Whether you own a blog, small business website, or eCommerce store, security is absolutely essential. If your website is hacked, you can risk damaging your reputation. Losing your web files and databases, damaging your SEO rankings. And exposing your customers’ and visitors’ private information to hackers.
As with many things in life, prevention is far better than cure. Luckily, WordPress makes it easy to secure your site from hacks.
Let’s take a closer look at the some of the best WordPress security plugins in this WordPress Wednesday roundup. What I like about them, and help you choose the best one for your particular site.
Do you need a WordPress security plugin?
You don’t necessarily need a WordPress security plugin to run a secure website. Many best practices can be implemented without passwords, such as regular updates and strong passwords. However, the best WordPress security plugins take it to the next level, adding an extra layer of security and making it easy to add advanced protection without developer help.
And security is an area where no one wants to skimp. No matter what kind of website you run, hacks can have a serious impact on your visitors, customers, and how they perceive your brand. Plus, Google doesn’t like unsecured websites, it can reduce your sales and leads, or even leak information such as your credit card details.
1. Wordfence Security
Wordfence is the leading security plugin. It has flagship free scanning tool checks core files, plugin files, theme files, posts and comments for suspicious code, fake URLs and spam.
It runs these scans regularly and automatically and alerts you when it detects threats, vulnerabilities, or corrupted files. While other plugins out there doesn’t offer recovery options, but it lets you see how your files have changed so you can fix them faster.
Includes a website firewall to keep bots away from websites. The free version of Wordfence includes limiting login attempts to thwart brute force attacks, live traffic monitoring to track who is visiting your site (humans, good bots, bad bots, etc.) and real-time malicious intent. It also includes a break-in attempt report with
Wordfence Security offers a premium version that includes comment spam filter, country blocking, remote scanning, two-factor authentication, and premium customer support.
What I like:
- The free version of the plugin offers great features such as firewall and live traffic monitoring.
- Wordfence provides fast support for customers who have trouble setting up the plugin.
Price: Free with paid plans available
2. Jetpack
As a WordPress site owner, you have probably heard of Jetpack. It is considered one of the best plugins within the WordPress community, and for good reason. It offers a simple, all-in-one solution for site security, performance, and advanced content management.
Jetpack’s free version offers basic protection: spam and malware blocking, brute force login protection, basic activity logs, website statistics reports, and automatic plugin updates.
However, you I would recommend to upgrade to the premium plan. As, this plan provides daily malware scanning and priority support in case of functional issues. What sets Jetpack’s premium plans apart from other plugins is it can also backup your website in real-time and restore it anytime with a single click. So, there’s no need to install a separate backup plugin.
What I like:
- Jetpack allows you to backup and restore your website with one click.
- It’s versatile plugin that eliminates the need for other social media, optimisation, and email marketing plugins.
- Provides great security for small websites.
Price: Free with paid plans available
3. Security Ninja
For comprehensive, easy-to-use vulnerability testing, you should check out and try the Security Ninja plugin. This plugin performs over 50 security checks against WordPress core files, themes, plugins, and password strength. And reports your website’s security status in a dashboard.
The free version of Security Ninja only reports problems and does not make any changes to your website. So if you are hesitant about making significant changes right now, give it a try.
On the other side, if you want a plugin that implements a solution to these problems, look elsewhere or upgrade to Security Ninja Pro for $39.99/year. The Pro version includes a firewall, malware scanner, event logger, and scheduled scans in addition to automatic remediation.
What I like:
- The Auto-Fixer module fixes problems automatically. So you don’t need to be a tech savvy to secure your website.
- The plugin allows you to schedule scans.
- The Free version includes a security test module that runs over fifty security tests on your website.
Price: Free with paid plans available
4. Titan Anti-spam & Security
Titan Anti-Spam & Security, that got it start as a simple spam blocker. But, now it has grown into a comprehensive security plugin actively installed on over 150,000 websites. With, the free version the plugin scans your system files, themes, and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, and hides spam-looking comments.
There’s a premium version which is an anti-spam tool, firewall and malware scanner all in one. A three-tiered intelligent spam filtering service to protect your website from spam, plus a real-time IP block list, scheduled daily, monthly, and yearly scans, and the ability to update firewall rules and malware signatures.
What I like:
- The free version of this plugin scans every line of code in every file.
- Still one of the few best spam filtering plugins.
Price: Free with paid plans available
5. iThemes Security
iThemes Security has over 1 million users around the world and it offers both free and paid versions.
The free version runs a malware scan powered by Sucuri SiteCheck and provides tips for fixing detected vulnerabilities. It also establishes various security requirements across the website. For example, enforce strong passwords and SSL on all pages to prevent administrators from editing files if an intruder gains access to personal credentials.
iThemes also allows you to change the WordPress database table prefix, wp-content path, ban unwanted bots and spiders, prevent brute force attacks and protect your database.
To compare files online, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium version. When a file change is detected, the plugin scans the source of the file to determine if the change was malicious. Currently only works with WordPress core files, not plugins or themes.
iThemes Security Pro starts at $80/year and offers advanced features like GeoIP, two-factor authentication, daily automatic malware scans, password expiration, Google captcha’s and more. The free version is great for beginners, but where iThemes excels is the premium version.
Both versions of iThemes are built to blend seamlessly into the WordPress admin interface, with a library of documentation and video tutorials to help shorten the learning curve.
What I like:
- This plugin is easy to install and set up without any cybersecurity knowledge.
- You can run a Google scan to identify malware on your website.
- The Pro version of the plugin lets you add secure, temporary admin access to your website.
Price: Free with paid plans available
6. Shield Security
Shield Security is one of the top rated and most downloaded security plugins in the WordPress directory. The plugin works as soon as you activate it. So your website is protected no matter what your settings are.
The free version offers application-layer firewall and early detection and automatic blocking of malicious bots. Shield Security is also the only WordPress security plugin that offers complete and accurate file change detection for plugins and themes, not just core files.
This is because other plugins rely only on the core fingerprint files provided by WordPress. Shield Security created that file fingerprint. To protect your premium plugins and themes and access dedicated one on one technical support, but you will need to upgrade to ShieldPRO.
What I like:
- It offers a lot of protection without annoying notifications.
- Scans and protects from the moment you activate the plugin.
- It has three types of 2FA to choose from.
Price: Free with paid plans available
