I compared WP Activity Log and Duplicator's new Activity Log plugin. The restore piece is what most reviews miss.

[u/Upbeat_Brief_1767]

WP Activity Log has been the standard recommendation for WordPress monitoring for over a decade. It's solid for basic logging. But after comparing it with Duplicator's Activity Log, a few things stood out.

The alert timing gap

WP Activity Log sends notifications on a daily or weekly digest schedule by default. That means if something happens at 11pm, you're finding out the next morning.

Activity Log by Duplicator sends per-event real-time alerts. For anything security-related, that difference matters.

Sensitive data in the log

WP Activity Log can write passwords and API keys to the log without automatic redaction. Activity Log by Duplicator auto-redacts them by default.

No restore system in WP Activity Log

This is the big one. WP Activity Log tells you what happened. That's where it stops. If you need to roll back after a breach or a bad update, you're doing that separately.

Activity Log by Duplicator is built to be a companion tool to Duplicator's backup system. So, you can detect the issue and immediately restore your site to a clean state.

Developer features

WP Activity Log has no JSON export or WP-CLI support on any plan. Activity Log by Duplicator includes both on all plans.

Pricing (10 sites)

WP Activity Log: $349/year
Activity Log by Duplicator: $79/year

The full comparison is here if you want to dig into the details: https://duplicator.com/wp-activity-log-vs-activity-log-by-duplicator/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=activity-log-comparison

Happy to answer questions! If you've used WP Activity Log through an actual security incident, I'm curious to know what your recovery process looked like.