8 Best Firewall Plugins For WordPress (WAF) Reviewed

Do you want to protect your website against security issues? Are you looking for the best firewall plugins for WordPress sites?

I’ve compiled a list of some of the best and most popular WordPress firewalls plugins and services. You can also read an in-depth review on each plugin below, as well as compare them all side by side for these top 8 ranking security & firewall plugins!

What Is a WordPress Firewall Plugin?

A WordPress firewall plugin is software that helps protect your website against external attacks and prevents hackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in the code.

The best of them will block brute-force login attempts, stop SQL injections and XSS hacks, prevent data leaks, etc.

There are two types of firewall, namely a software firewall and an application-level firewall.

• A software firewall is a program that checks the incoming data from another device, computer, or network to make sure it’s safe before allowing access.
• An application-level firewall works by filtering out traffic at the point where information enters your system. This type of security measure is more common in extensive networks.

Best Firewall Plugins for WordPress

Sucuri

Sucuri is a WordPress firewall plugin that prevents hackers from attacking your site. It protects against malware, brute force attacks, SQL injections, and other threats.

Sucuri can protect your site from DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attacks, which is one of the most common cyberattacks in recent years because it’s easy to do and difficult to stop.

Sucuri also includes some features that help boost website performance such as CDN integration with Akamai and Amazon CloudFront. This will speed up page load times for visitors by caching static assets closer to them, thus reducing server load time.

Besides, it includes a malware scanning engine that scans your site for malicious code. It comes with an automated daily backup service, which will make sure you lose no data if there’s ever a server outage or attack.

Sucuri price: The price starts from $199.99/year.

MaxCDN (StackPath)

Max CDN is another good CDN and website firewall service provider. This CDN is included in the StackPath network, which has offices worldwide impressive track record for reliability.

Like Cloudflare, MaxCDN offers both free and paid services with their firewall plugin (StackGuard). The service includes protection against DDoS attacks as well as WAF-level security, CDN, DNS protection, Accelerate, Monitor for your WordPress site.

MaxCDN’s Stackguard provides caching for images, videos, or other media files on proxy servers around the world. This helps reduce bandwidth usage from people who are not able to get to the content while it’s being served by one location.

If you need more than just DDoS protection, then this might be worth considering because they provide many load balancing solutions like round-robin routing between origin points that minimizes the impact of a single-point-of-failure.

MaxCDN offers more than just firewalls. They also make your website faster by caching content around the world so that it can be quickly accessed by people near those servers. This way, they can also help reduce latency.

MaxCDN Price: Price starts from $10/month.

SiteLock

SiteLock is the global website security protection, malware removal, and monitoring service. It provides malware, phishing, and bot protection for websites. Even this plugin has an automatic malware scan and removal feature that can detect and remove any malware from your site. 

It offers real-time website monitoring that alerts you of security vulnerabilities and issues before they become a threat to your site.

This also monitors traffic within its network with advanced algorithms, detecting attempts by hackers intent on stealing data or defacing websites based on their patterns. It’s more than a website firewall.

SiteLock helps you to identify vulnerabilities before they become threats. It has a website security scanner that will tell you about your website’s cybersecurity health.

The SiteLock Service uses the industry’s best database of malware signatures for detecting malicious content in less than 2 seconds per file scanned. It provides instant peace of mind from viruses that have plagued so many webmasters over the years.

Besides, it has an anti-malware team that is always one step ahead of the hackers who are trying to do bad things.

SiteLock has been protecting websites since 1997 and offers live experts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year via telephone or chat who can help you keep your website safe all around the clock.

SiteLock Price: Price starts from $14.99/Month.

Security Ninja

Security Ninja is a WordPress plugin that provides an easy-to-use interface for managing your website security. It has many features like a website firewall, an automatic malware scanner, scheduled scans, security tests and it also blocks malicious file uploads.

It monitors & secures both the login page and admin dashboard, which means that you can always be sure someone unauthorized isn’t logging into your WordPress admin area or accessing any of the sensitive information in there.

Security Ninja also notifies you when somebody tries to inject spam links on your site. Even it’ll remove injected spam links automatically before they are indexed by Google.

The plugin has also a built-in malware scanner that detects malicious code injected by hackers such as XSS vulnerabilities, SQL injections, etc. Security Ninja supports the most popular hosting providers like cPanel/WHM servers with SSH access enabled (this provides even better protection).

Security Ninja Price: The price starts from $49.95 One Time Payment.

Jetpack Security

Jetpack is a WordPress security plugin. It has features that protect your WordPress website from the most common vulnerabilities. But it does not protect against more serious threats like DDoS attacks. You will need to use another plugin for that.

The Jetpack Security plugin also offers a firewall service, which prevents brute force login attempts and limits login access from suspicious IP addresses. Along with firewall benefits, it offers an excellent website backup service.

Their free plan offers very basic protection and should be sufficient for small blogs with minimal traffic.

Whereas, the paid plan offers a more advanced firewall service with additional features like IP white-listing or black-listing, automatic malware scan, etc.

Jetpack Price: Price starts from $19.95/month.

Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is a great plugin for blocking malicious traffic, as well as scanning the website and detecting any malware. It’s an application-level firewall, which means it can block both common and sophisticated attacks.

The Wordfence firewall blocks SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), remote file inclusion attempts, brute force login attempts, and more. Even you can strong login security using its 2factor authentication feature.

It monitors your WordPress site for suspicious activity and blocks all malicious traffic. Besides, it helps to secure your site from malware, phishing sites, and other threats.

This plugin helps you keep your blog safe. It notifies you if someone tries to hack into it or if a bot (something that looks like a person on the internet) does something bad to it.

Their free plan offers very basic protection and should be sufficient for small blogs with minimal traffic. The free version of the plugin offers protection from brute-force attacks, as well as limits login access from suspicious IP addresses.

Whereas, the paid plan offers a more advanced firewall service with additional features like IP white-listing or black-listing, automatic malware removal, etc.

If you’re looking for a free firewall service, then Wordfence Security is your best bet. It offers more than just basic protection to help secure your WordPress blog against unwanted attacks or intruders.

Wordfence Price: Free version & paid plans start at $89 per year.

All in One WP Security

All in One WP Security is another popular WordPress security and firewall plugin, which provides protection against brute-force attacks, malicious content injection, and more.

It protects against cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and other kinds of vulnerabilities. Not these, it has over 13 website firewall-related features that are perfect for keeping your WordPress blog safe.

The plugin is good for its file change detection scanner analyzes feature which changes to your WordPress files that could signal an external intrusion.

It also has a password protection feature where you can choose whether or not passwords are required on certain pages in order to log in to them. With its image hotlinking feature, you can be a little more confident that your images won’t end up on some other site without you knowing.

We all know, WordPress blogs often get spam bots that want to put their own links on the page. This plugin is good for that because it stops those spammers from getting in.

Moreover, it monitors all log requests coming into your blog or website and is able to detect if there’s any suspicious activity going on with those requests. With its brute force attack prevention feature, it’s much harder for hackers to break through your firewall.

All in One WP Security Price: It’s a completely free plugin.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is one of the most used and well-known website firewall & CDN providers. It’s a great option for most people who are looking to protect their websites from any malicious and brute force attacks. It also protects your website against traffic spikes.

Cloudflare also provides a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver your website’s assets as close to the user as possible with one of its 120 data centers around the world.

Also, this will protect your site from DDoS attacks and other malicious hacks. There are a lot of prominent features to this network, so it’s good for everyone.

You can use Cloudflare’s free plan, which includes protection for basic security issues like DDoS, brute force attacks, and spambots. It has a simple interface and its ability to offer protection for free.

Cloudflare Price: Its pro plan offers lots of website protection features. The price starts from $20/month.

FAQs about WordPress Firewalls:

What is a firewall?

A website firewall is a security measure that guards the outer perimeter to prevent unauthorized access, especially by hackers.

Is it advisable to use WordPress firewall plugins for better protection?

It’s advisable if you want to secure your website from cyber attackers and other hacking threats.

How do I choose the best WordPress Firewall plugin for my website?

First, you need to identify the number of attacks your website has been facing and then decide on a plugin that best suits it.

Do I have to renew my WordPress Firewall subscription after one year?

It depends on the kind of protection plan that is offered by different plugins/services as some offer lifetime plans while others don’t.

Which WordPress Firewall Plugin/Service Should You Use?

It depends on what you’re looking for. If you need a simple, yet effective security solution that doesn’t mess around with your website’s performance, then Sucuri will be perfect for you. It has features including malware scanning, brute force detection, web application shielding against vulnerabilities, and so on.

On the other hand, if you want to play it safe without compromising too much of your site speed or functionalities, then go ahead with Wordfence.

Note: If you don’t want to use a firewall servcie or plugin, then I’ll recommend using iThemes security which is the best for the overall WordPress security solution.

If you don’t want to use any of these two firewall plugins (recommended), you can go with MaxCDN or Cloudflare for website firewalls and security protection. BUT MaxCDN is better than Cloudflare.

However, you can choose any of them, it’s your matter of preference.

If you have any questions regarding WordPress firewall plugins or services, please comment below. I’ll try to answer your questions.