If you are using WordPress and making posts that use comments or contact form, newsletter etc, then you should probably use an Anti-Spam plugin, we listed the best for you.
We listed Free and Premium plugins, it is written at the start of their description in bold text so you shouldn’t miss it. Some Premium plugins have extra features but the Free plugins we selected should be enough for most of the web sites.
1. Antispam Bee ( Free )
Antispan Bee is the plugin we recommend, it is free and ad-free, in our opinion the best alternative to Askimet.
It is one of the most popular anti-spam plugin on the WordPress plugin repository for blocking spam comments and trackbacks effectively. You can block or allow commenters from certain countries as well as delete existing spam comments after a certain number of days.
2. WPBruiser ( Free )
WPBruiser (formerly GoodBye Captcha) is an anti-spam and security plugin based on algorithms that identify spam bots without any annoying and hard to read captcha images.
WPBruiser completely eliminates spam-bot signups, spam comments, even brute force attacks, the second you install it on your WordPress website. It is completely invisible to the end-user – no need to ever fill out a Captcha or other “human-detection” field ever again – and it just works!
It comes with premium extension for plugins like bbpress or buddypress and much more.
3. Akismet ( Freemium )
Akismet is free for personal and non-commercial sites with a limit of 50,000 comment checks per month. However, if you wish to use it for commercial purposes, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid plan.
The plugin is developed by Automattic, the team behind WordPress and it comes pre-installed with every WordPress installation.
It is a cloud-based service and requires you to enter an API key in order for it to work, registration to wordpress.com required.
4. Cleantalk ( Premium )
Cleantalk is like all the other plugin an anti-spam plugin. But it is premium and not free because it supports: Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, Gravity Forms, MailChimp, Formidable forms, WooCommerce, JetPack comments and contact form, BuddyPress, bbPress, Fast Secure Contact form, S2Member, MailPoet, any WordPress registrations & contact forms and themes.
Conclusion
Unless you are going to use a lot of plugins that also allows comments / form submission from the user then the free plugins listed in our post should do the trick, we don’t see the necessity to buy any spam plugin unless you got a really important and popular website to protect.
Leave us a comment if you have any questions or if you know better anti spam plugins!
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