Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Which One Is Best for Your WordPress Website?
Choosing the right security plugin can make all the difference in fortifying your website against malicious attacks, data breaches, and other hidden vulnerabilities.
Finding the plugin that checks off all your requirements can be a daunting task. You need to carefully examine features, assess the customer support, and understand how each plugin handles security challenges — all while juggling your business’s demands.
To simplify the decision-making process, we’re comparing Wordfence and Sucuri, two of the most popular WordPress security plugins.
Read on to learn more about their key features, main differences, and primary use cases.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: At a Glance
Both Wordfence and Sucuri offer a range of security tools to protect your website from online threats.
Wordfence is an all-in-one WordPress security plugin that provides a range of security features, including a powerful endpoint web application firewall (WAF), an intelligent security scanner, and solid login protection (including 2fa).
It is known for its leading real-time threat defense capabilities, most up-to-date vulnerability database, and advanced security options. Wordfence is also known for being the most popular and most downloaded security plugin for WordPress.
On the other hand, Sucuri is a solution that protects WordPress, Magento, Joomla, and custom websites from online threats. It comes with a cloud-based firewall (premium only), a malware scanner , and custom website cleaning services.
While both Wordfence and Sucuri offer solid protection, Wordfence excels at securing WordPress websites. As a frontline for millions of WordPress websites, it has more data on malware affecting WordPress than any other competitor, which enables it to adjust its security in real time to protect WordPress websites from the latest threats. Wordfence has been leading the industry in WordPress security for many years.
Beyond that, Wordfence also has a Bug Bounty program that enables it to catch hidden backdoors even before hackers to protect both Wordfence users and the wider WordPress community reliant on its vulnerability database.
Here’s how Wordfence and Sucuri fare against each other:
| Wordfence | Sucuri | |
| Users | 5,000,000+ | 800,000+ |
| Firewall | Endpoint Firewall (most secure) | Cloud-based firewall |
| Malware Scanner | Server-side security scanner with both free and paid plans | Remote scanning with free plugin and server-side upgrade with premium plans |
| Malware Removal | Free one-click removal and premium malware removal services | Malware removal (premium plans only) |
| Vulnerability Scanner | Extensive database with real-time updates | Limited |
| Customer Support | Tiered support from WordPress security experts (including optional 24/7/365 support) | 24/7 support from web security experts |
| Login Protection | Brute force, 2FA, leaked password protection, and reCAPTCHA | Brute force, 2FA, and CAPTCHA |
| User Experience | Intuitive, WordPress-native interface | Functional but can be overwhelming |
| Notification and Alerts | Email, Slack, Discord, and SMS, Wordfence Audit Log | Email, Slack, and SMS |
| Extras | Wordfence Central and live traffic monitoring (Free) | Content delivery network and performance optimization (premium plans only) |
| Login Protection | Free version available – trusted by over 5 Million users, Premium plans start from $119/year | Free plugin without a firewall or malware removal. Sucuri plans start at $199.99/year |
| Get Started With Wordfence |
What Is Wordfence?
Wordfence is the most downloaded security plugin for WordPress. It is used by over 5 million WordPress sites and is a complete WordPress security plugin that offers all the necessary security features to protect your WordPress website.
Key features of Wordfence include:
- Powerful website application firewall (WAF) to block malicious traffic in real time
- More malware and vulnerability data than anyone else in the industry
- Intelligent server-side security scanner
- One-click malware removal functionality
- Advanced login protection to prevent brute-force attacks
- Vulnerability scanner to identify security issues in the WordPress installation
- Wordfence Audit log to monitor and track important security events
- User-friendly dashboard to monitor website security
- Excellent support from WordPress security experts
Wordfence Premium Dashboard
What Is Sucuri?
Sucuri is a website security solution that protects not only WordPress websites but also sites built on other website platforms, such as Magento, Joomla, and Drupal. Custom-coded websites also use Sucuri for their security.
Key features of Sucuri include:
- Cloud-based WAF to block malicious traffic
- Remote malware scanning
- Professional website cleaning services
- Content delivery network (CDN) to improve website performance
- Protection against brute-force attacks
Article Contents:
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Firewall
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Malware Scanner
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Malware Removal
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Vulnerability Scanner
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Customer Support
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Login Protection
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: User Experience
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Notifications and Alerts
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Extras
- Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Pricing
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Firewall
Both Wordfence and Sucuri offer solid firewall protection for WordPress websites, but they differ in how they operate.
Wordfence uses a PHP-based firewall that operates directly on the endpoint, providing a tailored defense for each WordPress installation. It intimately understands the website’s structure and user access levels and provides more precise protection.
Cloud firewall vs. endpoint firewall.
Additionally, Wordfence gets deeper insights into traffic patterns and potential threats. Its endpoint-based approach combined with data from millions of WordPress websites enables Wordfence’s Threat Intelligence team to rapidly develop and deploy new firewall rules in response to emerging vulnerabilities.
The Wordfence firewall offers:
- Protection against various vulnerabilities, including SQL injections, XSS attacks, malicious file uploads, directory traversal, local file inclusion, and external entry expansion (XEE)
- Custom rule creation for advanced users
- Learning mode to minimize false positives
- IP and country-blocking capabilities
- Security from brute force attacks
Wordfence offers both free and paid versions of its service. While free users receive comprehensive protection, the firewall rules are delayed by 30 days. In contrast, Premium users benefit from real-time updates to firewall rules and malware signatures and gain access to an IP blocklist feature.
On the other hand, Sucuri employs a cloud-based firewall that offers broad protection across various platforms. Besides that, it relies on its virtual patching system to protect websites from known vulnerabilities in plugins or themes, even if the site owner hasn’t updated the affected component.
While virtual patching brings a convenient stopgap by closing hidden doors via the cloud, its effectiveness is limited to known vulnerabilities in its database. This poses a risk since Sucuri doesn’t have access to a large threat dataset like Wordfence and can only reactively protect against the newest vulnerabilities, while Wordfence will provide protection before a vulnerability is even disclosed.
Beyond virtual patching, the Sucuri firewall offers:
- Blanket protection against common attack vectors
- Blocklist and allowlist management
- Geographic blocking to filter traffic from specific regions
- DDoS protection
Although Sucuri offers solid features, its reliance on known vulnerabilities and lack of WordPress-specific insights puts it at a disadvantage. Wordfence’s ability to understand the intricacies of each WordPress installation, combined with rapid response to emerging threats, makes it the superior choice for WordPress security.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Malware Scanner
As two of the most popular WordPress security solutions, Wordfence and Sucuri offer malware-scanning functionality to detect existing threats on your WordPress website.
As the most popular WordPress security plugin, installed on over 5 million websites globally, Wordfence has unparalleled access to attack data. This vast dataset enables Wordfence to gather the greatest volume of attack patterns and provide protection that other solutions simply can’t match, as they lack access to such a comprehensive range of real-world threats.
Using this extensive knowledge of malware affecting the WordPress community, Wordfence maintains an up-to-date database of malware signatures. This enables it to accurately detect and assess the risk level of most malware your website encounters.
Wordfence scans changes in core files, the presence of malware, WordPress vulnerabilities, and password strength.
The Wordfence security scanner references Wordfence’s extensive malware database to examine all WordPress files and detect malicious code, backdoors, and known malicious URLs. It also offers several scan types: manual, scheduled, limited, standard, high sensitivity, and custom security scans.
In contrast, Sucuri offers both remote and server-side scanning. Its remote scanner looks for blocklist warnings, malware in the source code, and conditional malware visible to specific visitors.
However, since certain malware doesn’t show up on remote scans, it also uses a server-side scanner to detect backdoors, phishing pages, and DDoS scripts. That said, you might need to send a support request to set up the server-side scanner, as the process isn’t as user-friendly.
While both Wordfence and Sucuri have powerful malware scanners, Wordfence excels at protecting your business from the latest exploits since its Threat Intelligence team lets you get malware signatures for dangerous threats in real time.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Malware Removal
When it comes to malware removal, Wordfence and Sucuri offer distinct approaches to tackle the problem.
Wordfence provides both free and paid solutions for malware removal. You can install Wordfence on your hacked WordPress website and scan it to identify compromised files.
With Wordfence’s comparison feature, you can review the scan results, view changes between the original and potentially infected files, and decide whether to edit or delete a core, theme, or plugin file with a single click.
Wordfence lets users delete malware with a single click.
While this do-it-yourself approach removes common malware, it still comes with some risk of removing the wrong files. For peace of mind, you can also turn to Wordfence’s site cleaning services to let the Wordfence team take over and remove malware for you.
In contrast, Sucuri only offers paid malware removal. If you sign up for the Sucuri security platform, you can submit a support request to have a team of security analysts perform malware cleanups.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Vulnerability Scanner
As a dedicated security plugin for WordPress, Wordfence leads in vulnerability scanning over Sucuri.
Wordfence offers the most robust and current database of WordPress vulnerabilities through Wordfence Intelligence. The database is maintained through internal research and the Wordfence Bug Bounty Program.
This program ensures that Wordfence users stay informed about the latest threats by encouraging developers to contribute to the database, offering rewards of up to $31,200. It also incorporates data from external sources like the CVE list, Packet Storm, and Exploit DB. This information enables both Wordfence Free and Premium users to identify hidden backdoors and potential security risks on their websites.
The Wordfence vulnerability database gets the latest WordPress vulnerabilities before any other competitor.
As of 2024, the Wordfence vulnerability database has amassed a collection of nearly 18,000 unique vulnerability records specific to the WordPress ecosystem. With this information, WordPress users can detect hidden backdoors and potential security threats on their websites, even with the free Wordfence plugin.
Beyond that, Wordfence also actively tracks affected plugins and themes. It notifies the users when said vulnerabilities are patched and when it’s safe to update or use affected components.
Sucuri lacks a dedicated vulnerability scanner. Instead, it focuses on identifying outdated software and plugins. It notifies the owners if they’re using an outdated content management system (CMS), extension, or plugin, which could contain vulnerabilities. This is generally useful, but it isn’t very effective at handling issues in real time.
While Sucuri Virtual Patching may compensate for this absence of a vulnerability scanner, Sucuri doesn’t have access to real-time vulnerability data like Wordfence, which makes your business prone to zero-day vulnerabilities, which are exploits even the plugin maintainer doesn’t know of — so there’s no patch.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Customer Support
A responsive and knowledgeable customer support team makes all the difference in website security since you deal with many unknowns. Both Wordfence and Sucuri offer great customer support, each with unique characteristics.
Wordfence offers flexible, tiered customer support that caters to different users. With the free version, users can access the Wordfence support forums, where both the Wordfence team and community members typically respond to questions asked.
Since Wordfence secures over 5 million websites, its community forums also act as an additional knowledge base, filled with expert insight, peer-to-peer assistance, and obscure WordPress security solutions.
Wordfence community forums on WordPress.org.
This community-driven resource helps users troubleshoot their way out of most problems, but it may take a few days to get your queries answered.
Wordfence Premium users have access to ticket-based support from Wordfence security experts, who have knowledge of complex WordPress security issues. They usually respond within a few hours after you submit your ticket.
Additionally, Wordfence also offers two higher-tiered plans: Wordfence Care and Wordfence Response.
Wordfence Care includes priority ticket-based support from dedicated security analysts who are intimately familiar with your site’s setup. These experts offer personalized assistance for any security issues.
Wordfence Response takes the customer support up a notch with 24/7/365 availability and a guaranteed 1-hour response time. This is ideal for users with complex security needs or mission-critical websites where immediate expert assistance is crucial.
Both Care and Response plans offer hands-on support, where Wordfence experts can directly assist with security issues, including malware removal and hack repair.
In contrast, Sucuri offers uniform customer support. All of its plans come with 24/7 customer support via live chat, phone, email, and ticket. That said, the response time may vary — with premium plans getting a quicker response.
While Sucuri’s support is valuable, Wordfence excels at its expertise in WordPress security. Due to its in-depth knowledge of the WordPress ecosystem, WordPress-affecting malware, and plugin vulnerabilities, it provides more targeted solutions for WordPress websites.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Login Protection
Wordfence login protection features.
While malware protection, a strong firewall, and vulnerability scanning are great security layers, you also need to protect the front door of your administration building. Both Wordfence and Sucuri check off this requirement, offering solid login protection features.
Wordfence offers a range of login protection features in both its free and premium versions. At its core, you have brute force protection that automatically blocks IP addresses after a specific number of failed login attempts.
Wordfence also has a unique leaked password prevention feature, which stops users from logging in with compromised passwords from previous data breaches. Wordfence’s real-time security network adds another protection layer for its premium users by blocking potential IP addresses based on failed login attempts across the WordPress ecosystem.
Wordfence also provides protection against distributed brute force attacks, integration with Google reCAPTCHA v3, and two-factor authentication (2FA).
Sucuri also offers brute force protection, two-factor authentication, and CAPTCHA on login pages. In other words, it offers the baseline login security you need for a WordPress website.
In the absence of leaked password protection and a real-time security network, Sucuri’s protection lacks the extra security layers your website and/or business needs against constant cyberattacks.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: User Experience
When it comes to user experience, Wordfence and Sucuri offer distinct approaches that cater to different user preferences and technical expertise.
Installation
As a 100% WordPress-focused security solution, Wordfence shines with its straightforward installation process.
Users can easily install it directly from the WordPress plugin repository or WordPress.org.
Wordfence installation via WordPress plugin repository.
As it’s the typical installation workflow for most WordPress plugins, Wordfence’s installation is intuitive for users of all skill levels.
In contrast, Sucuri’s installation is more complex. Users need to log into their domain registrar’s portal and modify their DNS name servers. This process involves changing the existing name servers to Sucuri’s specific name servers.
While straightforward to those familiar with the domain management, this step may pose a challenge to beginners unfamiliar with the technical aspects of website configuration.
User Interface
Wordfence features an intuitive interface that aligns well with the WordPress dashboard. New users benefit from a helpful tour that guides them through key features.
Additionally, the plugin offers clear tooltips and extensive documentation, making it easy to understand and navigate.
Learning how to use Wordfence is easy with the tooltip guides
Bonus tip: If you’re a visual learner, you can head over to Wordfence’s YouTube channel for insightful tutorials.
The ease of use doesn’t make Wordfence any less powerful. In fact, with Wordfence Central, users can manage multiple websites from a single dashboard.
On the other hand, Sucuri’s interface, while functional and feature-rich, can be overwhelming for WordPress users. Its design deviates from the familiar WordPress dashboard, which may require a steeper learning curve. Users often need more time to familiarize themselves with Sucuri’s features and layout.
Malware Removal
Wordfence leads the industry in malware removal. Both free and paid versions offer one-click malware removal, simplifying the process for users. The plugin provides a clear explanation of detected issues, helps users understand the security threats, and view changes between clean and potentially infected files.
Sucuri’s approach to malware removal also offers a hands-off solution since Sucuri’s team handles the malware removal process. It may be less compelling for users seeking a streamlined solution as it can result in longer waiting periods.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Notifications and Alerts
For solid website security, timely notifications serve as the first line of defense, alerting website owners to potential threats, completed scans, and necessary actions. You can then take appropriate steps promptly to avoid a data breach.
Wordfence offers a powerful notification system that keeps users well-informed:
- The Wordfence dashboard provides real-time alerts about scan results and security changes, offering an at-a-glance view of your website’s security status.
- Email notifications ensure you’re informed even when not logged into your dashboard.
- Wordfence Central, a centralized management platform, offers enhanced notification options:
- SMS updates for critical alerts, ensuring you’re notified even when away from your computer.
- Slack and Discord integrations for low-priority notifications to facilitate team collaboration on security issues.
- Customizable email notifications to let you tailor the information you receive.
Wordfence Central makes it easier to manage multiple websites.
www.wordfence.com/central
Sucuri also provides a comprehensive alert system:
- A dashboard interface displays real-time security alerts for immediate awareness.
- Email alerts inform about security events and scan results for consistent monitoring.
- Role-based custom settings enable targeted notifications based on user responsibilities.
- Slack integration keeps the team in the loop about security issues.
- SMS alerts ensure immediate notification of critical security events.
While both Wordfence and Sucuri have similar notification systems, Wordfence stands out with its Wordfence Central, which provides a significant advantage for users managing multiple websites. Users get to customize their alerts to get their site’s security status exactly as they like it.
Beyond that, the addition of Discord integration alongside Slack expands Wordfence’s communication options, catering to a wide range of team preferences.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Extras
Both Wordfence and Sucuri offer additional features that extend beyond core security functionalities, providing added value to their users.
Live Traffic tool in Wordfence enables users to analyze their traffic.
Wordfence enhances its security suite with several notable extras:
- Wordfence Central: A centralized management platform for overseeing multiple WordPress websites. It provides a unified dashboard for monitoring security status, updates, and alerts across all connected websites.
- Live traffic monitoring: Offers real-time insights into website visitors, including their geographic location, IP addresses, and accessed content. This feature helps identify suspicious behavior patterns and potential security threats as they occur.
- WHOIS Lookup Tool: Enables quick gathering of domain registration information. You can use it to investigate suspicious domains or verify the legitimacy of incoming traffic sources.
- The Wordfence Audit Log: All premium Wordfence plans also include full access to the Wordfence Audit Log, which captures and stores security-related events on your website as they happen, and sends them securely to an off-site location to protect them from tampering, and to store them for your analysis.
In contrast, Sucuri complements its security features with a few extras:
- Sucuri CDN: A content delivery network that improves website loading speeds by distributing content across multiple global servers. Besides improving user experience, it provides an additional layer of protection against DDoS attacks.
- Performance optimization: A set of performance-optimizing features, such as file minification, compression, and caching mechanisms, to reduce server load and improve response times.
- Customizable security headers: Allows users to implement additional browser-based security measures. These headers can prevent clickjacking, enforce HTTPS connections, and control how the site interacts with the external resources.
While both services offer valuable extras, Wordfence’s enhanced monitoring and management tools offer unparalleled value for WordPress users. In contrast, while Sucuri’s extras have a lot of value, you can get similar benefits for free with Cloudflare free plan and Smush plugin.
Wordfence vs. Sucuri: Pricing
Both Wordfence and Sucuri offer a range of pricing options to suit different needs and budgets.
Wordfence has a free version that comes with security scanning, malware removal, and an advanced firewall. It gets new signatures and firewall rules after 30 days. Plus, support is available via the forums.
If you’re a business user, WordPress Premium, which costs $119 per year, will suit you better as it gets the latest firewall rules and malware signatures immediately and comes with a real-time IP blocklist that blocks malicious IPs from accessing your site. Additionally, it offers ticket-based support from Wordfence experts.
For a more in-depth look, here’s how Wordfence Free and Premium compare.
Users looking for a hands-off approach for their business-critical websites can opt for Wordfence Care (priced at $490 per year) and Wordfence Response (priced at $950 per year) since these two plans come with unlimited incident response services. Wordfence Response offers 24/7/365 support with a 1-hour response time.
Wordfence Care and Response provide comprehensive security management beyond just incident response. Both plans include hands-on support from dedicated security analysts who install, configure, and optimize Wordfence for your website. They also provide yearly security audits with recommendations, continuous site monitoring, and malware removal services.
On the other hand, Sucuri offers a free WordPress plugin, which comes with remote malware scanning, WordPress activity monitoring, and file integrity checks. It doesn’t include malware removal or server-side scanning, so it’s not a complete security solution.
Instead, you must pay $199.99 per year to get Sucuri Basic for baseline security to remove malware. It comes with server-side scanning and firewall protection.
If you have a mission-critical website, you can invest in Sucuri Pro, which costs $299.99 per year, to get priority malware removal and DDoS protection. And for custom WAF rules and PCI compliance, you can turn to Sucuri Business, which has a price tag of $499.99 per year.
Which Is Better for WordPress Security: Wordfence or Sucuri?
Wordfence and Sucuri are solid security solutions for WordPress websites, each with its own strengths.
But if you’re looking for a solution built from the ground up to protect WordPress with an endpoint firewall, real-time threat intelligence, an extensive vulnerability database, and support from WordPress security experts, Wordfence is the superior choice.
You get substantial protection with free security scanning, malware removal, and vulnerability scanning with Wordfence Free, which suits any hobby website or small publisher and is trusted by over 5 million users every day to secure their sites.
If you’re a business owner, Wordfence Premium lets you have peace of mind with its access to real-time WordPress threats, the largest vulnerability database, and top-notch WordPress security experts.
For businesses requiring hands-off security management, both Wordfence Care and Response offer expert installation, configuration, and monitoring. For a mission-critical website, Wordfence Response offers 24/7/365 customer support with a 1-hour response time.