If you run a blog on WordPress, then you probably had some experience with spam. Spam can affect areas and features within your site. This includes your comments, forms, surveys, email lists, trackbacks, and more.
Also, it can waste your time, your server resources, spam-bots which can give you a false impression of your site traffic. Your email subscriber list size. And lastly, your performance metrics. Any type of spam but especially spam comments can make your site less professional and trustworthy to people who come across your site.
However, you can take steps to prevent spam-bots from attacking your website. One of the most effortless and effective solutions is to use a WordPress plugin. These plugins will straight-forward check, filter out, stop, or even remove spam from your WordPress website.
So this WordPress Wednesday, here’s 6 of some of the best and free anti-spam plugins that can help secure your website.
1. Zero Spam
WordPress Zero Spam has embodied the no-CAPTCHA approach. Which great as it is a stress-free solution that will obliterate spam on your site.
So save your readers time, as they don’t have to spend the time filling out CAPTCHAs, and solving mysteries which can also streamline your user experience on your site.
And all the thing you have to do is install and activate this plugin. And site back as this plugin takes over and starts blocking 99.9% of spam on your site. It uses server and client-side JavaScript key validation to prevent bots from spamming. So, users cannot comment without JavaScript enabled.
The WordPress Zero Spam plugin also integrates seamlessly with other plugins such like Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, BuddyPress, and WPForms, among others.
Price: Free
2. Stop Spammers
The second plugin in this list is simply to configure and use. Stop Spammers offers you loads of power to protect you and your visitors from spam. It works “right out of the box”.
This plugin prevents comment spam, as well as limits the login attempts. It has over 50 configuration options and utilises over 20 different checks for spam and malicious events to detect spam.
Stop Spammers will flag a comment or login attempt. Users are allowed a second attempt via a denied request page. As those users will get presented with a captcha screen to prevent them from being blocked in the future.
The plugin has an improved UI. You can efficiently combat spam comments, emails, registrations, spam-bots, and spammers. You can run diagnostic tests and view spam activity in a single click.
Price: Free
3. Titan Anti-Spam & Security
Titan Antispam & Security is more than just an anti-spam plugin for WordPress; Instead, it is a full suite of security features.
This plugin presents to you a security scanner, firewalls, security audits, real-time IP blacklisting, malware scanner, also it can repair any corrupt files.
With all these features. The plugin spots an easy to use and also intuitive interface that makes blocking spam a breeze. Titan plugin was originally a simpler spam blocker plugin. But due to an update, the plugin moves into a complete security solution for all types of WordPress sites.
Within this plugin, you’ll notice that there are no annoying CAPTCHAs, and if you need more features, it has a premium solution with a range of add-ons that you can purchase.
Price: Free
4. WP Cerber Security
The following plugin is kinda the same as the above plugin as it is another security suite. The Cerber Security plugin offers all the tools that you’ll need to destroy spam, but while hardening your WordPress website. It isn’t just spam blocking, as the only feature. That you find in this plugin. As it allows you to eliminate spam on registration, contact, and comments forms.
Other features include brute force prevention, IP blocking, user’s session manager, hiding /wp-admin from visitors, blocking access to WP REST API, invisible reCAPTCHA, integrity checker, malware scanner, 2FA and more.
Price: Free
5. Akismet
The number one WordPress anti-spam plugin, developed by the Automattic team it brings enterprise-level spam protection to your site.
Without a doubt, this is the most popular anti-spam plugin you can find. It’s a fantastic solution to combat spam but especially comment spam. Akismet comes “pre-installed” on every WordPress site you create. And all you have to do is activate it and connect to your Akismet account
The Akismet Plugin works by uploading all of your incoming comments to the Akismet server. Then the comments go through the “loads” of anti-spam algorithms and only the correct comments get published, while the spam ones go to the spam queue.
Along with this plugin you can view every comments status history. Which is great to see which were spammed by a moderator. Or even put that commet in the spam folder automatically.
The plugin is free for personal websites and nonprofits ONLY see the view license terms. While you need to pay at least $5 per month if you want to use Akismet on a commercial website, these premium plans come with extra features.
Price: Free
6. Antispam Bee
Anti-Spam Bee is free plugin that is full of packed full of features and doesn’t require registration like Akismet does.
You can use this plugin for either personal or commercial use. So any type of site is free of spam. It’s the best solution if you need to eliminate spam comments and trackbacks effectively, plus it’s straight-forward to use.
So stop these spammers faster without requiring to get CAPTCHA’s and without sending personal data to any third-party services. Plus this plugin is GDPR compliant.
Have the ability to trust approved commenters, validate IP addresses, block users from certain countries, delete spam comments directly, set admin notifications, log spammers using Fail2Ban, clear your WordPress database of spam after a specified number of days and more with this plugin.
Price: Free
