7 Best Anti Spam Plugins for WordPress to Expel Spammers
Isn’t it annoying?
You sign into the blog dashboard and see a lot of spam comments.
I know exactly how you feel. Along with the depression born from the way they treat your content, you see yourself frustrated in the process of cleaning all of the garbage. It takes time to clean spam comments and of course, could decrease your blogging productivity.
If you are searching for the best way to kick away spam comments, you have stumbled on the right place as I will be sharing the seven best anti spam plugins for WordPress in this article.
Before we go on further, make sure you have a self-hosted WP blog.
7 Best Anti Spam Plugins for WordPress Websites
You are lucky as a WordPress user because it has an incredible potential of increasing the functionality by the cost of a few clicks using the uncountable antispam plugins out there.
I know you are desperate to find out the anti-spam armors. So, here you go!
1. Akismet
With more than one million downloads, Akismet is the best anti spam plugin for WordPress. I have been using it for long and couldn’t find a major flaw till now. Automattic (Yeah, guys behind WordPress itself) is the developers of this plugin.
You can download Akismet for free from the official WordPress plugin repository. In order to make it functional, one must connect to the cloud service via the API key. And, you get the API is only after signing up.
What Akismet does is uploading each of the comments you get, to their cloud servers. The real check happens there as the content of the comment is passed through more than a hundred antispam algorithms to determine the legibility.
Sometimes, the spammers become smart enough with seem-to-be genuine comments. In such a confusing scenario, the plugin pushes the comment into the moderation queue for you to check the same manually. But it won’t happen even once in a hundred comments, I swear.
The plugin is free of cost up to 50,000 comments a month. If you want more than that, a premium account is needed, which does not cost you more than $5 monthly (basic). Do you think it’s expensive for a sensible plugin?
They have three plans with added benefits there. You are free to choose either of them, to get advanced Akismet feature checkout premium plans from here. And, it works perfectly with Jetpack, Contact Form 7, W3 Total Cache, and Yoast SEO, etc. plugins without any performance issue.
2. Anti-Spam Bee
Don’t you have enough time to devote for the registration of an antispam service? Then, I suggest you to install Anti-Spam Bee on your WP website. It requires no registration or third-party access. So, you can avoid Akismet and use this one (only if you have little time).
But this plugin does not have a powerful cloud-based spam checking algorithm. It ultimately relies upon the server-side methods like IP address validation, Gravatar checking, comparison with public spam database, etc.
As you can inject an ‘I’m not a Robot’ checkbox, bot comments fail to make your dashboard filthy. Moreover, the dynamically arranged comment fields keep the spammers away as well.
It is possible to block comments based on an IP, country or a particular language. And, you can have a quick look at the number of spam comments by turning on the dashboard add-in. The option to get Email notifications lets you receive monthly spam reports.
The plugin logs the spammer activities to use the same as a reference for future blocking. The excellent feature, in my opinion, is the setting to delete spam comments after a certain number of days. It keeps the dashboard clean and reduces the site load as well.
Of course, Anti-Spam Bee is free to use for any kind of website. You must give it a try to check whether it’s real spam blocker or not. In my experience, it is the best FREE tool to get rid of spammers.
3. WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam
Wow, now I am giving you an antispam plugin with a whole bunch of features. I am sure that you will jump out of joy to find out this one is freely available for both personal and enterprise use.
Just like the above mentioned two, WP-SpamShield also works as a plug and play service with no sign ups or APIs.
This plugin checks every comment you get on your blog in two different ways. The first method involves the basic cookie and Javascript technique, which is sufficient to weed out most of the bot comments. On the other hand, the second method makes use of a ton of algorithms to determine the genuineness. The second layer of security becomes active only if a comment surpasses the first one.
The developers claim that they don’t allow any spam to enter into the database so that standard SQL injection, XSS exploit attack, and DDoS through automatic commenting stay out of the scene.
They claim Zero False Positive; means the plugin don’t catch even a single legitimate comment as spam. As the majority of the antispam services proclaims to have low false positive or 99.9% detection, this is something that needs attention.
Along with the regular spam prevention, WP-SpamShield provides registration anti-spam and email harvester blocking (masks your email id from spammers).
They boast of having the support for almost all the contact form and registration plugins. Pretty impressive, huh?
4. WordPress Zero Spam
Here comes another top rated WordPress anti spam plugin, WordPress Zero Spam.
The working of this plugin is based on the principle that every genuine comment originates from a valid browser (in simpler terms though). The Mozilla founder David Walsh is the first to implement this principle. But the drawback is that your users can’t comment with Javascript disabled as WordPress Zero Spam uses it for the spam detection.
So, you don’t have to visit any third-party websites or services and that rules out the API features from the picture too. Just install the plugin, activate it. There you go!
I recommend using this plugin if you get a lot of spam comments from bots. My experiments revealed the fact that WZS can’t block human spammers with a high accuracy.
But the happiness is it’s free. Free for both personal and commercial use! And, it doesn’t impose any limitation at all. You can keep on knocking the socks of the spam comments as long as you want.
If you are ready to play with a bit of coding, you can increase the efficiency and ability of the plugin by using Action Hooks. They provide you with the premade hooks. You only have to inject it into correct files.
Unlike some other wordpress anti-spam plugins, this one works well with W3 Total Cache and supports Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms and WPForms too. With this tool, you can enable IP-based blocking also.
5. Spam Protection by CleanTalk
Formerly known as Anti-Spam by CleanTalk, the checking mechanism of this plugin is similar to Akismet’s. When a comment made, the plugin uploads the content to the cloud server, and it compares the same with antispam parameters to reach a conclusion.
Being a cloud-based service, CleanTalk needs you to enter a proper Access Key to making the plugin functional.
The similarity to Akismet lies not only in the functionality but in availability too. Though Spam Protection by CleanTalk can be downloaded from the WP plugin repository, you will get the access key after the purchase only. Yeah, this one is a paid plugin and worth every penny as well.
Along with comment spam protection, CleanTalk offers the prevention from all the content fields on your blog including contact forms, subscription forms, landing pages, bookings, widgets, etc.
No matter what cache utility you use, this one works flawlessly with it. And, the feature to check the existing comments for spam makes your job relatively easy to keep the dashboard clean. If your blog is open for registrations, you can vaguely rule out the spam registrants.
The blacklist, whitelist, country based blocking and stop word filter features are surely going to entice you up.
You can track the activity of the CleanTalk by having a look at the spam attacks log.
6. GrowMap Anti Spambot Plugin
If you have been using WordPress since long, you should have heard this name at least once; GASP.
Unlike all the other WordPress antispam plugins in this list, GASP is easy to use. Being the lighter in the lot, it will not add much weight to the database either.
This service is not perfect to prevent all types of spam comments as it has only one feature, a checkbox to avoid bots. So you must go for any other item in this article to have added specs to beat advanced spam.
Your users should enable Javascript as the plugin generates the checkbox using the same. That’s exactly why bots can’t see it.
The system validates the checkbox activation and flags comments as legitimate only if it gets a positive response.
I have seen many reputed blogs use this plugin in the past. But now Akismet is the popular choice I guess.
7. WangGuard
Are you in search of the best anti spam plugin for wordpress to use with the multi-user, bbPress or BuddyPress installation? You got the right one here. Yeah, WangGuard should be your pick.
The working is quite similar to both Akismet and CleanTalk. You install the plugin, sign up for the service and connect to the cloud server using the unique API.
So the question arises. Is this a paid one? Of course yes, but for those who gets more than 5000 queries a day. Do you fall under this category? Then, you can purchase the premium package for only one Euro! (Different plans are available though).
Are you interested in widening the spam security level? Then, you can try out different WangGuard add-ons like MailPoet Connector, Blacklisted Words, Limited Registration Domain and Registration Notice.
Unfortunately, WangGuard is not for those who want an anti-comment spam plugin. It only protects your registration pages from unwanted access.
The developers warn us not to enable Minify settings in Cache plugins as it may cause some issues.
Recommended read:
- Must Have WordPress Plugins Bloggers Should Use
- 10 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins
- Best WordPress SEO Plugins to Enhance Search Visibility
Wrapping Up
I have given you seven impeccable antispam WordPress plugins to reduce your frustration of browsing through the garbage.
If you have a large website with tons of daily hits, chances are you get tons of spam comments too. In such a situation, I recommend going with a paid plugin.
But for a beginner site or not-so-well-established one regarding traffic and spam comment count, a free plugin with a little bit of manual moderation is enough.
And, the last anti spam plugin for wordpress in this post is only for additional WordPress installation (like MU, bbPress, BuddyPress). Hence, it can’t provide you with comment spam prevention.
That’s all! It’s up to you and your needs now.
So, have you made your mind? Which one did you choose? Let me know in the comment section down below.
For spammers only (who at least skims through the content): – Stay away because I have an anti spam plugin enabled. Or be my guest to try your luck! :p
