The Comparison Between Wordfence vs Sucuri – Which One is Better?

The top known WordPress security plugins on the web are Sucuri and Wordfence.

To make your website secure, these two plugins plays an important role. Thus these two plugins are highly recommended by the top developers too. However, both the plugins are helpful. This makes difficult for a newbie to decide which plugin is best among them.

In this article, we will learn and compare Wordfence vs sucuri. At the end of this blog, you will have a complete idea that which tool is the best alternative for complete WordPress security.

Comparison between Sucuri and Wordfence

Sucuri and Wordfence are the top two plugins created for WordPress users to enhance the security level of their website. They both present extensive protection for malware infections, brute force attacks, and data theft.

Wordfence vs Sucuri

As a website or a business owner, you should make sure that you are choosing a security plugin that not only helps you to safeguard your website but also it works efficiently. You need to select a plugin considering that you might need some maintenance so that you can boost your online business seamlessly.

Secondly, you need to choose a security plugin that is handy in nature. However, the process of setup should be flawless and should not require technical knowledge to maintain it.

The main difference is given below. We will learn about each category one by one

  • Easy to use
  • Website Application Firewall (WAF)
  • Security Monitoring and Notifications
  • Malware Scanner
  • Hacked website clean up

1.Easy to use

easy to use
Website security is a very different topic as it belongs to the complete technical field. This is the main reason why we have considered ‘easy to use’ the very first category. Let us see which security plugin i.e. Wordfence or sucuri is best to safeguard your website.

Wordfence – Easy to use
The process of setting Wordfence is easy. To get security notifications you will be asked to provide an email address as soon as you finish the installation process. You would also be asked to agree with all terms and conditions.

After this, you will be able to view the onboarding wizard which will be helpful for you to know how to handle the Wordfence dashboard. It will highlight the place where you will be able to see security scans and notifications.

Sucuri – Easy to use
You will get a clean user interface if you choose to use sucuri. It will not show any unwanted prompts popping on your devices. Upon activation, it will run a quick scan plus on the dashboard of plugins, you will be able to see notifications.

Sucuri does not run your web server because it is a cloud-based firewall. Thus, no extra maintenance will be required by your side. For your domain name, you will require to add an API key and complete DNS settings.

Before reaching malicious traffic to your WordPress hosting server, the firewall will catch it. Once doing this you will not update and maintain it again and again in the future.

Security hardening setting is also very easy to do on your website.

The complete user interface is best, but still, users will need to go deeper to utilize all its features they are looking for.

Extra steps i.e. updating nameservers on the registrar of the domain are required to setup Sucuri’s firewall. Thus this might be a little hectic for your customers who are totally new to the website.

The best thing is that popular domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Domain.com will help you to set up this easily.

From Wordfence vs Sucuri, the hero is Sucuri in terms of easy to use feature.

Related Post:WordPress Security: How To Keep Your Site Safe And Secure

2. Website Application Firewall (WAF)

The common security threats will be blocked and your website traffic will be supervised by web application firewalls. With various methods, one can implement a firewall i.e. cloud-based vs application based.

The most reliable and efficient is cloud-based firewalls. The website application firewall is offered by Wordfence and sucuri both.

Let us see what is the difference.

Website application firewall – Wordfence
Wordfence comes with the website application firewall to block and monitor nasty website traffic.

As compared to the cloud-based firewall, an application-level firewall is less efficient as it runs on your server.

With the basic mode, the Wordfence will be turn on. This means as a WordPress plugin, and the firewall will run. So WordPress needs to be loaded before an attack blocked. It is not efficient because it might take server resources a lot.

You will require to change the Wordfence firewall in extended mode manually. Before it goes to your WordPress installations it will permit the Wordfence firewall to monitor.

Website application firewall – sucuri
A cloud-based website application firewall is offered by sucuri. This directly means before the suspicious traffic reaches your hosting server, it will block.

It will enhance the website speed as it is saving you a lot of server resources. In various regions, Sucuri’s CDN servers are situated, which is a good thing for website speed.

To make use of a firewall, you will require to alter the settings of the domain name’s DNS. Through your Sucuri’s server, the website traffic will go. When you are experiencing the DDoS, sucuri will not allow it to go from high-security mode to the paranoid mode.

From Wordfence vs Sucuri, the hero is Sucuri in terms of website application firewall.

3. Security Monitoring and Notifications

cyber security WordPress themes
As an owner of a website or a business, you should monitor regularly whether there is any problem on your website or not. The security problem can cost your money and customers too.

You require to ensure that you are able to receive emails from WordPress website to get such type of notifications. You can use SMTP service, to ensure you are getting WordPress emails.

We will now see the example that how Wordfence and Sucuri will handle website alerts and monitor them properly.

Wordfence – Monitoring and Notifications
Wordfence has the best system for notifications and alerts. In the WordPress admin dashboard and sidebar, just next to the Wordfence menu, the first notifications will be point outed.

As per severity, they will highlight the alerts. To learn more about these notifications and alerts you need to click on it.

Wordfence has also had something extra to offer you, i.e., instant notifications by email.

Sucuri – Monitoring and Notifications

The important notifications will be shown on your dashboard via sucuri. The status of core WordPress files will be shown on the top right corner of your screen.

You will be able to choose the total number of alerts per hour, total events you want to get notified, personalizing setting for brute force attacks, alert email subjects, post types.

From Wordfence vs Sucuri, the hero is Sucuri and Wordfence in terms of monitoring and notifications.

4. Malware scanner

malware
To check your WordPress site for malicious code, malware, or a changed file, Wordfence and Sucuri both the plugin comes with pre-build security scanners.

Wordfence – Malware scanner
The scanner which comes with Wordfence is highly personalize which meets your security concerns and hosting environments.

Automatically the scan schedule will be decided by Wordfence in the free plan whereas users will be able to select their own scan schedule in premium plans.

Sucuri- Malware scanner
Sucuri’s site check API is used by the sucuri malware scanner. Because of this API, your website will be check automatically against your multiple safe browsing API. This will make sure that your site is not blacklisted.

The default settings can be customized from the dashboard.

Sucuri’s free scanner actually runs on files that are available publicly on your website. It is good because it is not WordPress specific scanners. Thus it detects any malicious code and malware easily.

From Wordfence vs Sucuri, hero is sucuri in terms of Malware scanner

5. Hacked website clean up

It is not simple to clean up a website that is hacked. Different files can be affected due to malware. It can block you out or add unwanted links in your website’s content.

By yourself, it is not easy to clean up everything manually especially for beginners.

Malware removal service and website clean up both the features are offered by sucuri and Wordfence.

Wordfence – Site clean up
In free and premium plans, the Wordfence site cleanup service is actually no added. as an add-on service, it is made available separately.
Premium Wordfence license will be provided to the one website by a site clean up.

The process of malware clean up is very simple and straight forward. For infections, and site malware the website will be scan and then the files will be cleaned up which are affected.

How access is given to the hackers this thing will also get investigated. A detailed report will be prepared for a complete cleanup process with recommendations for future avoid.

Sucuri – Site clean up
The website cleanup services are included with all premium sucuri plans. The plans come up with SEO spam repair, website clean up, WAF protection, backup removal, blacklist removal, and future protection.

This is the best for cleaning up injected spam code, malware, and backdoor access files. The process is very simple. You just need to open a support ticket and the work will get started by their team to clean up the unwanted files.

For Cpanel or FTP/SSH access they will use your login details. The record of every file will be stored during the cleanup process so that they can just touch and backup each and everything automatically.

From Wordfence vs Sucuri, the hero is both in terms of site clean up.

Conclusion:
Both sucuri and Wordfence are outstanding plugins for security. But from the above comparison we can conclude that Sucuri is the best in terms of easy to use, Website Application Firewall (WAF), security monitoring and notifications, malware scanner, and hacked website clean up.

About Sonnal S Sinha

Sonnal S SinhaSonnal S Sinha is a passionate writer as well as WordPress and WooCommerce rockstar who loves to share insights on various topics through his engaging blog posts. He runs a successful website design and digital marketing company. With 15+ years of experience in WordPress theme development, he strives to inform and inspire readers with his thought-provoking content. He helps thousands of small and medium businesses and startups create a unique online presence. Follow Sonnal S Sinha for your regular dose of knowledge and inspiration.

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