Whenever we’re asked about WordPress security tips, our top 2 recommendations are get a good WordPress backup solution and start using Sucuri website firewall. In this article, we will share our honest review of Sucuri’s website firewall and why it’s worth every single penny!
Full Disclosure: No we did not get paid to write this Sucuri review. We’re just happy customers of Sucuri. They have a referral program available for all their customers, so if you decide to use Sucuri by clicking on our referral link in this article, then we will get a small commission. However we only recommend services that we personally use and believe will add value to our readers.
A Little Background
WPBeginner is one of the largest free WordPress resource sites on the planet. Because of that, we often have to deal with website attacks. This includes brute force attacks, feed attacks, DDoS, and a whole lot of spam.
That’s why we have always been extremely cautious. We have a real-time WordPress backup solution in place.
On top of that, we have password-protected our wp-admin directory, disabled PHP execution, changed the default WordPress database prefix, and basically followed every other security “hardening” trick.
While you can follow all the “prevention” best practices at the software “WordPress” level, the reality of the matter is that security has to be addressed at the hosting server level and more importantly the DNS level.
During the attacks, our website would slow down significantly due to the high server load. Sometimes it would even cause the server to restart causing downtime.
That’s when we started looking for a DNS level firewall solution.
We already had the Sucuri WordPress plugin installed on the site, so we decided to give their web application firewall (WAF) a try.
Some of you are probably confused by the tech-lingo and wondering what does Sucuri do and what is a WAF?
Overview of Sucuri
Sucuri is a website security company that specializes in WordPress security. They protect your website from hackers, malware, DDoS and blacklists.
When you enable Sucuri, all your site traffic goes through their cloudproxy firewall before coming to your hosting server. This allows them to block all the attacks and only send you legitimate visitors.
See the illustration below:
The biggest benefit of Sucuri is that it makes your website secure. On top of that, the firewall makes your website faster, and you save money on your hosting bill because your server load goes down significantly.
As soon as we enabled the Sucuri firewall, we started seeing the difference in performance. The attack overview inside the Sucuri dashboard was just eye opening.
WPBeginner’s Sucuri Firewall Results
Within the first three months, Sucuri helped us block over 450,000 WordPress attacks.
A break down of some of the common blocked requests:
- Exploit blocked by virtual patching (115,946 blocked attempts)
- Blacklisted IP address (72,495 blocked attempts)
- Bad bot access denied (45,299 blocked attempts)
- Backdoor location denied (29,690 blocked attempts)
- DDOS attempt blocked (29,676 blocked attempts)
- Fake bot access (24,571 blocked attempts)
- Evasion attempt denied (21,887 blocked attempts)
- Spam request blocked (14,313 blocked attempts)
- Scanning tool blocked (13,842 blocked attempts)
Now most of you are probably thinking that WPBeginner is a huge site that’s why we’re a bigger target.
Not entirely true. Often smaller sites are an easier target for hackers because they don’t take any security precautions. At this very moment, your website is probably getting attacks, and you just don’t know about it.
Sadly, when most people find out it’s a bit too late because they’re hacked. That’s why articles like how to find a backdoor in a hacked WordPress site and how to fix “this site ahead contains harmful programs” error are among the most popular on WPBeginner.
If you are running a business website, then Sucuri is a MUST HAVE solution because it offers complete end-to-end WordPress security.
5 Reasons Why We Love Sucuri
We are absolutely in love with Sucuri. Aside from using it on WPBeginner, we’re also using it on our other sites like List25 and SyedBalkhi.com.
Below are the 5 reasons why we love Sucuri.
1. Blocks all the Attacks
Sucuri’s firewall blocks all the attacks before it even touches our server. Since they’re one of the leading security companies, Sucuri proactively research and report potential security issues to WordPress core team as well as third-party plugins.
Their team closely works with the respective developers in fixing the security issues. Once fixed, Sucuri patches those vulnerabilities at the firewall level in case you didn’t get a chance to update your plugin fast enough.
For example, the recent Elegant Themes vulnerability that was disclosed was already patched on Sucuri’s servers before you updated your plugins and themes. Meaning your site was ALWAYS secure.
2. Website Integrity Monitoring
We have the Sucuri 2-in-1 Website AntiVirus package which comes with the Sucuri scanner. It monitors our website every 3 hours to ensure that it is clean of malware, malicious JavaScript, malicious iframes, suspicious redirections, spammy link injections etc.
The scanner also makes sure that our site is not blacklisted by any of the popular services like Google, Norton, AVG, Phishtank, Opera and others.
This helps you keep your reputation intact and keeps your users from seeing warnings like these:
3. Site Audit Log
Sucuri’s WordPress plugin keeps track of every thing that happens on your site.
This includes file changes, new posts, new users, last logins, failed login attempts, and more.
4. Server Side Scanning
When you’re dealing with smart hackers, you need to account for everything. Some hackers don’t care about infecting your users with malwares. Maybe they just want to add banner ads in your old post or replace your affiliate links.
These kind of hacks are very hard to catch because they’re not as obvious, and you won’t get blacklisted for these.
That’s when the server side scan comes in handy. Sucuri’s server side scanner goes through every single file (even non-WordPress files) to ensure that nothing suspicious exist on your server.
It also audit events like file changes and such to keep you informed.
5. Malware Cleanup Service
Even though all the reasons above well justify the cost, they also offer malware cleanup service with no page limits along with blacklist removal. We haven’t had to use this part of the service yet, but can you imagine having security experts cleaning up your site.
On average security experts charge $250 / hour for consulting.
Since this can get quite expensive, Sucuri has an extra incentive to make sure that your website never gets hacked.
Our Final Thoughts – Sucuri Review
Day after day, we hear stories of people’s websites getting hacked. We can honestly say that Sucuri is hands down the best and most cost effective security service in the WordPress industry.
For $199 / year, it is the best insurance you can buy for your online business.
If government websites can be hacked, then so can yours – no matter what you do. However it’s much better to find out that your website is hacked from a monitoring service rather than finding out from your users or better yet from Google when they blacklist your website.
More importantly, it’s definitely worth the peace of mind knowing that if something were to happen, we have a team of security experts who’ll help us clean everything properly.
Sucuri is a leading security company and they’ve been mentioned in major publications like CNN, USAToday, TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, and tons more. We have personally met with their co-founder and CEO, Tony Perez, and can honestly say that they are a trustworthy company, and we’re in good hands.
All the times that we have interacted with Sucuri’s support team, they have been quick, polite, and helpful.
If we were to rate Sucuri’s service and support, we would give them a 5 out of 5.
We hope you found our Sucuri review helpful. If you’re thinking about improving your WordPress security, then definitely check out Sucuri and give them a try.
Full Disclosure: No we did not get paid to write this Sucuri review. We’re happy customers of Sucuri. They have a referral program available for all their customers, so if you decide to use Sucuri by clicking on our referral link in this article, then we will get a small commission. However we only recommend services that we personally use and believe will add value to our readers.
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I just got Sucuri premium plan and wanted to know do I still need to install the Sucuri plugin on WordPress or do they do everything through their site?
We would recommend keeping and connecting their plugin currently
I have another question I just thought of: Sucuri also has backup service. Do you use that one at wpbeginner, or do you use another backup solution instead?. If that’s the case, which one, and why not the Sucuri one? Thanks!!
For the time being, we are using VaultPress for our backups and Sucuri for our security. For what we use on our site, you would want to take a look at our blueprint page: /blueprint/
Whenever I click on any article on my website from my mobile, it redirects to spam page but not on laptop.Wpbeginner please help me out to remove hack or any malware.Should I install wordfence or sucuri to remove this and to prevent future attacks.
Thanks!
As a starting point, you would want to take a look at our guide here: /plugins/how-to-scan-your-wordpress-site-for-potentially-malicious-code/
So if I install sucuri, Do I still need wordfence
If you’re using Sucuri’s firewall then normally you shouldn’t need an additional firewall as multiple plugins/tools for the same purpose can sometimes cause conflicts between the two.
Awesome article really helpful information.
Sucuri quiet expansive subscription plane but I know how to secure my website manually.
Overall article was greatest.
Thanks Dear
Thank you, glad you liked our article
Awesome article really helpful information.
Sucuri quiet expansive subscription plane but I know how to secure my website manually.
Overall article was greatest.
Thanks wpbegainer
You’re welcome, glad you liked our article
Literally loveed your full review and will definitely try securi paid plan, as currently I am in free plan is it necessary to go with their paid plan?
Is free plan isn’t effective?
Hi Amit,
The paid plan gives you access to their premium features like DNS level website firewall.
What do you think of the free version of Securi? I am using wordfence, securi and Bulletproof. I know there must be some overlap. Just did not see any review using the free version.
Hi Bill,
The free version of Sucuri helps you scan your WordPress website for security vulnerabilities. It is a solid plugin maintained by the top WordPress security company.
I came across this article while searching on Google for wordpress security info.
I subscribed to their service. I admit that they are very helpful and they do know what they do… The problem is that because of their firewall my website was unreachable for more than 90 minutes. I have more than 40K visits per day, so 90 minutes offline is a lot of money lost!!!!!!!
Nothing is perfect!
I see in this article Sucuri and Wordfence are both firewall plugins so probably keep Sucuri and iThemes, correct?
/plugins/best-wordpress-firewall-plugins-compared/
I noticed you said that if you are using Sucuri and MaxCDN any CDN benifit you get from Sucuri is a bonus. If you point the nameservers at Sucuri would that not confuse MaxCDN of the host server location? Do you really have two CDN’s working at the same time?
I see you recommended Sucuri in combination with MaxCDN. Do you also have other security plugins enabled because Sucuri is that good? Currently I keep both iThemes Security and Wordfence Security enabled. Adding a third plugin seems like there might be many overlapping features. Can you comment on which combination you use on wpbeginner for a fast and secure site?
Thank you
Hi Cody,
We use Sucuri for complete WordPress security. We also have many common best practices in place to improve security. Please see our complete WordPress security guide for more details.
Sucuri, is in my opinion, the best computer-related investment I’ve made in my entire life. I’ve been with them several years and they are always there to help. I would say they have bent over backwards helping someone like myself who is not too computer-literate. I have a small cartoon site, and once had over 33K attacks in one day but my site was unaffected.
Note: Sucuri I believe does have a referral service where you can get a discount if you recommend someone. I have repeatedly emailed them and told them, I do not wish to participate in this referral program as their service is so amazing, I’ve recommended them to many others just to help others avoid heartache from hacking attacks.
The peace of mind that comes with a service such as this is immeasurable.
Finally, there is only one thing I absolutely despise about Sucuri, the name Sucuri. As someone who is terrified of snakes, Sucuri is Portuguese for anaconda. I’d much prefer rabbit, dog or another animal.
Thanks for your review. How concerning, in your opinion, is Go Daddy’s acquisition of Sucuri? I always feel like when a huge company acquires a smaller company, there’s a chance for quality and service to take a nosedive.
Hi Brian,
It hasn’t taken a nose dive yet. And GoDaddy as a company has improved a lot in the recent years when it comes to their product quality.
Does anyone have bad experience with securi. They would be the best according to them, But I only have problems with them. And is there a way that I can look how many people they employ (Chamber of Commerce). I will pay for it.
My english is not so good i’m from belgium and i speak dutch – I will also write it in Dutch.
-How it all started-
2 months ago I protected my domain name using securi firewall. Because securi told me they were the best I chosen them without a doubt.
3 days ago I contacted securi whit a support ticket. I asked them to delete my domain name, Because I bought another domain name, And I will not use the old domain name anymore. I want to use my new domain name with the securi firewal. They said no problem, just remove the securi name sever from your hosting Then you can delete it in your securi account. I do not know how to do that so my hosting company has removed the name server, And then I asked securi to put the new domain name into my securi account.
———————————————————–
SECURI Ticket update
Hi, in that instance you need to point the nameservers from your domain.be back to the ones that they were previous to ours. Otherwise, if we remove the domain from the firewall dashboard the domain.be site will show a Sucuri error message.
Once the nameservers are pointed away from us and the site is no longer resolving to our firewall IP, we can remove it from the dashboard and then you can add in the new domain.
By: Jarret C.
——————————————————————
SECURI Ticket update Ticket
Hi,
The old site has been removed and the new site has been added
Thanks,
Caleb
——————————————————————
I was happy I thought now I can upload my website and then its well protected, Because securi told me they were the best.
Now I wanted to login I filled in my email address and my password. but I automatically get redirected to (https://login.sucuri.net/login/2fa/)
and I get a error – Sucuri 2FA ( Invalid code. Please try again.) Ok no problem until i have tried it 20 times with 20 different codes.
I then sent an email to support@sucuri.net Because written on their website. And Because I want to log in to my securi account
Please email support@sucuri.net if you need to reset or disable your 2FA account.
re-opened.
day 1 – I did not get an answer to my email nothing So I called them 10 times (No one answers the phone) A bit angry but okay tomorrow I will try again.
day 2 – Sent an email again but this time 3 emails – No one answer my email So I called them 15 times (I do not get anyone on the phone) A bit angry but okay tomorrow I will try again pffff.
Day 3 – I thought I will call them a few times a few times (8 times) – (But no one answers the phone) But yes i got a mail from them.
————————————————————————————–
SECURI Ticket update Ticket
Hello,
It looks like you were able to remove domain.be because I don’t see any sites here at the moment: https://waf.sucuri.net/
You should be able to continue with adding new domain.be now, but let us know if you have any other issues.
– jon
————————————————————————————–
Pffff After 3 days I get an email whit no answer to my question and I still can not log in
So I sent securi an e-mail (again)
The namesaver has already been deleted 3 days ago by my hosting company. and the domain name deleted Successful from suciri. I want to use my new domain name
But that’s not the problem, and I say it again for clarity that’s not the problem.
(2FA) Code not working – I’ve always been able to log in whit (2FA) Code until 3 days ago. When a colleague of you changed things in my securi account After that, I could not log in again.
you can remove (2FA) Code So I can log in (disable 2FA account.
———————————————————————————————-
I received a message again, you should send an email to billing@sucuri.net. I have already emailed them 4 times.
——————————————————————————————————————–
Hi there,
Unfortunately we currently do not have phone support at this time. It also appears that the emails were going to the wrong mailbox.
I would be happy to help you with disabling the 2fa so you can log in to your account. But first, I need to authenticate you as the account owner. We do this by verifying with the billing information on file.
If PayPal – we need the PayPal account email / billing agreement ID
If Credit card:
Company Name – if any
Full name of the account holder
Last 4 digits of the credit card number used
Expiration date
Billing address
Looking forward to your reply.
Regards,
—————————————————————————-
I sent them all the information and wait and waiting no anser no mail no call nothing. I now pay for a securi firewall that I can not use
Sorry but I’m really angry people. So I sent them an angry mail.
I’m really frustrated I thought you were the best. But I really begin to doubt you.
I have been trying for 3 days now To call you Your line is supposedly occupied for 3 days okay
Really this is the last time I send an email to you Can you solve my problem If you can not, I would like a refund. Because I pay for something I can not use
Please disable my 2FA account. So I can log in
——————————————————————————–
Then I received a message
– This is the last message I received from Ryan securi –
Your IP address is being blocked for abuse. To continue correspondence, you can email support@sucuri.net. Have a great day!
– I have replay
Why I just want to be helped I’ve been waiting for 3 days now. No problem I will now post a review online with all the mails that I received from securi. please close my account. And give me a refund. Because you are not fair. have a nice day
Hi Dani
Thank you for the feedback. I have since tried reaching out, have no had luck connecting. Please, if you can respond to tony@sucuri.net I’m sure we can work to get this resolved quickly.
Thanks in advance for your time.
Tony
Hey,
We are getting hit hard by SPAM bots located on Amazon AWS and Google Cloud. Do you know if Sucuri firewall can help with that? We currently use WPEngine which has a built-in firewall (not blocking anything) and CloudFlare (also not blocking the spam) we are running out of options and really hope Sucuri can help.
Hey AJ,
We use Sucuri because it helps us combat bot spam. I’m fairly certain that their service will fix that problem for you.
-Syed
Do you find that the Sucuri firewall affects your server-based analytics?
Hey Ron,
We don’t use server based analytics because Google analytics and other platforms are far more accurate
If you already have Wordfence should you get this too?
On sucuri’s product page related to there basic plan which is available for 9.99$ per month, they have also mentioned Performance Optimization and CDN. So is it something like they provide CDN services or they provide web security for websites using CDN services?
Can you please explain that if they provide CDN services, why should we go for a separate CDN provider?
Please contact Sucuri support, they will be able to explain each plan what features it comes with.
I’ve had this for about 1 month and about 1 week ago it blocked 700k attacks and allowed 3m requests through (I own a web hosting company)
A very recent problem with our website is causing me to uninstall / re- install WordPress.
Multiple issues:
We had I guess what you would call “link injection” – Links showing up for our webite in Google that redirected to porn, viagra and such. I found that the htaccess has a a couple additional lines in it that allowed for these redirections.
I also found in “users” that there were hundreds of user acounts created.
Dashboard showed there were over 7K log in attemps.
I started off by trying to pick through everything and repair, but I am concerned that I wouldn’t find all the problems and this would just happen again.
I know the paid version of sucuri is recommended, but from the information I provided would you think the free versions will prevent these issues until I can justify the monthly cost to the owner of the company?
The free version can check your website for infections or malware. But for removal and other features you will need the paid version.
Will this affect in search engines bot accessing website
Nope.
I am at a loss to understand why the makers of WordPress itself do not address this problem of protection and security
Website Security is a big deal entirely and not everybody is excellent at it. If the makers of WordPress focus thoroughly on security, I bet you we will still be running WordPress version 1.2alpha. It’s better when another set of people takes one of the flaws as their major concern and try as much as possible to fix them.
Sucuri is awesome, They have helped me with my site. I’ve looked into other malware removal services and it’s expensive. For $199 a year, you get awesome support, an awesome firewall, awesome advice, and they will even remove the malware for you. If your site gets some good traffic, it’s important to secure your site.
can i use together free cloudflare service and sucuri?
First and obvious question — how does Sucuri compare to CloudFlare? CloudFlare’s basic plan is free, and does lots of the same things. Why should one switch to Sucuri at $200 a year from CloudFlare (free or $20 a month?)
You don’t get the web application firewall on Cloudflare free plan. Your site also don’t get much optimization on the free plan.
On their $20 / month plan, you do get WAF but that comes out to $240 / year. You also don’t get Advanced DDoS protection for which Cloudflare charges $200 / month (so $2400 / year).
On the other hand Sucuri gives you WAF + Advanced DDoS protection for $199 / year. And if you want DDoS protection on Layer, 3, 4, & 7 — that’ll be $499 vs CloudFlare’s $2400.
Aside from price comaprison, Cloudflare doesn’t offer malware cleanup guarantee that Sucuri includes as part of their service.
This is very helpful. Thanks.
Our website is an huge database and fully loaded with latest windows softwares
Our website traffic (hummans) : 5-10K & hits : 20-25K, we are worring same problem , what you said in post.
When i tried our website on cloudflare as plan 20$/month, If set security ” iunder attck mode” , we got blocked adsense for one day. we got mad, now i removed cloudflare , i added maxcdn & keycdn . it works okay not perfect for security purpose.
Compare to keycdn , maxcdn is excellent work for speed . Still im looking some thing perfect security for wordpress. we will try for this. and also i will post a review on securi in next month.
Actually Cloudfare do not totally protect you in their free basic version.They consider all the sites same that’s why there is no specialized security for wordpress whereas wordpress has its own security issues and needed to patched separately.
Thank for this article. This is much needed. Sucuri is also of great help in identifying the malware in the site and it’s root. One observation I have on Sucuri, even when there is a malware in the website (because of which the hosting service provider first blocks port 80 and then the website), Sucuri does not show any malware / risk in the website. That’s suprising.
If you’re using their free scanner tool on the website, then yes that won’t detect all malware specially the ones that are hidden inside your server.
However the server side scan will detect those.