Everything requires premium

I haven’t been using this long enough to have all the angles covered, but I have to respectfully disagree with your statement.

Here are some FEATURES that I use and NEED in the free version:
– virus/file scanning
– brute force login protection
– instant banning of “banned url’s”
– throttling and/or blocking of humans/bots depending on chosen criteria, (eg number of 404 pages, page visit frequency etc)

And believe me, every single day, I am getting bot attacks from countries all over the world. I cannot believe a much of a target WordPress is.

There’s a ton of features that are included in the free version. We’re using the pro version mostly for country blocking. As themaproducer mentions, the basic of the plugin is extremely capable of providing an extra layer of security to your site. sccr410, dig a little deeper into the interface and you’ll discover the goods.

Maybe that is a flaw with the plugin then because from what I can tell everything I try to do to secure my site more says “This is for premium licenses only”. The plugin isn’t well organized for me to understand what exactly it is doing.

I installed the plugin after a hack clean up and not more than 12 hours later it had malicious files back on the server and other core files altered. While it did email me about it which was nice, I assumed it would stop it from happening in the first place.

And, according to https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/about/guidelines/ #5

Trialware is not allowed in the repository. It's perfectly fine to attempt to upsell the user on other products and features, but a) not in an annoying manner and b) not by disabling functionality after some time period. Similarly, you cannot "cripple" functionality in the plugin and then ask for payment or provide a code to unlock the functionality. All code hosted by www.ads-software.com servers must be free and fully-functional. If you want to sell advanced features for a plugin (such as a "pro" version), then you must sell and serve that code from your own site, we will not host it on our servers.

This plugin is clearly violating those terms and should be updating accordingly. I have my own premium plugin and spent quite a lot of time to make an add-on model work to ensure I am in compliance with these rules, so should Wordfence.

I don’t think this plugin is violating the theme guidelines, or at least the one you’ve mentioned, but it is easy to see how someone could assume installing it would clear up a hacked site. It’s more of a “could” and “would be nice” job.

I didn’t expect it to clean up the hacked site, I expected it to protect it from getting hacked again so quickly. It does do a lot of other things, I was more frustrated that hacked files appeared so quickly.

There are so many instances within the plugin where I went to use a feature (trying to check that passwords are strong, for example) only to be told “You must have a premium license”. This clearly violates the “cripple” clause and “All code hosted by www.ads-software.com servers must be free and fully-functional.” To me that one is clear as day. And this feature is not listed as a premium feature on the plugin page, it makes it out to look like it is part of the free version. https://screencast.com/t/YaoBxBPHc

With all my respects I’m 100% disagree with your opinion. Nowadays you CAN’T ride a Ford Focus and expect Lamborghini’s options. Just be realistic and balance your expectations based on the fact “Whatever you pay whatever you’ll be served”. For a free plugin Wordfence is the best ant the mos complete one among all the other security plugins (which I’ve tried bunch of them before).

You shouldn’t step into a car that looks like a Lamborghini and have a Ford Focus engine – that is what the rules of the WordPress Plugin Repository say and that is what this plugin does. It does do A LOT of things in the free version, I know it does. Most of my frustration came from having hacked files on my server literally hours after installing it as I had believed this would be able to prevent it. I know it’s not going to prevent everything, but hours later was just frustrating. After the hack, I dove in to try using more features and kept running into “You need a premium license” which made me more frustrated and the real reason for the low rating.