Activity Guard – Security Scanner, Activity Log with IP blocking vs Shield Security – Smart Bot Blocking, Brute-Force Login Protection & File Scanning

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.

Most security plugins hand you a dashboard full of alerts and expect you to know what to do next. Shield works differently. It blocks threats automatically, repairs what it can on its own, and then shows you exactly what still needs your attention — ranked by impact, not volume. Less noise. More action. 🤖 Security That Runs Itself The most powerful thing Shield does is what it handles without you: Automatic IP Blocking — every visitor is quietly scored as they interact with your site. Failed logins, firewall blocks, silentCAPTCHA failures, and other signals accumulate into a reputation score. When a visitor’s score crosses the threshold, Shield blocks them — automatically, without you lifting a finger Automatic File Repair — when a file integrity scan finds a changed WordPress core file, Shield pulls the original from WordPress.org and restores it. Detected and fixed, without waiting for you to act Automatic Bot Recognition — Shield identifies legitimate crawlers (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Apple) and known services (ManageWP, Pingdom, Stripe, CloudFlare) and never blocks them. Your SEO and monitoring tools keep working 🧭 Guided Security, Not Just a Dashboard Shield organises your security into four focused areas so you always know where to look: Queue — things that need your attention, ranked by priority. Not everything at once — just what matters right now Investigate — dig into blocked IPs, security events, and the specific signals that triggered each one Configure — guided setup for each protection area, with clear recommendations matched to your site Reports — a clear view of what Shield has blocked, detected, and repaired over time The goal: guide you quickly towards action, not bury you in data. 🛡️ Free Protection Bot Blocking & Firewall silentCAPTCHA — blocks bad bots on login, registration, lost password, and comment forms using passive signals invisible to real visitors. No CAPTCHA keys. No external requests. No JavaScript that breaks your forms. Everything runs on your server (GDPR friendly). Firewall rules blocking common WordPress attack patterns — SQL injection probes, known exploit signatures, suspicious request parameters XML-RPC protection — disable or restrict entirely, including pingbacks and trackbacks REST API firewall — block unauthenticated requests Fake crawler detection — identifies bots spoofing legitimate search engines Login & Account Security Two-factor authentication (2FA) — email codes, Google Authenticator, or YubiKey OTP for all users Brute force protection with configurable login attempt limits and cooldown Session locking — tie sessions to a browser or IP to stop account theft after a successful login User enumeration blocking — closes off ?author= probes used to harvest usernames before an attack Scanning & Integrity Core file scanning — compares WordPress core against official checksums and repairs changed files automatically Suspicious PHP detection — flags PHP files in locations where they have no business being Abandoned plugin detection — identifies unmaintained plugins most likely to carry unpatched vulnerabilities Visibility & Control Security Admin PIN — lock Shield’s own settings so other administrators cannot quietly weaken your configuration Security activity log — logins, user changes, plugin and theme events, post edits, and suspicious requests: Everything in one clear view IP Rules — automatic & manual block and bypass rules, CIDR range support, full per-IP request history 🤝 CrowdSec Integration Shield is the only WordPress security plugin with a native CrowdSec integration. CrowdSec aggregates threat signals from millions of sites into a shared IP reputation network — your site blocks known attackers before they ever probe you, using intelligence far beyond your own traffic history. ✨ ShieldPRO Passkeys — phishing-resistant, passwordless login for users Backup login codes — emergency 2FA access when a device is lost AI-based malware scanner — detects known and unknown PHP malware Plugin & theme file scanning — compares installed files against WordPress.org originals, flagging unauthorised changes Vulnerability scanning — active checks across all installed plugins and themes Broader spam protection — WooCommerce, EDD, Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, Elementor, and more Traffic rate limiting — cap request rates per IP to absorb high-volume bot floods User suspension — manual or automatic suspension of idle accounts MainWP integration White Label — rename and rebrand Shield for client sites Who It’s For Shield suits site owners, agencies, and MSPs who want protection that runs itself — not a plugin that demands constant attention to be useful. If you have been burned by security plugins that generate more noise than protection, or dashboards that tell you everything is wrong without telling you what to fix, Shield was built to be the alternative.