Solid Security (iTheme Security) vs Wordfence Comparison (2024)

First of all, let me tell you that if you are looking for ithemes security vs Wordfence comparison post you are at the right place. But there is a small change as itheme security is now Solid Security. So this article will cover Solid Security vs Wordfence comparison. 

Before deep diving into WordPress security plugin features for website protection, let me tell you why itheme security brand name changed to Solid Security.

StellerWP or Liquid Web renamed itheme to SolidWP and tried to provide a 3-in-one solution that includes: Security, Backups, and Management and named it Solid Suite.

That means Solid Suite is a combination of 3 tools:

• Solid Security – Security tools to protect your website
• Solid Backups – Backup tool for automated backups & restore
• Solid Central – Tool to manage multiple WordPress websites

Here in this post, I will tell you which security plugin is good for your WordPress website and protect you from malware and hackers.

Nowadays hackers and spammers keep attacking WordPress websites.

Around 30,000 websites get hacked daily and out of these 43% are built on WordPress.

Out of all other CMSs, WordPress is the most commonly hacked CMS according to a report by Sucuri in 2022. You will be surprised to know that in 2021, 95.6% of infections detected by Sucuri were Websites running on WordPress.

The same year, Wordfence published a report that their network blocked 13.7 million attacks targeting four WordPress plugins and some themes.

So it is very important to protect your WordPress website, which can be done easily with the help of security plugins like Solid Security or Wordfence. You need only one out of these two. Read this article for a comparison between Wordfence Security Plugin and Solid Security Plugin to make your choice.

Itheme Security vs Wordfence (Summary)

If you are interested in Sucuri and its comparison with Wordfence read this post for a comparison between Wordfence & Sucuri.

Solid Security Review in Brief (Itheme Security) 

They do not have Malware Scanning, Country Blocking and Hack Repair as they claim to control malware by finding vulnerable plugins and themes. 

Do you really need Malware Scanning?

A new study by Snicco, WeWatchYourWebsite, GridPane (supported by Automattic), and PatchStack has found that using WordPress malware scanners as plugins on a compromised site is not effective. 

These scanners are more like cleanup tools. They can only help once your site is already infected. They’re not good at preventing attacks in the first place.

How Solid Security Protects Websites?

The main focus of Solid Security is to find vulnerabilities in themes and plugins, looking for obsolete software that can cause damage and weak passwords.

If you need more in terms of strong password-based protection like passkeys, user activity logging, magic links, passwordless logins and much more they recommend you upgrade.

Wordfence Review in Brief

They keep checking new vulnerabilities in WordPress core, themes, and plugins.

And when they find something, they release new firewall rules to protect against those vulnerabilities.

Again, these Rules are delayed by 30 days for free users and real-time for paid customers.  

Wordfence has also features like file change detection and protection against brute force which we will discuss in detail.

It does not provide bot protection as Solid security provides. But it has an IP blocking feature which is quite the same as bot blocking. 

Wordfence parent company is Defiant Inc. in Delaware and its headquarters is in Seattle, Washington.

Best Security Plugin for WordPress (Parameters)

A security plugin is a must-have thing for a WordPress website. But on what parameters you should choose the best security plugin?

Security plugins have a lot of features to attract customers but most of them serve very less or no purpose for a small blogger or website owner.

Large websites and e-commerce websites that deal with credit cards and online payments should not rely on free versions of any security plugin.

Because hackers can steal your most sensitive information so along with the security plugin you have to keep updating and maintaining WordPress.

Now you decide which is the best security plugin based on these essential and desired features.

Essential Features of a Security Plugin

Malware Scan

Most WordPress websites get infected by malware that is injected into vulnerable plugins, themes, or WordPress core files. But as I told you previously rather than using a malware scanner it is a good idea to use a plugin that could find vulnerable plugins, themes, or WordPress core files.

Solid Security plugin can find vulnerable files while Wordfence does the Malware scanning. 

Firewall

The WordPress firewall protects your website from human hackers and bots. It can stop various threats like SQL injections, File inclusions, DDoS attacks, and cross-site scripting or forgery.

Firewalls protect your website from taking down and stealing your and your users’ data. So WordPress firewall is another important parameter to be considered when choosing the best WordPress security plugin.

Both Solid Security and Wordfence have Firewall options.

Brute Force Protection

Login protection and two-factor authentication are the most required features to protect your WordPress website from brute-force attacks.

In the most common type of brute force attack, hackers try to guess your WordPress passwords.

Using automated software they try to guess your login information to get access to the WordPress admin area. Login protection can limit login attempts and two-factor authentication provide another layer of security by sending a code to your phone number.

Solid security is specialized in this while Wordfence has another plugin for this called Wordfence login security.

Desired Features

Along with the most essential features, you should look for some features that can add another layer of protection to your WordPress website.

• Activity Log Reports
• File change detection
• Security notifications
• Database backups
• IP Blocking

Before going with any security plugin you can look at these features. You should also take care of the server resources your plugin consumes to work. If it is so heavy on your web host you should reconsider it.

Features Comparison (Wordfence vs Solid Security)

Malware Scanning

First, let’s compare the malware scanning feature of both plugins. As it is clear from the name it detects malware that can affect your website negatively. A malware scanner should be able to find file-based malware, malware in databases, and malware in plugins and themes.

Wordfence looks for malicious codes, and malicious URLs in all WordPress posts, pages, and comments. 

On the other hand, Solid Security does not have any malware scanner. Yet after installation, you can set up scanning of your website twice a day and they will send you an email if they find any problem on the website.

Solid security says that they stop malware but they also say they do not have a malware scanner. You may ask how they stop malware. 

They have this statement for their claim. 

Source: MALWARE MADNESS PART1

Wordfence has a malware scanner but the efficacy of the free scanner is only 60% with the free version and to get 100% you have to upgrade to Pro.

Their malware signatures are also delayed by 30 days and you have to upgrade to get them in real time. We have been using it on some of our websites. 

While you may be worried about your WordPress website security after reading this. 

Yet Solid Security added a Scan option which looks like a Wordfence scanner and scans for plugins, themes, WordPress Core, Google safe browsing, and passwords. 

If you have been under attack several time you should go for the pro version of either Solid Security or Wordfence.

Solid security pro version starts from $99 for one website and keeps increasing if we increase the number of websites. Wordfence Pro has different license types for single websites starting from $119.

Malware Removal

The next important factor to be considered before taking a security plugin for WordPress is Malware removal efficacy. Itheme Security plugin does not have any Malware removal tool. On the other hand, Wordfence gives the option to delete or repair infected files. Their premium malware investigation and removal service is a bit costly and you have to pay $490 for 1 year of this.

Wordfence malware removal is quite popular and not only deletes or repairs malware but also keeps you updated about any plugin, theme, or WordPress update.

They check posts, comments, files, themes, users, and URLs. You can start a scan whenever you want to let Wordfence choose when to scan your website. Manual scan scheduling is available for paid users only.

Some reputation checks like domain blocklist, spamvertised, and IP-generating spam options are for premium users.

There are four scan options available with Wordfence:

• Limited Scan – Limited detection with very low resource utilization
• Standard Scan – Recommended for all websites
• High Sensitivity – Recommended for hacked websites
• Custom Scan – Customize options according to need

Wordfence’s malware removal makes it one of the best WordPress security plugins as most of the other plugins do not have this feature.

Some people say this plugin can’t find malware in premium plugins/themes and also in databases.

But as we did not test it with the infected website we can’t say anything about this.

If you need more, you can get their Wordfence Care plan and stay away from malware for one year.

Firewall

WordPress Firewall is another important security feature a security plugin must have. It keeps your website safe from malicious traffic and hacking attacks.

Wordfence has a decent Firewall which has two modes: Learning Mode, Enabled, and Protecting Mode.

When you install Wordfence, firewall will be active in Learning Mode. In this mode, Wordfence firewall will understand how much traffic your website gets normally and how to allow normal visitors through the firewall. In this way, it can block unwanted traffic and block threats effectively. You can enable it on a date by checking check box below this. It is recommended you keep the learning mode active for a week.

Wordfence has more advanced features for Firewall. A firewall can provide the best protection if it loads first before the WordPress environment loads.

Most of the security plugins do not provide this option and work like a normal WordPress plugin. But Wordfence has this feature enabled by default.

You can turn it off by clicking a checkbox if your server encounters a conflict with advanced blocking settings such as IP address or country blocking before WordPress loads.

As we know Wordfence has free and paid versions so the free version get firewall updates later than premium version.

On the other hand itheme security plugin don’t have Firewall option.

You can turn it off by clicking a checkbox if your server encounters a conflict with advanced blocking settings such as IP address or country blocking before WordPress loads.

As we know Wordfence has free and paid versions so the free version get firewall updates later than the premium version.

Solid Security recently updated itself and finally brought the most awaited Firewall option.

It gives you the option to Create Rules for firewall. Using these rules you can stop attackers on the basis of these rules.

• URI
• Request Method
• Content Type
• Header
• Cookie
• IP Address

And block, redirect, Log only or allow based on the rules given above. Let me explain to you how this works. Suppose you are getting invalid traffic from a suspicious IP address or URI. Then you can block those IPs or URI using these firewall rules.

Solid Security also has IP Management, Configure, and Automated options that provide more control in Firewall settings.

Backup Feature

Regular backup of the website can be a critical factor to protect your website. If you take regular backups of your website you can easily restore your website to the latest non-hacked version. If you don’t have backup service in place you may have to pay a big amount to clean your hacked website.

With the backup option, you can reinstate your website in a few minutes. Manual cleaning of website may take hours or days which can adversely affect your website rankings.

So, you can save your website ranking, search traffic, and ultimately your earnings.

Solid security offers database backup which you can save on your hosting.

If you are using Solid Security and using its backup, do not select Save Locally Only and do not save it to the Website root folder. It’s better to choose email only or both for saving your database.

If you need more in terms of backup SolidWP has Solid Backup previously known as BackupBuddy.  

On the other hand, Wordfence does not have a backup option.

Pricing (SolidWP vs Wordfence)

Before you think of buying any one of these plugins, it is important to tell you that both of these plugins have free versions. If you have a very new website or website with very less visitors and free version of Solid Security or Wordfence is good for you.

But if are worried about website security or have been hacked before or getting threats of being hacked then you can choose Solid Security or Wordfence based on their features.

SolidWP Pricing

There is no lifetime deal for Itheme Security and every year you have to pay $99 to $299 to protect 1 to 10 websites.

NOTE: SolidWP pricing plans may have changed. Check the latest plans here.

They have a new package called Solid Suite which contains Solid Security Pro (Security Plugin), Solid Backups (Backup feature), Solid Central (Multisite management) & Solid Academy (WordPress learning community) all for $199 per year.

Now let’s talk about Wordfence pricing details.

Wordfence Pricing

Wordfence offers three pricing plans: Premium, Care, and Response

Premium Plan costs $119 per year which provides real-time firewall rules, malware signature, country blocking, and premium support.

The care plan costs $490 per year and in this plan Wordfence team does all the installations, configuration, and optimization work.

They also take care of any incident and provide hands-on support.

Now the Response plan is for large businesses that cannot afford downtime. This plan costs $950 per year. In this businesses will get 1 one-hour response time and a 24-hour resolution time. You can reach out to them 24/7/365 if you opt for this.

But for every website, you need a different license. If you want to use Wordfence Care on 5 websites it will cost you around $490*5 = $2450.

While if you want Solid Security for 5 websites you have to pay just $199. It is quite clear that Wordfence premium costs too much compared to Solid Security Pro.

Itheme Security or Wordfence Security Final Verdict

Solid Security upgraded itself and included features like Firewall and Backups. They also added a site scan feature and advanced rules to set up a firewall. 

The interface of Solid Security is very clean as compared to Wordfence. Solid security is a light plugin as compared to Wordfence. A lot of users online keep asking whether Wordfence slows down their website or not.

Solid security has another feature called hide backend. My final verdict is if you want a faster, properly backed up and more secure website go with Solid Security.