Wordfence free alternative options. Should you make the switch?

Are there any free Wordfence alternatives worth switching to?

First, yes, there are free Wordfence alternatives. Here are the most popular Wordfence alternatives: Sucuri, iThemes Security, Cloudflare, SiteLock and MalCare Security. However, none give you as many features as Wordfence. 

Though, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use their free versions. In fact, if you combine Wordfence’s free version with one or two of Wordfence’s alternative free versions, you may have yourself the best WordPress security for your website, for free!

I will discuss how each of these “free Wordfence alternatives” compare to Wordfence and you can see for yourself why most new website owners go to Wordfence first for their WordPress security needs. 

However, I will also explain why when upgrading your WordPress security, that Wordfence might not be the only best free alternative.

But why switch and why do many use Wordfence’s free version over all the others? Is Wordfence the best WordPress security system on the market?

Using the free version of Wordfence seems to be the “go-to” first measure that most website owners, especially new website owners, take in order to secure their websites. Why? 

First off, wordfence is quite easy to use especially with its WordPress plug-in. It definitely adds a level of security that surprisingly is quite painless and more than many other websites have out there. 

In fact, the overwhelming majority of WordPress sites believe it or not have no security on them whatsoever. 

Actually, many even still use the default “admin” login to get into their WordPress dashboard. 

However, Wordfence isn’t the only free security option for WordPress sites; there are wordfence alternatives that do offer a free version as well. 

Let’s explore those free versions for WordPress security and see how they measure up. 

I’m not going to do a too in-depth analysis on the free versions, just the main points that you should consider to see if any of these Wordfence free alternative options are worth switching to.

Wordfence free version vs alternative companies free versions for WordPress security.

Since I am comparing the free versions for other WordPress security alternatives to wordfence, it only makes sense that I do a rundown on the features of Wordfence’s free version first. 

Then comparing Wordfence’s free version alternatives and seeing how they stand up to Wordfence. 

For the purposes of this post, I’m only going to compare the free versions of the most popular WordPress security companies that offer WordPress plugins. 

The reason being is that there are numerous WordPress security companies out there, but personally I would only go with the most reputable companies when securing a WordPress website. 

Wordfence Free Version.

Firewall

• Web Application Firewall identifies and blocks malicious traffic. Built and maintained by a large team focused 100% on WordPress security.
• Protects your site at the endpoint, enabling deep integration with WordPress. Unlike cloud alternatives does not break encryption, cannot be bypassed and cannot leak data.
• Integrated malware scanner blocks requests that include malicious code or content.
• Protection from brute force attacks by limiting login attempts.

WordPress Security Scanner

• Malware scanner checks core files, themes and plugins for malware, bad URLs, backdoors, SEO spam, malicious redirects and code injections.
• Compares your core files, themes and plugins with what is in the WordPress.org repository, checking their integrity and reporting any changes to you.
• Repair files that have changed by overwriting them with a pristine, original version. Delete any files that don’t belong easily within the Wordfence interface.
• Checks your site for known security vulnerabilities and alerts you to any issues. Also alerts you to potential security issues when a plugin has been closed or abandoned.
• Checks your content safety by scanning file contents, posts and comments for dangerous URLs and suspicious content.

Login Security

• Two-factor authentication (2FA), one of the most secure forms of remote system authentication available via any TOTP-based authenticator app or service.
• Login Page CAPTCHA stops bots from logging in.
• Disable or add 2FA to XML-RPC.
• Block logins for administrators using known compromised passwords.

Wordfence Central

• Wordfence Central is a powerful and efficient way to manage the security for multiple sites in one place.
• Efficiently assess the security status of all your websites in one view. View detailed security findings without leaving Wordfence Central.
• Powerful templates make configuring Wordfence a breeze.
• Highly configurable alerts can be delivered via email, SMS or Slack. Improve the signal to noise ratio by leveraging severity level options and a daily digest option.
• Track and alert on important security events including administrator logins, breached password usage and surges in attack activity.
• Free to use for unlimited sites.

Security Tools

• With Live Traffic, monitor visits and hack attempts not shown in other analytics packages in real time; including origin, their IP address, the time of day and time spent on your site.
• Block attackers by IP or build advanced rules based on IP Range, Hostname, User Agent and Referrer.
• Country blocking available with Wordfence Premium.

As you can see there are quite a few features on Wordfence’s free plan included with the plugin. However, I did not include the premium features. If you would like to see the full set of features included with Wordfence’s plugin including the premium features, check out Wordfence’s WordPress Plugin’s page.

Sucuri Free Version.

• Security Activity Auditing
• File Integrity Monitoring
• Remote Malware Scanning
• Blacklist Monitoring
• Effective Security Hardening
• Post-Hack Security Actions
• Security Notifications

More information is available on Sucuri’s WordPress Plugin’s page.

Cloudflare Free Version.

• Globally Load Balanced CDN.
• Static Content Caching.
• Instant Full Cache Purge.
• Min Cache TTL Expiry 2 hours.
• Client Max Upload Size 100 (MB).
• Page Rules 3.
• Accelerated Mobile Links (AMP).
• IPv6, HTTP/2, SPDY.
• WebSockets.
• Async JavaScript Loading with Rocket Loader.
• DDoS Mitigation.
• Cloudflare Access – Basic 5 Users Included.
• Deploy Intelligence to Identify New Threats.
• Reputation-based Threat Protection.
• Comment Spam Protection.
• Content Scraping Protection.
• Universal SSL Certificate.
• Firewall Rules 5.
• User Agent Blocking Rules 10.
• Rate Limiting Rules 1.
• Rate Limiting Header Rules 1.
• Global Anycast DNS.
• DNSSEC.
• Wildcard DNS.
• Multi-User Administrative Access.
• Cloudflare API Access.
• Terraform Integration.
• Site, DNS Analytics.
• Site Analytics (resolution) 1hour.
• DNS Analytics (historical time) 6 hours.
• ISO 27001.
• Median Email Response Time Less than 24 hours.

More information is available on Cloudflare’s WordPress plugin’s page.

MalCare Security Free Version.

Here’s a video that runs down the differences between MalCare’s Free and Paid Versions.

Information is available on MalCare’s WordPress plugin’s page.

Wordfence alternative options. Why not use a combination of free security versions?

As you can see there’s a reason why most new WordPress site owners choose the free version of Wordfence over alternative free versions for their WordPress sites security. 

However, as your WordPress site grows in traffic, issues like speed, support as well as other facets of security become much more important. 

Therefore, it will be necessary for you to eventually upgrade your security to a premium or paid WordPress security version. This is where choosing a Wordfence alternative becomes much more of an issue. 

You see there are much better alternatives for WordPress security when you get into premium and paid versions than WordFence. 

Although you may feel so comfortable using a Wordfence’s free version that you may not want to explore a Wordfence alternative and just upgrade your Wordfence free version to its paid version. 

That is what Wordfence is counting on. 

The big advantage that Wordfence’s free version has that the others don’t is its firewall protection. This is the only WordPress firewall security feature I have found in a free version.

However, if you don’t mind the possible bloat and want to enhance Wordfence with an added level of security, then combining Wordfence with another Wordfence free alternative like Sucuri could do the trick. In fact, it might be overkill. 

But Sucuri’s free version can help you shore up and harden your site where Wordfence’s free version stops short. You’ll get the best WordPress security that money can’t buy and that’s free. 

Although if you notice that the additional free Wordfence alternatives on your website slow it down, then I would seriously consider switching to a paid version of Sucuri or Cloudflare.

Sucuri and Cloudflare not only provide excellent support, they are cloud based so they will not only free up valuable server resources, but will drastically improve the speed of your website as well.