Activity Guard – Security Scanner, Activity Log with IP blocking vs Stream – Activity Log & Audit Trail

Activity Guard is a free WordPress plugin that covers four things most plugins charge separately for: a complete activity log, an IP-based security firewall, a plugin vulnerability scanner, and WooCommerce abandoned cart analytics. Alerts go out in real time to Slack, Telegram, or email, all from one dashboard. Most activity log plugins stop at logging. Most security plugins don’t touch WooCommerce. Plugins like WP Activity Log, Simple History, and Stream do logging well — Activity Guard adds real-time Slack and Telegram alerts, an IP firewall with emergency shutdown, CVE vulnerability scanning, and WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery analytics, all at no cost. No paid tier required for any of it. No other free plugin on WordPress.org combines these four in one place: a complete audit log, an IP security firewall, a multi-database vulnerability scanner, and WooCommerce analytics with cart recovery tracking. Activity Guard Website | Documentation | Pro Support WordPress Activity Log Activity Guard records every meaningful change on your site, including the IP address, username, timestamp, and the exact change made. The audit log covers: User logins, logouts, and failed login attempts User registrations, role changes, and profile edits Pages, posts, and custom post types: create, edit, delete, status changes Plugin and theme activations, deactivations, updates, and deletions WordPress core settings and configuration changes Menu, widget, and sidebar modifications Email delivery tracking via a full email log Form submissions from Contact Form 7, SimpleForm, and others Admin settings changes and debug log events Cron job scheduling and background process tracking Script modification and file change detection Visitor traffic monitoring with an on/off toggle Visual charts summarize your audit log at a glance. No need to scroll through raw log tables to understand what’s happening on your site. Security Firewall and IP Blocking Activity Guard actively blocks threats rather than just recording them. IP blocking by manual entry, CIDR range, or conditional rule Emergency Shutdown: force-logout every active session on your site with one click Cloudflare Turnstile login protection against bots and brute force attacks Login rate limiting to stop credential-stuffing Bot detection and automatic IP blocking Restrict or fully disable XML-RPC access Core file integrity scanner to detect unauthorized file changes File integrity monitoring across plugins and themes Block TOR network access Block vulnerability scanner user agents HTTP security headers: custom, logged, and enforced WordPress version hiding 404 error tracking and suspicious HTTP request alerts Admin dashboard visitor tracking Cron job failure and site downtime monitoring The Emergency Shutdown feature is specific to Activity Guard: one click and every logged-in session on your site ends immediately — useful when you detect a breach in progress and need everyone out now. Plugin Vulnerability Scanner Activity Guard scans every installed plugin and theme against multiple vulnerability databases before problems develop: Detect plugins with known CVEs across NVD, WPVulnerability.net, and the WPAzleen private API Flag outdated plugins not compatible with your WordPress version Identify abandoned plugins not updated in over a year Warn about plugins with low install counts or poor ratings No other free activity log plugin on WordPress.org includes a built-in multi-database vulnerability scanner. WooCommerce Activity Log and Analytics Activity Guard logs every WooCommerce event and adds analytics built specifically for store owners. Order tracking covers status changes, payments, refunds, and cancellations. You also get stock level changes and low-stock events, coupon creation and usage, product pricing edits, billing and shipping address updates, customer registration changes, and real-time shipping status updates. The abandoned cart and incomplete-order analytics go further than basic logging. The dashboard shows checkout drop-off rates, recovery potential, recovery rate, and how customers interact with their carts before leaving. This tells you where revenue is being lost, not just that it was lost. WooCommerce abandoned cart analytics with recovery rate tracking is included free. No competing free activity log plugin on WordPress.org provides this. Slack and Telegram Notifications Activity Guard sends alerts the moment a critical event occurs, across four channels: Slack: route alerts to any channel, tag specific users or groups with @mentions Telegram: real-time activity and security alerts direct to your Telegram chat Email: configurable per event type Admin dashboard: in-panel notification view Events that trigger alerts include core file changes, plugin and theme updates (with the username that triggered the update), WooCommerce orders, payments, coupon usage, incomplete order follow-ups, product edits, stock changes, login and registration events, page and post changes, form submissions, and admin settings changes. A daily digest and weekly plugin download summary are also available. You can schedule notifications for specific times and control exactly which events send alerts. Admin and Developer Tools Maintenance mode toggle from the dashboard Menu and widget change tracking Plugin and theme activation and deactivation logs Script modification detection HTTP security header change logging Debug log and fatal error detection Email log: full delivery history for all outgoing WordPress emails Contact Form 7 and SimpleForm integration alerts Who Uses Activity Guard WooCommerce store owners use it to track every order, coupon, product change, and shipping event, and to recover revenue with abandoned cart analytics. Site administrators use it to know exactly who changed what, instantly log out suspicious users, and maintain a clean audit trail. Agencies and developers use it to monitor plugin updates, configuration changes, fatal errors, and debug logs across client sites. Security-focused admins use it to block IPs, scan for CVEs, monitor file integrity, and trigger emergency shutdowns. Multi-author sites use it to hold contributors accountable with full user activity logging and role-change tracking. Join us: Facebook | YouTube | X / Twitter Competitor Analysis Search the WordPress plugin directory for an activity log plugin and a handful of names come up again and again, so it is worth being clear about where Activity Guard actually fits among them. WP Activity Log is the biggest name in the category, with the broadest event coverage of any activity log plugin and support for tracking third-party plugins like ACF, Gravity Forms, and LearnDash. It is a genuine alternative to Activity Guard for pure logging depth, but Slack and SMS alerts sit behind WP Activity Log Premium, and there is no IP firewall, no vulnerability scanner, and no WooCommerce analytics at any tier. Activity Guard includes Slack and Telegram alerts, an IP firewall, vulnerability scanning, and WooCommerce abandoned cart analytics in the free version, with a narrower focus on the WordPress admin rather than enterprise SIEM exports. Activity Log Pro is the closest match on structure. Its free tier also adds real security-adjacent value beyond plain logging, with Login Flood Guard and severity-tagged events, so anyone comparing the two is comparing like for like on ambition. Where Activity Guard pulls ahead is in what ships free versus what is gated: Activity Log Pro’s Slack and webhook routing live behind its Premium “Log Channels” feature, while Activity Guard’s Slack and Telegram alerts, IP blocking, vulnerability scanning, and WooCommerce cart recovery analytics are all included at no cost. Beyond those two, most of the other names that show up nearby are lighter tools solving a narrower slice of the same problem, or a different problem entirely. Activity Log – Monitor & Record User Changes (Aryo) is a lightweight, beginner-friendly logger with email-only notifications and no Slack, Telegram, IP firewall, or vulnerability scanning. Activity Logs, User Activity Tracking, Multisite Activity Log from Logtivity is built for agencies managing many client sites and does send Slack alerts, but it works by connecting each site to Logtivity’s hosted service with an API key rather than running standalone, and it has no IP firewall, no vulnerability scanner, and no WooCommerce analytics. Security Plugin, Firewall & Malware Scanner with Auto Removal is a genuinely strong free WAF and malware scanner, but it is not an activity log at all: it does not track content edits, role changes, or WooCommerce events, and its alerts are email-only through the CleanTalk cloud account it requires. Error Log Viewer by BestWebSoft has nothing to do with user activity either, it is a PHP and WordPress error log reader with email notifications, useful for debugging but unrelated to security monitoring or audit trails. So of the plugins that show up in a “wordpress activity log” or “wp activity log alternative” search, only WP Activity Log, Activity Log Pro, Aryo Activity Log, and Logtivity are actually built for the same job as Activity Guard: tracking what changed on a WordPress site and who changed it. Among those four, Activity Guard’s combination of free Slack and Telegram alerts, an IP firewall with emergency shutdown, a CVE vulnerability scanner, and WooCommerce abandoned cart analytics, all in the free version with no external account required, is what sets it apart. External Services Slack Webhook Integration Activity Guard sends notifications to your Slack workspace using a Slack incoming webhook URL that you provide. To set one up: Create a Slack app or use an existing one Enable Incoming Webhooks in the app settings Add a webhook to your workspace Paste the webhook URL into Activity Guard settings No data is stored by Slack beyond what you configure in your own Slack workspace. See Slack’s privacy policy for details. Cloudflare Turnstile Activity Guard uses Cloudflare Turnstile for login bot protection. When Turnstile is enabled, your login page communicates with Cloudflare’s verification servers. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy for details. Plugin Vulnerability Scanner – Data Sources WordPress.org Plugin API: retrieves plugin metadata including latest version, last updated date, rating, and active install count. Privacy Policy WPAzleen API: private endpoint for known vulnerabilities by plugin and version. No sensitive data is transmitted. Privacy Policy WPVulnerability.net: public API for CVE-based vulnerability data. Privacy Policy National Vulnerability Database (NVD): official CVE data from NIST. Privacy Policy All scans run locally using public metadata and vulnerability feeds. Activity Guard does not collect, store, or transmit any personal information during scans. Freemius Activity Guard uses the Freemius SDK for optional telemetry. No data is collected by default. Data collection only starts after you explicitly confirm in the admin notice. See the Freemius privacy policy for details. WPAzleen Settings API Loads display settings for the Pro upgrade modal in the plugin admin area. No personal data is transmitted. WPAzleen Privacy Policy Source Code The source files for all compiled/minified JavaScript and CSS in this plugin are publicly available at: https://github.com/wpazleen/activity-guard Build instructions: Clone the repository or visit the src directory directly. Run npm install in the root to install dependencies. Run npm run build to compile JavaScript and CSS assets. Compiled files output to build/. Contributions, bug reports, and pull requests are welcome.

Stream is a complete activity log and audit trail for your WordPress site: see what changed, who changed it, and when. From plugin activations to post edits, login attempts to new user creation, every user and system action is recorded in an audit log built for debugging, security monitoring, and compliance. Every logged action is displayed in an activity stream and organized for easy filtering by User, Role, Context, Action or IP address. Admins can highlight entries in the activity log—such as suspicious user activity—to investigate what’s happening in real time. Stream also lets you configure email alerts and webhooks for integrations like Slack and IFTTT, so your team knows the moment something goes wrong. Stream keeps its own logs healthy too: records are automatically purged on the retention schedule you choose, with batched deletion and orphaned-data cleanup that stay reliable even on very large sites. Stream is also AI-ready: its abilities are exposed through the WordPress Abilities API and MCP Adapter, so AI assistants and other tools can securely query your site’s activity records. For advanced users, Stream supports a network view of all activity records on your Multisite, exclude rules to ignore certain kinds of user activity, and a WP-CLI command for querying records. Stream is free and fully open source — development happens in the open on GitHub, maintained by XWP. With Stream’s powerful activity logging, you’ll have the information you need to responsibly manage your WordPress sites. Built-In Tracking Integrations For Popular Plugins: Advanced Custom Fields bbPress BuddyPress Easy Digital Downloads Gravity Forms Jetpack Two Factor User Switching WooCommerce Yoast SEO Built-In Tracking For Core Actions: Posts Pages Custom Post Types Users Themes Plugins Tags Categories Custom Taxonomies Settings Custom Backgrounds Custom Headers Menus Media Library Widgets Comments Theme Editor WordPress Core Updates Other Noteworthy Features: Multisite view of all activity records on a network Limit who can view user activity records by user role Set exclude rules to ignore certain kinds of user activity Live updates of user activity records in the Stream Export your Activity Stream as a CSV or JSON file WP-CLI command for querying records Configuration Most of the plugin configuration is available under the “Stream” → “Settings” page in the WordPress dashboard. Request IP Address The plugin expects the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] variable to contain the verified IP address of the current request. On hosting environments with PHP processing behind reverse proxies or CDNs the actual client IP is passed to PHP through request HTTP headers such as X-Forwarded-For and True-Client-IP which can’t be trusted without an additional layer of validation. Update your server configuration to set the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] variable to the verified client IP address. As a workaround, you can use the wp_stream_client_ip_address filter to adapt the IP address: add_filter( 'wp_stream_client_ip_address', function( $client_ip ) { // Trust the first IP in the X-Forwarded-For header. // ⚠️ Note: This is inherently insecure and can easily be spoofed! if ( ! empty( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ) ) { $forwarded_ips = explode( ',' $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] ); if ( filter_var( $forwarded_ips[0], FILTER_VALIDATE_IP ) ) { return $forwarded_ips[0]; } } return $client_ip; } ); ⚠️ WARNING: The above is an insecure workaround that you should only use when you fully understand what this implies. Relying on any variable with the HTTP_* prefix is prone to spoofing and cannot be trusted! Known Issues We have temporarily disabled the data removal feature through plugin uninstallation, starting with version 3.9.3. We identified a few edge cases that did not behave as expected and we decided that a temporary removal is preferable at this time for such an impactful and irreversible operation. Our team is actively working on refining this feature to ensure it performs optimally and securely. We plan to reintroduce it in a future update with enhanced safeguards. Contribute There are several ways you can get involved to help make Stream better: Report Bugs: If you find a bug, error or other problem, please report it! You can do this by creating a new topic in the plugin forum. Once a developer can verify the bug by reproducing it, they will create an official bug report in GitHub where the bug will be worked on. Translate into Your Language: Use the official plugin translation tool to translate Stream into your language. Suggest New Features: Have an awesome idea? Please share it! Simply create a new topic in the plugin forum to express your thoughts on why the feature should be included and get a discussion going around your idea. Issue Pull Requests: If you’re a developer, the easiest way to get involved is to help out on issues already reported in GitHub. Be sure to check out the contributing guide for developers. Thank you for wanting to make Stream better for everyone! View contributors here.