Hello everyone,
I’ve been using WP Cerber for several years on the vast majority of my sites, and to me it’s still simply the best security plugin for WordPress. No other free plugin offers such a complete feature set: application firewall, login protection, anti-spam, country/IP filtering, hardening tools, etc. To get something equivalent today, you’d need to combine at least two or three different plugins.
It’s precisely because I appreciate this plugin so much that I’m really worried about the current situation.
-
Recent updates are very rare, and when they do come the changelog is almost empty, with no visible evolution.
-
Official support seems to be at a standstill: no replies from the team for about five months on the forum.
-
On the plugin’s official page on wordpress.org, the plugin has been closed since 2022 with a big “Security issue” banner, and this message has been displayed for more than three years now without any update or clear explanation.
All of this creates a serious trust issue: even if WP Cerber is still technically excellent, it’s becoming hard to recommend it to new clients or to rely on it in the long term with such a public warning and the lack of official communication. It feels like even if the plugin makes a “comeback”, its reputation is already badly damaged.
I also have the feeling – purely personal, to be clear – that WP Cerber may have been a victim of the commercial context: Automattic offers its own security solutions and controls the wordpress.org repository. Removing WP Cerber has inevitably benefited these competing services. That’s really a shame, because the concrete result today is that no free plugin reaches its level.
I don’t want to bash the development team, quite the opposite: I’m very grateful for all the work done so far. My goal with this message is to talk with other users and, if possible, get a bit of visibility on the future of the project.
- Are you still using WP Cerber in production?
- How do you handle the trust issue with your clients regarding that “security issue” message on wordpress.org?
- Have you migrated to other solutions? Which ones, and with what combination of plugins to come close to WP Cerber’s features?
- Does anyone have recent or official information about the roadmap, maintenance, or a possible return to the official repository?
If the WP Cerber team reads this message, I’d really appreciate some communication: even a short update on the situation and current limitations would already be very valuable to help us make informed decisions.
Thanks in advance to everyone for your feedback and insights.