The Best Security Plugins for WordPress in 2022

Sucuri is one of the most well-known security companies, providing services to thousands of individuals. It protects big names in WordPress, like Yoast SEO, and is partnered with numerous WP hosting providers, including SiteGround.

But is it the best WP security plugin? Let’s find out.

Features

You can download Sucuri Security for free from the WP repository. The free version lets you apply various measures to harden the WordPress protection measures. This includes disabling PHP execution, changing the database prefix, resetting keys and passwords, using a more secure WordPress login page, and much more.

The tool can also search for various vulnerabilities and hacking attempts and alert you if it finds anything. It’s a solid way to cover your bases. Many users praise this as the best free WordPress security plugin of 2022.

For more robust features, you would need to connect to a premium Sucuri account.

For starters, this would get you extensive scanning options. Sucuri monitors everything, from basic security and malware signs down to malicious scripts hiding in your backend code. The provider even checks for DNS and SSL changes, making it a decent replacement for a website monitoring tool.

The provider also tracks your websites in various blacklisting databases. This ensures you won’t suffer SEO penalties due to malware injections.

If something does happen to get through, Sucuri extends a full malware and blacklist cleanup service. If the automated tools can’t remove the problem, Sucuri will have an actual expert fix your website manually. You’re unlikely to ever need this with such security tools, though.

Possibly the most significant reason to pay for the WordPress security plugin is the web application firewall. Sucuri routes all your traffic through its WAF server and scrubs everything to ensure no malicious bots or suspicious traffic get through.

The tool is even designed to stop layer 3, 4, and 7 DDoS attacks (as opposed to Cloudflare, which prevents only layer 7 DDoS). Sucuri adds prevention measures on zero-day, so you won’t have to worry about newly found vulnerabilities.

If you’re having trouble with specific attackers, you can block out traffic from certain IPs or entire geographical regions. Best of all, the service might even speed up your site due to Sucuri’s proprietary CDN. You can encrypt the traffic with your own premium SSL certificate.

All in all, Sucuri has an impressive set of tools, including possibly the best WordPress firewall system.

User Reviews

The WordPress repository reveals quite a few satisfied Sucuri users. They like that the plugin is effective and easy to set up. Out of 342 reviews, 267 have five stars, which is decent.

Some negative reviews on TrustPilot indicate Sucuri failed to help at least a few users. This just goes to show no solution is a silver bullet. You can rely on Sucuri to protect you from many known attacks, but you should still follow the best security practices to minimize the risk of a successful hack.

Pricing

Sucuri can be used as a free WordPress security plugin. However, this version lacks the WAF and a few other premium services. To get all the power of Sucuri, go for one of the paid plans:

• Basic—Malware, hack, and vulnerability scans every 12h, $199.99/year
• Pro—Malware, hack, and vulnerability scans every 6h, $299.99/year
• Business—Malware, hack, and vulnerability scans every 30 min, 499.99/year
• Enterprise—Custom everything with a ton of unique features

There is something for everyone—from simple websites to mission-critical apps.

The only catch is that all plans but the enterprise one work on a one-website-per-license basis. If you have multiple sites, you would need extra licenses, which can get pricey. If you have multiple sites, check out MalCare—the best anti-hack software for securing multiple WordPress websites.

On the upside, Sucuri extends a 30-day money-back guarantee across the board. It’s a solid window to connect Sucuri and check if it fulfills your requirements.

Verdict

Sucuri is an all-in-one service that covers pretty much all aspects of WordPress security. It includes everything from basic malware scans to complex traffic analysis and zero-day fixes. At $199.99 per year, it’s reasonably priced for arguably the best security plugin for WordPress.

Being over nine years old is no small thing on the internet and it makes Bulletproof Security one of the older WP security plugins still available. It is the flagship product of AITpro—a cybersecurity company.

Now, in all honesty, the AITpro website doesn’t look too promising. However, Bulletproof security is a viable product that handles many aspects of online protection that other systems don’t.

Here’s what it includes.

Features

Bulletproof Security is straightforward to set up—just pick the default settings and it will configure everything automatically. If you like to tinker with the settings, though, you can change them to your preference.

Bulletproof Security focuses on protection more than other WordPress security plugins.

For starters, it hardens the .htaccess file and root folder of your server. The settings are designed to stop cross-site scripting and SQL injection attacks, among other things.

Database security is quite heavy too. The plugin puts it behind a firewall, monitors it continuously, and even provides database backups.

And those are just the most important hardening measures. The list would be too extensive to put here, so you can read more details on the AITpro website.

Bulletproof Security doubles as a WordPress firewall plugin that authenticates you based on your personal IP address. This is a superb protection feature, which would be very hard to get around. 

Keep in mind, though, it’s different from filtering traffic through a web application firewall. You still might want to consider getting a proper layer 7 DDoS mitigation tool like Cloudflare.

The plugin adds other features, such as more secure login pages, extensive logging, and continuous monitoring of website health. Some anti-spam, anti-brute-force, and anti-DDoS tools are included as well.

The WordPress protection system includes 16 mini add-ons. They include tools for safe decoding of malicious code, cronjob monitoring, database cleanup, cURL scans, XML-RPC vulnerability checks, and more. They are fantastic options for more advanced users that want to ensure airtight protection.

Bulletproof Security pro does have some reactive tools like a malware scan. It runs scheduled inspections that detect anything from infected images to suspicious database entries.

For the most part, though, Bulletproof Security focuses on preventing attacks rather than helping you recover from one.

User Reviews

Bulletproof Security Pro is very popular among its clients. Out of 557 reviews in the plugin repository, 506 feature five stars, and most others are 4-star comments. It’s an incredibly rare result for a WP security plugin.

How does Bulletproof Security do it?

Surprisingly enough, most customers praise the support team. The Bulletproof Security engineers go above and beyond to help users. One client even mentioned the team adapted the plugin to fit their custom website.

Pricing

Bulletproof Security has a reasonably comprehensive free tier. It features basic tools like malware scans and cleanup, .htaccess hardening, database backups, and a few other options. It’s easily the best free WordPress security plugin.

For the full set of features, though, you would need the paid plan. There is only one and it would cost you a one-time fee of $69.95. You can install it on an unlimited number of websites with forever updates and support.

The price makes Bulletproof Security Pro the most affordable tool of its kind across the board.

Verdict

Bulletproof Security Pro has probably the strongest hardening and analysis tools out of all WordPress security plugins in 2022. On top of that, it’s the most affordable paid option available. If you need truly bulletproof protection for your WordPress site, you now know where to get it.

Security Ninja is a plugin by WebFactory—a company specialized exclusively in WordPress. It is behind more than a hundred tools, and is among the better WordPress security projects.

The goal of the solution is to provide an easy way for non-technical users to manage WordPress protection.

Let’s see if it fulfills it.

Features

Security Ninja starts with your typical WP security scanner. It checks your website and hardens some 30 most common weak spots by uninstalling unused plugins, changing security keys, enforcing strong passwords, removing or changing various files, etc.

In-depth scanning can reveal vulnerable plugins, harmful code, or even malware. Security Ninja runs extensive checks and compares your website to the original code. If someone does tamper with your website, you’ll get an immediate email alert.

Lastly, Security Ninja routes traffic through its advanced firewall.

It gets continuously updated with a database of 600k+ bad IP addresses and numerous spam checks. It also automatically blocks users who make multiple unsuccessful login attempts.

It’s the best WordPress firewall when it comes to stopping forceful attacks.

The firewall filters out various requests that look like SQL injection or DDoS attacks. If you want, you can blacklist IPaddresses or even prevent users from specific countries from visiting. If you want to be particularly mean, there’s an option to redirect blocked users to a custom URL—do with that info what you will.

Security Ninja can log various WordPress events. You can always know who did what on your website, which is great if you work with colleagues and are worried about security for WordPress sites.

All in all, this is a comprehensive feature set for a very user-friendly plugin.

User Reviews

Security Ninja might not have as many users as, let’s say, Jetpack, but it is certainly popular among existing clients. Practically all reviews praise it for being effective and a breeze to set up.

The last negative comment we found was from two years ago. Security systems usually deal with numerous frustrated customers. The fact that Security Ninja has next to none disgruntled users is almost unreal.

Pricing

The WP security plugin free plan only includes basic protection and vulnerability scanning. It’s okay if you only need simple vulnerability reports. Still, you would need a paid plan to really see what Security Ninja is all about.

The pricing only depends on the number of websites.

• One site—$49.99/year
• Three sites—$129.99/year
• Five sites—$199.99/year
• 20 sites—$299.99/year
• 100 sites—$999.99/year

You can pay monthly, but this would be more than twice as expensive.

A real treat, however, are the lifetime plans. For about three times the price of an annual deal, you can get a Security Ninja license for life. The plans start at $119 for a single site and go up to $1,999 for a maximum of 100 sites.

If you are sure you want to stick with this provider, it’s the best WP security plugin in terms of long-term value.

If you’re kind of on the fence about Security Ninja, keep in mind it has a 14-day free trial. You can test it out before purchasing a license.

Verdict

Security Ninja is a fantastic compromise between power and ease of use. It gets you in-depth scans, a robust firewall, and extensive WordPress hardening.

Unlike some other solutions, it’s simple enough for a beginner to implement on their first site.

Not to mention it’s extremely affordable, especially with a lifetime license. It’s one of the best WordPress security pluginsall-round.

iThemes used to create themes, though it also offers WordPress hosting, training courses, and ten different plugins, including a WP security plugin—iThemes Security Pro.

Features

The best thing iThemes Security Pro has going for it is its ease of use. Not only is it easy to set up, but you can also apply all the recommended protection measures in one click. Just use the “security check” option and iThemes will handle everything from there.

The all-in-one security plugin runs regular WordPress hardening, including modifying critical files, file change detection, blacklisting IP addresses, requiring strong passwords, configuring SSL encryption, adding brute-force protection, and more.

The premium features include malware scanning, captcha protection, 2FA, logging user actions, advanced email notifications, and more.

With the passwordless login, you only need to enter your username and email address to sign in. Instead of asking for a password, iThemes Security Pro emails you a “magic link” you’ll use to authenticate. That way, even if an attacker finds your login page and has the credentials, they’ll need to get into your email inbox. Just make sure to use 2FA on your email as another barrier.

Another awesome thing that boosts security for WordPress sites is the “away mode.” You can lock access to the dashboard when you know you won’t be accessing it for a while. The obvious downside is having to wait if there’s a change you want to make.

One missing feature is a web application firewall. The software can stop most attacks but might be less effective against layer 7 DDoS. If you need a service with a robust WAF, check out Sucuri above.

If you’re not worried about running WordPress without a WAF, iThemes is possibly the best security plugin for WordPress.

User Reviews

iThemes is possibly the most loved security plugin. It has 3,300+ 5-star reviews in the repository and numerous positive comments on sites like Reddit.

Some users did complain about getting locked out. It’s important to note that if you turn on magic links or run a security check, you won’t be able to use regular login credentials. You need to send yourself a link to enter the website, or you’ll be locked out.

Other than that, there are no major complaints.

Pricing

iThemes Security Pro includes all WordPress protection features across the board. The only difference is how many websites the plan supports. There are three plans in total:

• Blogger—One site, $80/year
• Small Business—Ten sites, $127/year
• Gold—Unlimited sites, $199/year

The plans are quite affordable. It’s a particularly nice touch that the Gold plan works for users with many sites.

Verdict

iThemes Security Pro is a breeze to use, making it the best security plugin for WordPress for hobbyist bloggers or those short on time. You can employ all the necessary security measures while paying pennies. Plus, the value for securing multiple websites is incredible.

MalCare was created by BlogVault—the creators of one of the top backup plugins. If you’re unfamiliar with it, BlogVault is the backup solution used by big WordPress hosting names like WP Engine and Cloudways, as well as the cloud platform Pantheon. Impressive, right?

MalCare is another popular WordPress security plugin. Let’s see if it’s as good as the other solutions.

Features

MalCare comes with a full suite of security technologies.

It starts with general security hardening. This includes typical things like stopping PHP execution in some folders, adding captcha to logins, modifying security keys, etc.

You can also disable plugin installation, which restricts anyone who does gain access to your WP admin. You can, of course, re-enable installation when you need to change something.

The WordPress security scan plugin can detect and remove malware. One benefit is that, instead of standard signature matching, MalCare analyzes 100+ different signals to detect suspicious code changes.

In other words, it can catch previously unknown malware, unlike systems reliant purely on a malware database.

The host is so sure in the system, it guarantees zero false alarms. Speaking of that, you can easily configure MalCare to alert you via email whenever needed.

If the automatic cleanup fails, the MalCare team fixes issues manually. Not only that, but they fix the original vulnerability so the problem does not reoccur.

MalCare has a web application firewall, but it’s a bit better at blocking individual attacks than providing full-on DDoSmitigation.

User Reviews

Practically every WordPress security plugins review mentioning MalCare is positive. Users like the ease of use and how powerful the solution is.

There are very few negative comments. All seem to be one-off issues and not the company’s fault.

Overall, MalCare’s reputation is extremely positive.

Pricing

MalCare has a free tier, but it only covers malware scanning and brute-force protection. It’s acceptable as a WP security scanner but very limited compared to some free software out there.

Other than that, there are three paid plans.

• Personal—One site, $99/year
• Small Business—Five sites, $259/year
• Developers—20 websites, $599/year

All plans come with full protection features. The Developers plan lets you add one team member to work with you, which is helpful. If you want to include more collaborators or white-label the plans, contact the provider about a custom plan.

Overall, MalCare scores a lot of points for having multi-website packages. This makes it a much cheaper alternative to other top WordPress security plugins like Sucuri.

Alternatively, you can buy BlogVault backups bundled with MalCare and other services like website staging or migrations. It’s fantastic to get multiple options all in one place. Plus, it comes at an affordable monthly price.

Verdict

The BlogVault team certainly has a knack for developing awesome apps, so it comes as no surprise MalCare is another home run. The free version is a bit limited, but the paid plans have all the features needed to nip malicious attacks in the bud. Plus, it’s the best plugin for WordPress if you want to secure multiple websites for an affordable price.

Jetpack is a multipurpose plugin built by Automattic—the same people that are behind WordPress itself. It started as a one-stop-shop solution for users who want to easily optimize WordPress.com sites. It has been available for the hosted WordPress version for a long time now and it is one of the most popular tools.

Here’s what the premium Jetpack versions can do.

Features

Jetpack is like a Swiss army knife. Aside from just security tools, it’s a system for backups, speed optimization, social media posting, and much more.

What interests us, though, are the features ensuring better WordPress security.

Jetpack starts off with automated updates. You can enable these for individual plugins to get more control.

If you opt out of them on specific plugins, Jetpack can still email you whenever a new update is available. This feature can be a time-saver and add reliability to your site, though your web host might already offer a similar tool.

Jetpack also runs uptime checks on your site every five minutes (or in real-time on the larger plan). It will notify you via email if your site does go down, so you can fix the issue or restore a backup.

This can save you unnecessary downtime.

Jetpack can add various WordPress protection measures to your login page. This includes enforcing two-factor authentication and blacklisting brute-force attempts. There are a few other features for letting users log in with their WordPress.com accounts, but these are a bit less useful.

The plugin also covers an anti-spam system and a security scanner. If it finds a security threat, it will notify you and offer to fix it. Don’t worry—most issues can be sorted out automatically.

Jetpack generates security reports on everything you do. It saves the logs for 30 days (or one year with the larger plans).

All in all, Jetpack covers the most basic features. It’s among the better WordPress home security plugins, though there are more advanced solutions for top-of-the-line protection.

Jetpack is powerful, but it has many tools, making it a bit bloaty. You should be careful to only activate the Jetpack modules you use, as only those get downloaded. If you switch on everything at once, you’ll likely experience a lot of issues.

User Reviews

Jetpack is probably one of the most popular WordPress security plugins. The reason for this is that it comes preinstalled on many hosting platforms and is heavily promoted for WordPress.com sites. Still, the great majority of customers love Jetpack, so it’s doing something right.

On the other hand, many users say there’s no real reason to use Jetpack when you can run multiple specialized plugins.

This is a fair point. You could likely find a bunch of leaner tools to do everything you need.

Jetpack is really geared towards beginners without much experience dealing with the WordPress backend. It offers the convenience of managing the most critical aspects of your website from one place.

Pricing

Jetpack has a free plan which includes the most relevant features, but you can’t use it as a WordPress security scan plugin.

The other two plans are:

• Jetpack Security Daily—Daily security scans and uptime checks every five minutes, $7.95/month
• Jetpack Security Real-time—Real-time security scans and uptime monitoring, $19.95/month

The prices above are paid in annual increments. You can also pay month-to-month, but the yearly deals come with a 20% discount.

Overall, the pricing is affordable, considering Jetpack takes care not only of security but also of speed optimization and a ton of other factors.

Verdict

Jetpack is a fantastic plugin for beginners who want to take care of most website aspects with one tool, security included. It only takes a few clicks to set up everything and it won’t make you break the bank.

If you want a straightforward solution, it’s the best WordPress security plugin in 2022.

Hide My WP Ghost is a security plugin, but it takes a somewhat different approach to most solutions. Here’s what sets it apart.

Features

Hide My WP Ghost does just what the name says—it hides your WordPress installation. More precisely, it makes your website look like you’re not using WordPress.

It does this by obfuscating certain types of information, changing various code comments, and swapping out id tags. So if someone decides to inspect the source of your pages, the code won’t reveal to them it’s actually WordPress.

And even if an attacker does figure it out, they’ll have little luck finding a point to attack. The WordPress security pluginchanges the URLs of commonly exploited pages, like the wp-login and the paths to important files and folders.

But wait, there’s more.

Hide My WP Ghost can add captcha to your WordPress login page, limit login attempts, or lock admin and file access to just your IP address. Even if someone can find the custom URLs and guess the correct password, they still won’t be able to do anything.

And those were just the obfuscation features. Hide My WP Ghost still runs a full protection suite that stops things like XSS, SQL injections, XML-RPC exploits, and more.

It features the obligatory WP security scanner that finds vulnerabilities in your site, database, or even themes and plugins. Hide My WP Ghost can patch issues for you, but it will also show you how to fix them yourself—you can expect to learn a lot about WP security as you’re working.

Impressive, huh?

Hide My WP Ghost is one of the most innovative companies on the market.

User Reviews

With an average user rating of 4.5/5, Hide My WP Ghost is doing quite well. Users praise it for being a solution with solid features.

It’s worth pointing out there are multiple other services called Hide My WP that you might run into. Hide My WP Ghost is the only version with a free WordPress security plugin in WordPress’s official repository, so it’s easily recognizable. We can’t speak to other tools’ actual performance, although they have a similar feature list.

Pricing

Hide My WP Ghost includes the majority of its tools in the free tier. Some features like protecting the API, brute-force protection, and hiding common files, are reserved for premium users. You can still get good use of the free plan, but the paid ones are well worth it if you can afford them.

The only difference between the paid plans is the number of websites they support:

• Ghost 1—One website, $23.99/year
• Ghost 5—Five websites, $52.50/year
• Ghost 10—Ten websites, $69/year
• Ghost All—Unlimited websites, $149.99/year

Overall, it’s a great free WordPress security plugin, and paid plans are reasonably priced.

The provider throws in a 30-day money-back guarantee. That gives you a solid window to see how Hide My WP Ghost works for your website.

Verdict

Hide My WP Ghost is a great WordPress security plugin not only for protecting weak spots but also for hiding all the crucial info and locations from potential attackers.

After all, it’s tough to inject scripts into a website if you can’t even find the files.

If you’re interested, the service is available for a very reasonable price with a money-back guarantee—feel free to give it a try.