attacks.
You can easily set up their WAF. You have to add a DNS record your domain and point them to Sucuri’s cloudproxy instead of your website.
As a beginner also, we can use the Sucuri to improve our WordPress website security.
Pricing: Starting from $199.99/ year billed annually
Grade: A+
- MaxCDN (StackPath)
MaxCDN is now being a part of StackPath family. MaxCDN is being a one of leading company in the CDN security and web application firewall provider in the industry. They added layer 3 and 4 DDoS protection on all plans for their robust platform.
For the protection of domains, the StackPath add layer DDoS. This is the DNS level firewall. This is protecting your website from malicious attacks. In addition to its help to speed up your website.
They have no WordPress plugin, because of that StackPath not provide a firewall. However, their plans are more affordable and have a featured pack for small business compared to Cloudflare (# 3rd rank provider)
Pricing: You will receive free trial. It is valid for only one month. After that, the pricing start with $20 per month. This is sufficient for a small business WordPress site.
Grade: A
- Cloudflare
Because of their free CDN service they have been achieved popularity them. In the CDN service include the basic DDoS protection as well. It does not include the firewall application for their free plan. If you want to get Cloudflare firewall you have to sign up for their pro plan.
Cloudflare is a DNS-level firewall. According to that, your traffic goes through their network. This leads to an increase in the performance of your website and if there is unusually high traffic arises, it reduces the downtime.
It is only responsible of a pro plane is protection of DDoS against layer 3 attacks. At least you will need their business plan protect from the advanced DDoS layer 5 and 7 attacks.
When consider the advantages of Cloudflare, we can indicate it as CDN, caching and a large network of server. As the disadvantages of the Cloudflare, we can identify that they do not offer application-level security scans, malware protection, blacklist removal, security notification and alert. They do not observe your WordPress site for file changes and other common WordPress security threats.
Pricing: Starting price is $20/ month for the Pro plan and $200/ month for business.
Grade: A-
- Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is a popular WordPress plugin and it available the firewall feature as well as. It observes Your WordPress website for malware, file changes, SQL injections, and more features. Wordfence Security firewall has an ability to protect your website from DDoS and brute force attacks.
Wordfence Security comes with an application-level firewall. According to that, it is triggered on your server and bad traffic is blocked after it reaches your server but before loading website.
This is not a best application for block attacks. It will increase the load of your server through a large number of bad requests. This is an application-level firewall, because of that; it does not come with a content delivery network (CDN).
The Wordfence Security firewall comes with on-demand security scans as well as scheduled scans. It facilitates you to manually monitor traffic and block suspicious-looking IPs directly from your WordPress admin area.
You will need the premium version for getting their sophisticated application-level firewall.
Pricing: Basic plugin-free in Wordfence Security. Premium version pricing is start from $99/ year for a single site license.
Grade: B+
- Jetpack
Jetpack is also a most popular WordPress plugin and it include the WordPress security and backup features. Jetpack plugin is coming with an application-level firewall. According to that, bad traffic is blocked after it reaches your WordPress hosting server.
Their free plan is available the features such as brute force protection and downtime monitoring. At least, you have to upgrade to at least the personal plan to unlock daily automated backups and automated spam filtering.
You should have to be on Jetpack’s professional plan, to unlock the automated malware scanning and security fixes which are providers like Sucuri offer.
When consider the pricing of the Jetpack, it is fair when consider the features which are they offered. However, it is better off going with Sucuri or MaxCDN because of their true security firewall.
Pricing: Basic plugin provide with free of charge. Personal plan cost is $39/ year and professional plan cost is $299/Year.
Grade: B
- BulletProof Security
BulletProof Security is also popular WordPress security plugin and comes with an application-level firewall. It is available protection features such as login security, database backup, maintenance mode and several security tweaks.
This is not recommending for beginners. Because of BulletProof Security does not provide good user experience, it may be difficult to understand to beginners. It is available features with a setup wizard which automatically updates your WordPress .htaccess files and enables firewall protection.
It does not available file scanner to check for malicious code on your website. If you choose the paid version of the plugin provide you to extra features to monitor for intrusion and malicious files in your WordPress uploads folder.
Pricing: This is a free basic plugin. Pro version cost is being the $59.95 for unlimited site and lifetime support.
Grade: C
Conclusion
Through this article, we compare the all best security plugin for your WordPress. According to the comparison, we can identify the Sucuri as the best security plugin. It will provide the best protection for your website. It comes with the best DNA level firewall and includes many security features for protect your website. Their CDN help you to boost the performance.
We can provide MaxCDN as the best alternative option with comparing the pricing and the features available it.
So, we think that this article will help you to get an idea regarding the firewall and select the best WordPress security plugin for your website.
Editor’s choice; Best Free WordPress Security Plugin of 2021