Sucuri may not be the most famous internet company around, but among cybersecurity professionals and hosting experts, Sucuri is a well-known brand.
It’s on the younger side, in the internet age, having been founded in 2008 (has it really been a decade already?).
Sucuri is also a unique company: the name is the Brazilian Portuguese word for “anaconda,” and the title refers to both the snake itself and a tank model in the Brazilian military.
The image is clear—Sucuri projects strength, everything you want in cybersecurity.
Moreover, the two co-founders are both executives at GoDaddy, one of the largest hosting companies in the world.
With all that in mind, it’s hard not to see the appeal of Sucuri for web security.
But hey—what’s really lying there under the surface? You can’t really bank on a name, and especially when it comes to something as important as your site’s security.
In this review, I’ll use my first-hand experience to examine Sucuri and tell you how worthy it is of your time and money.
Short answer: it’s pretty good. But hey, the long answer is important—so keep reading!
Benefits of Using Sucuri Website Security Solution
This is the screenshot of an actual email that I received when I subscribed to Sucuri.
One of the main advantages of using the Sucuri website security solution is easy setup. Installation and configuration are very simple and if it happens that you encounter any problem during these processes, Sucuri support always stands at your disposal.
Sucuri: Cons
As always, let’s go for the bad news first.
What’s wrong with Sucuri?
What can it do better?
I’m happy to say this section has been a bit of a struggle for me to address. Sucuri’s main flaws aren’t ultimately going to be its downfall.
These flaws, as I see them, are basically price, ease of use, and organization of online resources.
The last point is very minor, and the first two aren’t as major as they sound.
First thing’s first: price?
It’s a bit high. I wouldn’t say Sucuri is overpriced, because they’re delivering a full, dedicated security suite to your website.
Even smaller businesses, if they’re seriously interested in protecting their sites, shouldn’t feel robbed by the entry-level package.
Again, I would still say the prices are overall in the appropriate range.
However, I think the entry-level price at least could be knocked down a bit—if not, then perhaps some discounts would be good.
As far as ease of use goes, I do not mean to imply that Sucuri ranks badly on its ease of use factor.
Actually, I think Sucuri does the best it can for what it is.
Simply put, the nature of website security is complex, and so no matter how well designed a user interface is, there will be inevitable limits on how “easy” the product is for the customer to use.
In that sense, Sucuri does present some small learning curves for those who need solid site protection but are confused about the details.
Finally, I do think Sucuri’s online resources are a little chaotic.
However, I consider this a very minor complaint.
True, Sucuri could consolidate its resources to make things easier for newbies, but no one is buying Sucuri’s platform for their blog—they’re buying it for the product itself.
And that about sums it up!
Sucuri has remarkably few major weaknesses, and that makes our move into its advantages particularly pleasant.
Sucuri: Pros
This surely leaves you wondering what Sucuri does well. To say “everything” would be an overstatement.
Overall, I would say that Sucuri’s main strength is that it offers a robust, fully-featured platform that lives up to its own selling points.
By this, I mostly mean it has a lot of security features, and they perform well.
The secondary advantages are that Sucuri is as easy to use a service as it can be, given the complexities of the product itself (as mentioned), and very solid customer support.
Minor complaints aside, the online information Sucuri has made available is incredibly helpful, and their representatives are knowledgeable and respond quickly.
I wouldn’t say Sucuri is a steal or a great bargain, but I wouldn’t call it overpriced either.
Sucuri might look expensive for smaller businesses who are uncertain how much protection they really want, but the degree of security awarded by Sucuri’s web security platform is very solid.
This means that overall Sucuri really does have a lot of pros: it has good features, good performance, it’s easy to use, and has strong customer support—making the price not too bad.
But hey—that’s a simplification. Let’s look at the details that brought me here!
Sucuri: Pricing
Pricing is always one of the most important things a person can consider—for some, it is the most important thing.
The thing with cybersecurity is, you’re going to have to be willing to make an investment.
The price of solid security for your website won’t necessarily be on par with the money you spend on the hosting and the building of the site itself (which can be very inexpensive depending on the size of your site and hosting package).
That’s okay—security is an investment that’s really worth it. The question for Sucuri’s pricing is not “is it cheap?”
Instead, the question should be: “Is Sucuri affordable?
Is Sucuri competitively priced for its quality?”
Note that there are differences.
My short answer is yes. I will acknowledge right off the bat that Sucuri generally is on the pricier side.
Obviously, there’s some nuance involved, so let’s jump in.
First off there are three main tiers for overall website security packages, which is called the Website Security Platform. Basic is $199.99 a year,
Professional is $299.99 a year, and Business is $499.99 a year.
We’ll get to it later, but the main differences are in the number of features, and the guaranteed response times.
Aside from buying an overall security package for your site, you can also get a firewall package for your site.
This includes DDoS protection, a web app firewall, supposed performance optimization through a CDN, and a few more things.
Sucuri Firewall is a product that comes with three tiers, named identically to the Website Security Platform: Basic at $9.99 a month, Pro at $19.98 a month, and Business at $69.93 a month.
Sucuri also has packages geared specifically for large enterprises and for agencies and developers: enterprise solutions and multisite solutions don’t have set prices.
You’ll set up a free consultation first to figure it out.
Those two products are the gist of Sucuri’s pricing. It’s pretty straightforward, but keep reading—there are a lot of features that come with these, and that’s what will really determine whether Sucuri is worth it.
Sucuri: Features
Okay, now let’s have a look at the features that undergird the whole Sucuri platform.
Note that I’m mostly focusing on the website security platform, which is the more wholesome and notable product offered by Sucuri. However, I will also discuss their Firewall plans to a lesser extent.
The Website Security Platform comes with a few things regardless of tier.
All three cover one website, unlimited web pages, a 30-day money-back guarantee, HTTPS/SSL, and ticket and chat support (no phones except for Enterprise).
They also protect unlimited bandwidth, including a web application firewall (WAF), DDoS attack mitigation, Zero-Day exploit prevention—really a whole lot of protections for different kinds of attacks—automatic cleanup, unlimited malware removal requests, full-site cleanups, and supposed increases in performance.
That’s a lot, and it’s not even a full list of features (which you can view here). One of the main differences between the tiers are in the guaranteed response times: 12 hours for Basic, 6 hours for professional, and 4 hours for Business.
Note that these are the maximum amounts of time—it could be shorter.
Other differences include SSL certificate support, which isn’t included in Basic. (Here is a guide to install SSL certificate)
This is reasonable—presumably, the supplier of your existing SSL certificate has that end covered.
Most of the monitoring procedures—such as security scans, malware detection, blacklist monitoring, DNS monitoring, SSL monitoring, and so on—have longer or shorter time intervals (12-hour intervals for Basic, 6 hours for Professional, 30 minutes for Business).
Enterprise packages can set custom intervals.
In all, I would say the tiers of the Website Security Platform have more in common than not.
The few differences are important enough to make distinct tiers a worthwhile idea: shorter response times and monitoring intervals are very important, for instance.
Sucuri Firewall functions more for prevention than removal and clean-up, but it’s lower prices are certainly worth a look for those who don’t need heavy-duty security tools.
All tiers of the Firewall come with DDoS protection, load balancing, the web application firewall (of course), and of course SSL and PCI compliance via the Firewall.
Basic and Pro tiers only get ticket support, whereas Businesses can get live chat support as well.
Pro and Business tiers get advanced DDoS mitigation, which is pretty decent for the prices (especially for Pro).
Again, please remember that if you’re interested in more intensive monitoring or any form of malware removal, you’ll need to upgrade the Website Security Platform options.
In sum, Sucuri is very well-featured. It’s seriously heavy-duty and there aren’t many criticisms I truly have.
I believe the overall price range for their products is reasonable, but it might be nice if the entry price for their Website Security Platform were lower.
Nonetheless, let it be known that both formally (officially and relative to the competition), and personally (from my experience) Sucuri is one of the most well-built security platforms around, if not number one.
Ease of Use
With all those features, does Sucuri manage to be usable to the less literate in cybersecurity?
Could a person who knows the lists of web security but is not an expert figure out how to make full use of Sucuri?
Ease of use felt more important for me here than with most other products I review.
This is of course because I know more about hosting and I most often review hosting companies.
Now, I wouldn’t say I’m a slouch when it comes to web security—it’s just not my area of expertise.
As with many Sucuri customers, I felt a little daunted by the product at first. I expected more of a learning curve.
Any learning curve would be especially stressful in the event of a DDoS attack or any kind of site breach.
To my pleasant surprise, the whole thing was pretty doable. Submitting a malware removal request, for example, is a very simple and straightforward form.
Your dashboard is very plain and easy to figure out, and working within your dashboard the way you would within many other types of dashboards can give you a pretty easy time using the software.
What’s Inside Sucuri:
Once you logged in Sucuri, you will be able to see different scanners status which is automatically enabled on your dashboard that looks like:
You can set monitoring types frequency in Settings >> Monitoring Types
You can see the status of each scanner in History section:
You can also see the status of Uptime and Downtime in Uptime section
Now, I don’t want to overhype the ease of use. Sucuri will still present some difficulties for those who are less familiar with web security.
I truly think Sucuri has made complicated problems as easy as possible, but it may mean that the security guy you hired will have an easier and faster time.
However, the nature of its service will inevitably present a small learning curve.
Most people purchasing the Website Security Platform will know why they needed to buy it and should be okay overall, but a few details here and there could present some confusions (for example everyone knows they want malware removed, but do they know what Zero-day Exploits are, and how to toggle settings related to them?)
Therefore, while Sucuri is easy to use thanks to its slick, simple, and guiding interface, there will be some confusion the less security-proficient should be ready for.
Luckily, Sucuri has resources dedicated to helping its customers…so keep reading!
Customer Support
Yes indeed, Sucuri is as easy to use as it can be—but it can only be so easy, and therein lies the next item on our list: customer support.
As with most companies, Sucuri has two types of customer support that we’ll look at the information on and provided by their website, and representatives available for direct contact.
Let’s take a look at the latter type first.
I tested out Sucuri’s live chat with a simple question that I thought might be a point of confusion for some users—that was at one point a confusion for me until I looked it up.
Frankly, this was one of the best live chats I’ve ever worked with.
If the representative seems responsive in the screenshots, then I’ll have to apologize for misleading you a little.
That’s because I couldn’t screenshot quickly enough to keep up with his responses. Just as I would begin a screenshot and try to save it, a new message would pop up.
Frankly, the conversation would have gone by even more quickly if I were more responsive.
That’s a quick example, but it illustrates the quality of their customer support, which has been consistently good in my experience.
Their ticket system is similarly useful, and even if the responses aren’t as immediate, they are still relatively fast and informative.
Now that we’ve covered their direct contact customer support, let’s talk about their on-site informational resources.
Sucuri’s resources are a little more spread-out than other sites’ materials. We’ll take it piece by piece.
First, we have Sucuri Reports, which are exactly what they sound like put-together reports on recent security issues with advice woven in.
Then we have Sucuri Guides.
These are the closest thing Sucuri has to the written articles of a knowledge base, but it’s much less comprehensive. There are only a few guides.
They’re useful, to be sure, but I think this area could be better populated.
Similar to guides, Sucuri has webinars that might be more in-depth and suited to those who want to really make use of the platform.
Sucuri infographics should work well for those who want information presented in an easy to digest way—basically, informative pieces less intensive than guides, webinars, or reports.
Sucuri has a blog, like just about every other SaaS company. Company blogs can be useful, and Sucuri’s is not an exception.
However, I wouldn’t rank Sucuri’s blog highly on a list of the most informative blogs.
They have plenty of other content anyway.
Finally, Sucuri has a knowledge base and FAQ page. These are probably going to be the most important resources for uncertain and new customers, and they perform as well as the best.
Frankly, however, I think Sucuri’s information and educational content could be condensed.
I’ve found there’s a lot of good stuff on Sucuri’s online informational materials, but it’s a bit overwhelming. At times, it can feel a bit fluffy—although I’ve found less fluff than I would have expected.
Overall Sucuri has great customer support.
Their live chat and ticket systems work very well, and their on-site information is very comprehensive, if in need of condensing.
Sucuri Performance
Performance is important for any product, online or offline.
But it’s hard to imagine a product where performance is more essential than Sucuri.
If you’re investing in security for your website, you need to know beyond any doubt that it will perform, no excuses.
This is especially true for Sucuri. While Sucuri isn’t expensive relative to its services, it still might be a heftier amount of money than is ideal, at least for the smaller customers.
Once again, you need to be guaranteed Sucuri will perform well and not let you down.
Unsurprisingly, it won’t.
For the most part, Sucuri lives up to its own hype. Now, admittedly, Sucuri isn’t the type of product you’d use extremely often—unless something bad happens, you might not be on your Sucuri dashboard every hour.
Compared to a content management system or website builder, this is especially the case.
But the reliability of the services themselves are key here, and I have found Sucuri to be very consistent. It’s nice to get a daily update from the malware scanner, for example.
I haven’t found any days missing or any interruptions in their services.
Here is how Sucuri’s load time test works:
A nice surprise was that I did notice an increase in my site’s performance and speed. Sucuri advertises this a lot on their site, and I was skeptical.
Sure, good security should boost your site’s performance—but it’s also quite common for your site to get burdened down with bloatware.
While I wouldn’t say that the speed/performance boost I got from Sucuri was incredible, it was noticeable. Nothing crazy, but still something I was able to notice.
That being the case, I’ll also award some praise to Sucuri’s performance.
Overall, I can’t say I have any complaints. I haven’t had drastic security issues recently, so I also can’t say I’ve thrown a huge test at them.
Nonetheless, day-to-day and with the experimentation I can do, Sucuri performs very well.
Conclusion
After all those details, how is Sucuri looking as an overall product?
I don’t know about you, but I would say the result is a pretty striking figure. Sucuri does have limitations, but those are almost necessary—with such a comprehensive security suite, there will be a higher price tag, and with such a complex service, there will inevitably be some learning curves.
Aside from that, Sucuri brings very strong customer support to the table and consistently well-performing features (that are well-designed from a user experience perspective) that are largely easy to use.
Even the entry-level platform provides a ton of protection, though I do wonder if the price could be lowered somewhat.
I would recommend Sucuri to most businesses, including small ones.
For those who do not have access to technologically literate staff, Sucuri might present some small difficulties but is still worth looking into.
Those who do not have very high stakes involved with their sites—you can probably look into another company or Sucuri’s firewall options.
Sucuri FAQs
What Is Sucuri Security?
Sucuri Security is a tool that offers website security solutions and helps to protect your Website against hacks and DDoS attacks. It’s a free WordPress plugin.
Is Sucuri Safe?
Sucuri helps your website by continuously analyzing it and automatically removes malware infection and block DDoS attacks. Thus, a safe option for your website security.
What Does Sucuri Do?
Sucuri automatically identifies the security issues on your website, removes malware infections, configures continuous monitoring, deploys a protection platform, and boosts the performance of your website making it secure.
How Much Does Sucuri Cost?
The Basic plan costs $199.99/Year for a website that runs a hack scan every 12 hours. The Pro plan costs $299.99/Year with a hack scan frequency of 6 hours and a Business plan costs $499.99/Year with a hack frequency of 30 minutes and an additional feature to remove malware every 6 hours.
What Is A Sucuri Alert?
Sucuri Alert is an email alert plugin that monitors event that is triggered by WordPress related to security.
What Is Sucuri Website Firewall?
It is a cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) that blocks hackers and prevents DDoS attacks.