You receive the bulk of the WordFence features just by downloading the plugin from the repository, but is it worth upgrading to the premium version of the plugin? Keep in mind

What Do You Get from Upgrading

• CellPhone sign-in
• Advanced comment spam filter
• Check if site is spamvertised
• Check if site IP is generating spam
• Remote scans
• Country blocking
• Frequent scans
• Premium support

Now while these sound quite impressive most people need to ask themselves whether or not they are actually going to use these features. If you are just a simple blog owner why would you be worried about remote scanning your website? What would you do if your website was spamvertised? This can provide some useful information but what would you do in the event of any of these things coming true?

CellPhone Sign-in

The CellPhone Sign-In feature is something that might be useful for your users or it can just be an annoyance while it comes across as being handy and adding an extra layer of security there are only a handful of users that would use this feature and there is no guarantee they would use it on your website. 

Advanced Comment Spam Filter

You can get a free list of 17k stop words on GitHub that would place a bigger dent than this plugins spam filter. 

Check If Site Is Spamvertised

This feature simply means that WordFence will check to see if your website is being blacklisted or is known for distributing spam. 

Check If Site IP Is Generating Spam

This is very similar to the Spamvertised tool and it basically will check to see if your website IP is known for distributing spam mail or any form of spam in general. There is not much you can do in this case other than request your host to change your IP.

Remote Scans

Simply if you don't know what it is you are not going to use it... At all. 

Country Blocking

Country blocking allows you to block a range of IP addresses from a particular country. Keep in mind that if someone is using a Proxy or VPN and they attempt to 

Frequent Scans

Premium Support

The support at WordFence is actually really nice the staff is knowledgeable and they are very helpful. However, if you are only wanting support most of it can be done on your own by watching a video guide on YouTube. 

So do you really need WordFence premium? If you are on a basic shared hosting plan then chances are is you are going to be wasting your resources and you will not use these features at all. However, the cell phone sign-in is a nice feature that adds a form of 2-factor authentication which is something we should all be using. 

Do you use WordFence premium? Was it worth the upgrade?

I don't recommend using the caching features over a true caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache, also if you are using the Falcon Cache and attempt to use a caching plugin with it, you are very likely to break not only the plugin but your website.  However, that being said WordFence makes it easy to add a strong firewall to your website even though it can be quite a resource hog at times the plugin has risen to the top of the repository for a reason and I am glad to see such a plugin is providing protection for thousands of websites. 

While WordFence is a great plugin that comes with a lot of handy features it is not needed for every install and it is not something you should have running all of the time. WordFence can greatly improve the security of your website and your users by scanning your theme, posts, and more but it can be a real resource drain even when taking preventive measures.

Resource usage is something that WordPress is constantly blamed for and the problem most of the time lies with the user having plugins that are not needed. While having a plugin such as WordFence or Ithemes security might make your blog safe from common attacks most of the time someone attempting to attack your website will be using a DDOS. Now, while WordFence has some tools to prevent against these kinds of attacks there is no need for your website to be handling that from a plugin that is generating more than its fair share of database queries.

If you are on a VPS or a Dedicated server than resource usage should rarely be a problem, but if you are stuck on a shared hosting then you will notice that this plugin is frequently blocked or is causing resource spikes. So, what can you do to solve these issues?

There are many ways that you can try to approach the resource issue such as caching and disabling certain functionality but if you are stripping away parts of the plugin why have it installed at all? Instead, you should look into setting up CloudFlare.

CloudFlare offers a lot of the protection tools of WordFence, but it also is a CDN and has tools to improve the load time of your website. The best part is that it won't cost you a dime because the service is completely free and it has a global network of websites that constantly feed it new data to better protect all the websites that are a part of its network.

While WordFence is a great tool that can do wonders in protecting your website it simply is not suitable for all WordPress environments and you will need to use other tools that might be even better than the on you first looked at.

WordFence is a WordPress security plugin that even has some optimization tools built in. WordFence has made great strides and has become one of the largest names in WordPress security by discovering vulnerabilities in several plugins and by actively keep users updated by their email list.

WordFence in recent times has made a push to improve multisite compatibility in order to keep sites better protected and to avoid it from getting in the way of those on the network. The latest release version 6.0 has added full IPV 6 compatibility and it is continuing to add more tools and improvement to its scanning engine.

However, WordFence has also created its infamous "Falcon Engine" which is supposed to improve the load time of your website up to 50 times of what it used to be. However, this number is slightly misleading as the actual plugin is using a cached page and is making it to where your website could handle roughly 50x the amount of traffic (if you are on a decent hosting plan that is). This tool is not strong enough to replace something such as W3 Total Cache, but it still has great use for those who get scared by the thought of using such a tool.

Personally I have never found the caching module to be of use and I prefer to use a tool such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. But this tool is so simple that anyone can add it to their website and see their load time increase greatly. Especially if they use it in conjunction with a tool such as Auto-Optimize.

In conclusion, WordFence is an all in one security and performance plugin that is a great tool for any website to have. If you are a more experienced webmaster then you might not find much use for the tool but its a great starting point for those entering the WordPress scene.