PureGuard Performance is a WordPress plugin designed to protect websites from automated bots while maintaining site performance. It addresses the needs of site owners seeking to distinguish between human visitors, suspicious activity, and confirmed bots, providing five configurable security modes to monitor, block, or challenge traffic as appropriate. The plugin employs an 18-layer detection engine that operates in two independent phases: a server-side web application firewall (WAF) and a browser-based verification stage. The server-side phase runs before WordPress loads, using methods such as IP reputation checks (including FireHOL and CrowdSec), bot user-agent signatures, datacenter ASN detection, Chrome version analysis, Sec-Fetch header validation, and burst rate limiting. Bots identified at this stage are blocked in under five milliseconds, preventing them from accessing any page resources.
The browser verification phase applies ten client-side integrity checks in the visitor's browser, such as Canvas fingerprinting, WebGL renderer analysis, AudioContext hash, math precision, hardware concurrency, timezone consistency, touch API presence, developer tools detection, headless browser flags, and runtime injection checks. Visitors flagged as suspicious may be presented with a lightweight JavaScript challenge page requiring a SHA-256 proof-of-work and the same browser checks, typically solvable by real browsers in one to three seconds. Successful completion results in an HMAC-signed cookie valid for one hour.
PureGuard Performance offers five security modes: Off (monitor only), Medium (block confirmed bots), High (block bots and challenge suspicious visitors), Strict (allow only humans), and Lockdown (emergency block-all except for admins and search engines). The plugin includes a censorship-friendly VPN filter, ensuring that users behind VPNs or proxies are not hard-blocked but instead face the browser check, while real bot evidence still results in blocking. Branded challenge and block pages allow site owners to customize the appearance with their logo, brand name, color scheme, and theme, and blocked visitors receive their IP, an incident ID, and an option to report mistaken blocks directly to the dashboard.
Engagement tracking is built in, with real-time beacons reporting scroll depth, click events, and time-on-page at 10, 30, and 60-second intervals to the PureGuard dashboard. The plugin is designed for minimal performance impact, with server-side checks running before WordPress and client-side scripts loading asynchronously. Installation requires no coding and can be completed in minutes, with activation and configuration handled via the WordPress admin panel. 4+, and is available as a free download with no account required for installation.
PureGuard — Bot Protection & Performance sits in PulseGate's Security & compliance platforms category. It focuses on preventing malicious bots from accessing and harming WordPress sites. It is built as a B2B product for wordPress site administrators. There is a free tier. The product ships for the web.
Pure Guard builds and maintains PureGuard — Bot Protection & Performance, and the product first shipped in 2026. PulseGate's similarity index finds few close equivalents — PureGuard — Bot Protection & Performance occupies a relatively distinct niche. Key capabilities include bot detection, security modes, and challenge page. The interface is available in English and Japanese.
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PureGuard — Bot Protection & Performance discovered by the PulseGate indexer
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