Are you searching for the best WordPress anti-spam plugin for your site? If so, you’ve entered the right place.
Spam is a headache that every website owner wants to avoid. Without any security measures in place, it overwhelms you with bulk comments and spam forms submissions. Therefore, the best solution to this is anti-spam plugins.
In this article, we’ve carefully handpicked the best WordPress anti-spam plugins tofight back spam and protect your website. So, make sure you read the article till the end.
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Why Use WordPress Anti-spam Plugins?
Here are a few upsides of WordPress spam blocker plugins that explains why every website owner must use them for their comments and forms:
- Prevention is better than cure: Instead of waiting for the inevitable spam attacks, anti-spam plugins help you prevent them right from the start.
- Removes existing spam: If you already have your comments littered with spam, some plugins are capable of detecting and removing them.
- Saves your time: Since anti-spam plugins automatically block any spam, you don’t need to manually filter all comments and mark them as spam.
- Saves your resources: The worst spam goes straight to the gutter so that they don’t occupy unnecessary storage space on your website.
- Leave your comments open: The most straightforward method to prevent spam is to disable your blog’s comments at the expense of meaningful discussion. These plugins let you engage with your audience while keeping spambots at bay.
- Protects your search engine ranking: Spam comments with bad links make your website look less credible. Anti-spam plugins ensure that your site’s SEO is not compromised in any way by removing such comments.
With that said, here’s a list of the best WordPress anti-spam plugins for your forms and blog comments.
11 Best WordPress Anti-spam Plugins
1. Akismet Spam Protection
Akismet is one of the most popular anti-spam WordPress plugins. And it lives up to its popularity because it provides excellent protection from spam comments in your blog and contact form submissions. You just have to moderate the suspicious comments caught by the plugin.
When you download WordPress, you’ll find that this plugin’s automatically installed and activated into your WordPress dashboard. However, you can also use premium versions for extra features like premium support and multi-site support.
Key Features:
- Clears the worst spams to avoid potential threats.
- Any hidden or misleading URLs are shown in the comment body.
- Discard feature to save disk space.
- Status history for every comment.
- Moderators can spam or unspam blocked comments.
Price: Free or $10/month (Plus Plan)
2. Antispam Bee
Antispam Bee is one of the best free anti-spam WordPress plugins for mitigating comment spam. Once it’s enabled on your website, it blocks all spam comments and trackbacks without the need for a captcha. On top of that, this plugin notifies the admin by email whenever spam is detected.
Moreover, it automatically deletes spam collected after filtering. You just have to set when you want them deleted in the settings. You can also set indicators for spam types that should be sent to the trash without further action.
Key Features:
- Spam statistics are available.
- Allow comments from specific languages.
- Restrict comments from specific countries.
- Exclude trackbacks and pingbacks in spam detection.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant.
Price: Free
3. WP Cerber
Anti-spam protection is one of the many cybersecurity services that WP Cerber provides. It doesn’t just act as a WordPress spam comment blocker plugin for your blog comments, contact forms, and registration forms. But you get first-class defense against hackers and malware as well.
WP Cerber uses reCaptcha on forms to detect bots and block them from spamming your site. Even better is the invisible reCaptcha for blog comments that automatically detects bots through mouse and keyboard movements. So, your commentators won’t be prompted to solve a captcha at all.
Key Features:
- Detects and deletes spam comments.
- Protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks.
- Limits login attempts made by an IP address or subnet.
- Filter and inspect activities of users.
- Weekly reports are available.
Price: Free or $99/year
4. CleanTalk
CleanTalk is the complete solution to all spam troubles on your WordPress website. That’s because it blocks spam in comments, registrations, contact emails, orders, bookings, subscriptions, surveys, polls, WooCommerce, and more.
Additionally, it doesn’t need any Captchas to do that, unlike other WordPress spam comment blocker plugins. Along with blocking incoming spam, it also checks published comments for existing spam and removes them from your site.
Key Features:
- Works with mobile devices.
- Spam Firewall for advanced protection.
- Checks validity of email addresses in real-time.
- Compatible with major forms and marketing plugins.
- Daily and weekly spam reports.
Price: Free or $8/year
5. All In One WP Security & Firewall
All In One WP Security & Firewall is, first and foremost, a WordPress security plugin. But it also provides anti-spam features to stop spam comments on your WordPress site. Not only that, you can even block the IP addresses from where the most spam has originated.
This best WordPress anti-spam comments plugin uses a captcha in the comment form to distinguish between human users and automated activity for added security. The same protection is enforced for login forms and registration forms through Google reCaptcha or simple maths captcha.
Key Features:
- Monitor account activity of all users.
- Manually approve each registration to reduce spam.
- Ban users by IP address.
- Regular updates for uncompromised security.
- Compatible with major WordPress plugins.
Price: Free
6. Titan Anti-spam & Security
Titan Anti-spam & Security is another fantastic WordPress spam comment blocker plugin with the added benefits of a firewall and malware scanner. It has a global spam database that consists of known malicious IP addresses. So, the plugin checks all comments on your blog against this database to match and block spam.
With spam comments removed from your blogs, your audience enjoys a greater user experience. To add to that, Titan also protects your site from brute force attacks by restricting login attempts for a single user.
Key Features:
- 24/7 technical support.
- Protects registration forms from spam.
- Detailed statistics for comments and logins.
- Scheduled security scans.
- No captcha required.
Price: Free or $55/year
7. Stop Spammers
With Stop Spammers, you’ll be able to prevent spam comments, user registration, and emails. You can block suspicious users, emails, and IP addresses and approve the rest manually. Additionally, it enables blocking users based on their countries.
Stop Spammers has 50+ configuration options for you to personalize the plugin for your WordPress site. If you want more features, then the premium version has you covered. For instance, this version provides Contact Form 7 protection and server-level firewall protection.
Key Features:
- Export and import settings from one site to another.
- Blocks based on specific spam words.
- GDPR-compliant.
- Restrict guest visitors with Members-only Mode.
- Notification control options for admin.
Price: Free or $29/year
8. WordPress Zero Spam
WordPress Zero Spam knows how annoying it can be for users to solve a captcha for everything. That’s why this plugin detects and blocks spam using AI and database matching techniques instead to protect your site. No more time-consuming captchas that affect user experience!
Besides detecting and blocking spam, you can even find out which part of the globe these spams are coming from. With this information, Zero Spam helps you stop future comments and registration from specific countries and regions.
Key Features:
- No moderation required from the admin side.
- Block IP addresses manually or automatically.
- Allows integration with popular plugins.
- Geolocates IP addresses.
- Protects WooCommerce registration forms.
Price: Free
9. WP Armour
WP Armour is the best WordPress anti-spam plugin that utilizes the honeypot technique. It inserts extra javascript fields to your forms automatically. Since the spambots can’t detect javascript, they unknowingly submit incomplete forms on your website. This is a dead giveaway to the plugin that the submission is spam.
So, it quickly stops spam in all your site’s comments, registration, and other forms. Moreover, WP Armour keeps a log of all IP addresses that have sent spam. This helps you to permanently block IPs sending multiple spams.
Key Features:
- Supports popular form plugins like Gravity Forms.
- Easy installation without any setup.
- Hard for spambots to bypass the honeypot.
- Record spam submissions.
- Dedicated support available.
Price: Free or $19.99 for Lifetime Purchase
10. BulletProof Security
For those looking for an all-in-one security solution, BulletProof Security can be the perfect solution. Most importantly, it guards registrations, logins, and comments on your WordPress website against spam.
You don’t have to worry about this plugin slowing down your site because it’s speed-optimized. This means it doesn’t make unnecessary database calls which strain the page loading time. However, configuring this plugin might be a daunting task for beginners because of the extensive settings.
Key Features:
- Login security and monitoring.
- GDPR compliance option.
- Performance optimized.
- Manual or scheduled database backups.
- Scans for malware.
Price: Free or $69.95
11. Stop WP Comment Spam
As the name suggests, Stop WP Comment Spam is a WordPress spam blocker plugin dedicated to defending your site from spam comments. Once detected, the automated spam is sent to the spam folder. From here, you can manually delete them or let the plugin get rid of them automatically after some time.
The premium version of this plugin offers an anti-spam service for contact forms and registration forms as well. Additionally, it’s GDPR compliant. This means that it doesn’t misuse the personal data of your visitors and protects their privacy.
Key Features:
- Fast and lightweight.
- Reports available with spam statistics.
- Affordable pro plans.
- No need for API key.
- Compatible with other security plugins.
Price: Free or $8.99/year
Wrapping Up
That concludes our list of the best WordPress anti-spam plugins. You’ll find that some plugins offer more features for their value than others. Some use techniques completely different from others to detect spam. But despite their differences, they all provide excellent anti-spam protection for you.
If you need overall website security, you’ll find many good WordPress security plugins for that. You can also read up on the tips you can implement to keep your site secure.
We hope you found this article helpful. Please feel free to share your experience with any of these plugins in the comments.
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