WP Activity Log Review: The Best WordPress Activity Log Plugin
Choosing the right plugin for audit your WordPress website plays an important role in any online business. A WordPress audit plugin with a well-designed website does not necessarily mean that their site will be ranked first on Google’s search results.
There are plenty of options available on the WordPress audit plugin provider market. Ideally, you would need to choose the best provider that will fulfill all of your requirements in a cost-effective package. Also, you’d need to do some in-depth analysis of all of the similar plugins that offer what you need. The in-depth analysis includes all parameters that you need to consider when choosing a web hosting provider. The most common parameters are listed below:
⦁ Price
⦁ Features
⦁ Technical support
⦁ Customer reviews
The items mentioned in the list above are a few of the more important parameters that you should consider when selecting a web hosting company for your business. This article will give you an overall review of the WP Activity Log. They are a leading WordPress plugin that provides several features and services at an affordable price point. Let’s get started.
About WP Activity Log:
WP Activity Log is a WordPress plugin that tracks and logs all activities that happen in your site’s WordPress admin area (but not only) to help you detect any odd or suspicious behavior before it can become a real security threat to your site. Essentially, this plugin monitors and records all user activity such as changes made to content, themes, plugins, widgets, user accounts and their passwords and any WordPress settings.
WP Activity Log was developed by WP White Security, founded by Robert Abela. The plugin is available in two editions; free and Premium. All the logging functionality is available in the free version of the plugin, which can be downloaded from the official WordPress plugin repository.
The Premium edition has a number of useful and advanced features which help the website owners and / or administrator build a complete WordPress activity log solution that enables them to remain on the ball. One such feature is email notifications – which immediately sends an email if a specified event occurs on the website.
Why WP Activity Log:
Before we go through the plugin details let’s see what are some of the benefits you can take advantage of when keeping a WordPress activity log on your website:
-Ease troubleshooting: Trying to troubleshoot a problem without logs is like finding a needle in a haystack. It is virtually impossible, especially when the users themselves do not cooperate. If you have a record of what happened exactly, i.e. who disabled a plugin, changed a widget, modified the content or deleted a post you can find out exactly what happened and who did what in just a matter of seconds.
-Detect possible WordPress attacks: Before malicious hackers attack your website they try several tricks. For example, they scan your website, try a brute force attack etc. All of these actions leave a trace in the WordPress audit log and by knowing that someone is trying to attack your website you can take evasive action to thwart the attack.
-Meet regulatory compliance requirements: Every business has to adhere to some regulatory compliance requirements. All industry sectors have them, be it finance, healthcare, e-commerce etc. One thing all these requirements have in common is logging – because of security and privacy issues, businesses are legally obliged to keep a record of what is happening on their websites.
Features:
Highlighted below are some of the great features that make WP Activity Log unique when compared to their competitors in the market:
-Scope of Activities: Different plugins log different kinds of activity. Some can be very niche and specialized, while others offer a broader scope and can log activities across different areas. If choosing the latter, you’ll want to make sure that you can switch on or off different events, helping you ensure that resources are being put to good use, the plugin only keeps a log of what is relevant to you and your business, and you manage the amount of data being stored.
-Data Retention Policy: Data retention can be a make-or-break deal, especially if your website has to comply with certain regulations. Ensure that a long enough data retention timeframe is possible not to fall foul of any applicable law. For example, if a WordPress website is being used to handle patient data, or to share patient data with the patients and their families, that website has to be HIPAA compliant. HIPAA requires system owners to keep logging data for up to 7 years. ISO 27001, an international standard for information security, which is more popular in Europe, requires businesses to keep up to 3 years of logging data.
-Plugin Integration: If your WordPress website is heavily dependent on plugins such as WooCommerce, you might want to consider a plugin that can log activity generated through such plugins. This will provide you with a broader view that also covers key components of your website
-Search & Filtering: Logs are, by their very nature, chronological. As such, you’ll find all events in the order of the time they happened, irrespective of which component they originated from. This can make it harder to find particular events if, for example, you know which component has an issue but not the date or time. Search and filtering fixes this by allowing you to look for specific events or filter by criteria – so that you can find answers faster.
-User Session Management: With user session management logs, you can view and manage active sessions, limit simultaneous user sessions, and even use logs to identify and terminate inactive sessions. This feature is good to have from a security standpoint as it gives you control over how users interact with your site and eliminates potential security issues.
-Activity Log Mirroring: Activity log mirroring is a feature that allows you to mirror, or copy, activity logs externally. For example, to a log management system or to cloud storage for auditing. If you’re already using such a system, this feature may be indispensable with numerous benefits associated with collating all of your logs under one system. The ability to save logs to an external database can also help you make sure you keep your WordPress database as lean as possible, especially if you have a larger website that generates lots of logs.
-Multisite Network Support: If you’re managing a WordPress multisite network, an activity log plugin with multisite support can save you a lot of hassle and time by bringing together your multisite logs.
Support:
WP Activity Log has an excellent support team that can be reached anytime via email support system. In my experience, they proved themselves to be very helpful and quick to respond. They resolved every last problem that I had set up.
WP Activity Log is one of the few web hosts that offers full 24/7 email support. I have found their support department to be very quick to solve issues, especially when it comes to handling site-specific issues or anything other than answering generic tech queries.
Affordable Price
WP Activity Log proudly claims themselves as one of the most cost-effective WordPress plugin on the whole market. And to be fair, they do a pretty good job of keeping that claim factual.
Something that makes WP Activity Log unique as an Activity Log Plugin is that their prices are displayed clearly and openly on its website for their visitor. I think WP Activity Log deserves the praise for doing this. In fact, on most screen resolutions and layouts, you can actually see their plan pricing without even scrolling down on the page! Additionally, their features are laid out clearly for potential customers to read and see if ’s plans are right for them.
None of WP Activity Log’s competitors have this level and type of transparency. Other competitors will hide the prices or make you sign up before you can even see them. This is often done to sneak in hidden charges that they don’t want to reveal until they’ve gotten you to register (and partially commit to going with them).
The image below shows the starting prices for each type of plans at WP Activity Log.
Our Experience:
I have tested more than 13 similar plugin in the past at Techozens.com – WP Activity Log is easily one of the top in terms of quality, by far.
For the purpose of this review, I have used WP Activity Log for a total of three months so far. Within that time frame, I am more than satisfied with my experience. There was no downtime up to this point, to be exact. It was easy to set up thanks to their support team, and the processing power was on-par with other hosting companies.
Final Recommendation:
With all of this in mind, let’s get down to the big question: “Would we recommend it?”
And the answer to this is a resounding and absolute “YES”.WP Activity Log is a value-oriented, transparent, and highly-reputable service for any business or influencer trying to increase their brand visibility by using WP Activity Log’s secure and trusted WordPress Activity Log Plugin.
If you’re looking to WordPress plugin that tracks and logs all activities by using a trusted WordPress Plugin, WP Activity Log will do the trick nicely.
We also definitely recommend WP Activity Log to anyone who is looking for a simple, great WordPress activity log plugin. They provide fast, great support, and good features. All of these are provided at an incredibly low price (for what you get) without compromising on quality. You will rarely find a WordPress plugin offering these same great services at a lower price, and WP Activity Log is one-of-a-kind in that regard.
Scorecard:
For any of our readers who skipped straight to the bottom of this review to get a TL;DR, look no further. You can also take this section as a quick summary of WP Activity Log’s service quality across its most important components.
Here’s how WP Activity Log scored:
Features: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Safety / Security: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Ease of Use: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Price: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Support: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Growth: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
Final Score: ★★★★★ (5/5 stars)
