Sucuri vs WordFence- Which Security Plugin is Best for your Site?

If you are also contemplating Sucuri vs Wordfence for your website, then you are not alone. Wordfence and Sucuri are two of the best and most popular WordPress security plugins on the market. 

Both are highly recommended and incredibly useful to keep your WordPress site safe. This makes it difficult for beginners to choose which one works for them. 

While Sucuri and Wordfence have many similar features, each with its own pros and cons. 

In this article, we will compare Wordfence vs Sucuri to share what is the best overall WordPress security in our expert opinion. 

Sucuri vs Wordfence: What should you look for?

Wordfence and Sucuri are the two main WordPress security plugins. All offer comprehensive protection against violent attacks, malware infections, and data theft. 

As a website owner, you need to choose a security add-on that not only protects your website but effectively protects your website. You also need something that requires little maintenance, so you can focus on growing your business. 

Finally, you should choose a secure plug-in that is easy to use and that does not require technical skills to set/maintain. 

To help you make you, we will compare Sucuri side by side with Wordfence. Our comparison is divided into the following categories: 

•  Ease of use 
•  Web Application Firewall (WAF) 
•  Security Monitoring and Notifications 
•  Malware Scanner 
•  Website Cleanup 

That said, let’s see how Wordfence vs Sucuri builds up and which one comes out as the best overall security plugin. 

Sucuri vs Wordfence: Ease of use 

Site security is a very complex and technical area. That’s why our first comparison category is easy to use.  Let’s see how easy it is to use Wordfence vs Sucuri to protect your site. 

Wordfence

Once you install the plugin, you will immediately be prompted for an email address that you want to receive a security notification. You must also accept your terms of service. 

After that, you will see an introductory wizard that will help you get acquainted with the Wordfence panel. It indicates where you will see security notifications and scans. 

The plugins open the website application firewall in learning mode and run an automatic background scan. Depending on the size of your website, you will see notifications when the scan is complete. 

Clicking on the notification will display its details, the recommended action to take. For example, there is an updated version of our WordPress theme available. 

By default, the firewall runs as a WordPress plugin, which is not very effective. Wordfence allows you to run it in the extended mode for better protection, but you have to configure it manually (later). 

The basic configuration of the Wordfence plugin is quite simple and does not require much user input. The user interface is a bit confusing and can make it difficult for beginners to find certain sets/options. 

Sucuri

Sucuri provides a clearer user interface without unnecessary messages appearing on the screen. You also run a quick scan and you’ll see notifications in the plug-in panel. 

Sucuri’s website application firewall (WAF) is a cloud-based firewall, which means it won’t run on your server. In other words, its end does not require technical maintenance. 

You will need to add your API key and configure DNS settings for your domain name. This will allow the firewall to capture malicious traffic before it reaches your WordPress hosting server.  After installation, you will not have to worry about updating or maintaining it in the future. 

Sucuri can also easily perform the recommended security enhancement settings on its website. All you have to do is click to apply various security enhancement settings. 

The general user interface is good. But users still have to dig deeper to find the options they are looking for. 

Updating a domain name server in a domain registrar is an additional step necessary to configure a Sucuri firewall and can be a bit difficult for some non-technical users. The advantage is that your domain registrar can help you to set it up. 

Sucuri vs Wordfence: Web Application Firewall (WAF) 

A web application firewall monitors traffic to your website and blocks common security threats. There are different ways to deploy a firewall (application-based versus cloud-based). 

 We believe cloud-based firewalls are more efficient and reliable in the long run.  Sucuri and Wordfence provide website application firewall, let’s see how they differ. 

 Wordfence

Wordfence provides a website application firewall to monitor and block traffic to malicious websites. 

It’s an application-level firewall, which means it runs on your server and is less efficient than a cloud-based firewall. This means that the firewall runs as a WordPress plugin, so before an attack can be blocked, WordPress must load. This can take up many server resources and be inefficient. 

To change it, you must manually configure the Wordfence firewall in expansion mode. This will allow the Wordfence firewall to monitor traffic before arriving at your WordPress installation. 

Because it’s an endpoint firewall, Wordfence only blocks traffic once it’s reached the hosting server. In the event of DDoS attacks or violent attempts, your server resources will continue to suffer and your website will decrease in performance. 

You will learn how you and other users access your WordPress website. During this time, several firewall rules will not be applied to ensure that legitimate users of the website are not accidentally blocked. 

Sucuri

Sucuri provides a cloud-based website application firewall, which means that it blocks suspicious traffic even before it reaches the hosting server. 

This saves you a lot of server resources and instantly increases the speed of your website. Sucuri CDN servers are located in different regions, which is another additional increase in site speed. 

When using a firewall, you must change the DNS settings of the domain name. This change will allow all traffic to your website through Sucuri’s server. 

There is no basic or extended mode. Once the installation is complete, Sucuri WAF will begin to protect your site from malicious requests, DDoS attacks, and password forgery attempts.

They have a powerful machine learning algorithm that is strong enough to avoid false positives.  Sucuri takes you from high-security mode to paranoid mode when you meet DDoS. This ensures that your website’s server is not blocked. 

Sucuri vs Wordfence: Security Monitoring and Notifications 

As a website owner, you need to know if there are any issues on your site as soon as possible. Security concerns can cost your customers and money. 

Receive these notifications and you need to make sure that your WordPress website can send an email. The best way to make sure this is by sending WordPress emails using SMTP service. 

 Let’s see how Wordfence and Sucuri handle site monitoring and alerts. 

Wordfence

Wordfence has a good notification and alert system. First, notifications will be highlighted next to the Wordfence menu in the WordPress admin sidebar and in the control panel. 

They are highlighted according to their priority. You can click Notification to learn more about it and how to fix it. 

However, this will only be seen when you log in to the WordPress dashboard.  Wordfence also comes with instant email notification. To configure e-mail alerts, go to the All Wordfence Options page and scroll down to the E-mail Alert Preferences section. 

You can open/close email alerts here. You can also choose the severity level to send email alerts. Sucuri also displays key notifications in the control panel. The upper right corner of the screen is dedicated to displaying the status of the main WordPress file. you will see the audit log and site status. 

Sucuri comes with a complete alert management system. Simply visit Sucuri’s security settings page and switch to the Alerts tab. You can add the email address you want to receive a notification. After that, you can further customize email alerts. 

You can select the events you want to receive notifications, the number of alerts per hour, and customize settings for violent attacks, post types, and alert email themes. Your Firewall web application also sends high-level automatic alerts to your email. 

Malware Scanner 

Both plugins come with built-in security scanners to check your WordPress website for malware, modified files, and malicious code. Let’s see how Wordfence and Sucuri analyze malware and other problems. 

Wordfence Malware Scanner 

Wordfence comes with a powerful scanner that is highly customizable to meet your hosting environment and security issues. By default, scanning is enabled with limited scanning settings (to save server resources to a shared host schedule). 

The free version, Wordfence automatically determines the analysis schedule for your website. Advanced users can choose their own scan schedule. 

You can configure the scanner to run in a different mode. Some scanning options are only available for advanced versions. The Wordfence scanner can also check your plugins and themes to match the version of the repository. 

Sucuri Malware Scanner 

Sucuri’s malware scanner uses Sucuri’s site check API. This API automatically checks your website with several secure browsing APIs to make sure your website is not blacklisted. 

Automatically check the integrity of your core WordPress files to make sure they haven’t been modified. You can customize scanning settings from the Sucuri Security Settings page and then click the Scanner tab. 

Sucuri’s free scanner runs on publicly available files on its website. It’s not a WordPress specific scanner, so it’s incredibly good at detecting any kind of malware and malicious code. It is also less intrusive to your server resources, which is an added advantage. 

Sucuri vs Wordfence:  Website Cleanup 

Cleaning up a hacked WordPress site is not easy. Malware can affect multiple files, inject links into your content, or block it outside your own website. 

 Manual cleaning of everything is impossible for most beginners. Fortunately, Wordfence and Sucuri offer website cleaning and malware removal services. Let’s see which one makes it better. 

Wordfence

Wordfence site cleaning services are not included in your free or premium plans. Sold separately as a complimentary service. 

Site cleaning will also give you a premium Wordfence license for a site.  The malware cleaning process is very simple. They scan your site for malware/infection and then clean all affected files. 

Your team will also investigate how hackers access your website. They will prepare a detailed report for the entire cleaning process and provide advice on future prevention. 

Sucuri

All paid Sucuri plans include site cleaning services. This comes with site cleanup, blacklisting removal, SEO spam fixes, and WAF protection for future prevention. 

They’re pretty good at cleaning up malware, injected spam code, and backdoor access files. The process is very simple. Open a support ticket and your team will begin the cleanup process. 

They will use their login credentials for FTP/SSH or Cpanel access. In the process, they save records for each file they touch and automatically back up everything. 

Conclusion 

Wordfence and Sucuri are two excellent WordPress security plugins. However, we believe Sucuri is the best WordPress security plugin in general. 

It provides a cloud-based WAF that improves website performance and speed while blocking malicious traffic and violent attacks. Wordfence is a great free option if you don’t mind using a firewall and server-side scanner. 

ServerGuy offers the best security and hosting services for your website. If you are not satisfied with either of the plugins or have other concerns, do contact us via mail, chat, or call.