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You need comments to get feedback and increase engagement on your website or blog. However, the WordPress comment section also attracts spammers who can frankly break your blog. Spam comments can make the comment section look hideous, and create a disturbance for both you and your readers. Frequently spamming of the post leads to huge resource loss and can harm your site in the long run.
How to Stop WordPress Spam?
If you are using a WordPress website, then there is a straightforward method for tackling spam. As you know, the WordPress platform is filled with an enormous collection of plugins curated to solve your different problems, and just like that, there are WordPress anti-spam plugins. To completely stop spam in your site, you can use these plugins.
Also read:
– 7 Best Akismet Alternatives for WordPress Spam Prevention
– CleanTalk Review: The Best Anti-Spam Plugin?
Before installing any plugin, it is also recommended to use the basic optimal settings to stop the comment spam on your website.
- Always ask comment posters to fill out the full name and email before allowing them to make a post comment.
- [Optional] This is an optional setting where you can close the comments on older posts. You can change the number of days after which comments must not be allowed on a particular post.
- You can also set each comment to be approved manually.
Once you have tried these options but still facing comment spam issue, then it is recommended to try one of the plugins listed below.
In the list below, we have included a bunch of best and most effective Anti-Spam WordPress plugins. Installing any of these plugins will be of enormous help in your fight against comment spammers.
Best WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins
#1. Anti Spam by CleanTalk
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Now if you are looking for a universal spam protection system that can keep your site secure from all sorts of spam, and not just comments, then you might consider taking a look into the Anti Spam WordPress plugin by CleanTalk. Here, it is worth noting that CleanTalk will send the comments you receive on your website to the CleanTalk cloud, analyze it to detect if it is a spambot. Spambots will be prevented from posting comments, whereas genuine visitors will be allowed.
What is impressive here is that the service is known to have a false/positive rate which is no higher than 0.008%. Furthermore, the plugin will extend its functionalities to not only help you stop spam comments, but also spam registrations, orders, bookings, surveys, and much more.
#2. Akismet
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Second is the super popular Akismet anti-spam plugin for WordPress. Once installed, you will have to activate the plugin using an API key which will require you to sign up and create an account with Akismet. The API key is given for free if you want to use it on your blog; however, businesses and commercial websites will have to buy a license. Furthermore, free users will have a limit of up to 50,000 monthly spam checks. If you want to go for a commercial license, pricing starts at a modest $5/month.
Once you have things up and running, the plugin will automatically scan all the comments, tally them against its global database of spams, and then filter out the spammy, malicious content. You will also get to review the spam comments, judge for yourself and manually allow, or delete them.
#3. Anti-spam Bee
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Next up we have Anti-spam Bee. Unlike Akismet, with this WordPress anti-spam plugin, you will not have to go through any extra sign up process, nor will you need to install any third party APIs. This means effective spam management without getting any third party services in the middle. The plugin works automatically to help you fight against spam comments and trackbacks. The plugin will trust commenters with Gravatars. You can also approve commenters whose comments will never get spammed. Besides this, you can also block or allow comments based on which country it is coming from, and so on.
Other notable features of the plugin include the option to ban specific IP addresses from commenting on your website. You can also log spammers using Fail2Ban. Best of all, you can schedule deletion of all spam content.
#4. Titan Anti-Spam
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Titan Anti-Spam & Security is a security plugin for WordPress that includes an anti-spam program, firewall, malware scanner, accessibility checking, security, and thread audits for WordPress site. The plugin protects your site from different security vulnerability your site may encounter. The Anti-spam feature of the plugin goes through every single comment to prevent malicious content from being published to your site. The plugin refers to its global spam database and rechecks the content posted on your site.
The firewall plugin detects and blocks malicious traffic. It also protects the endpoint of your website against brute force attacks, malware, and intruders. You can block a specific IP address by creating advanced rules. The firewall also keeps track of all the events as a log for future reference. The in-built WordPress security scanner checks the file system and plugins for threads, backdoors, SEO spams, code injection, and malicious redirects. The scanner has more than 5000 signatures that are used to scan the site. The plugin is fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
#5. Cerber Security
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Cerber Security is a full-on security anti-spam plugin for your WordPress website which is developed to help protect you from malware and other online threats. Now one of its features happens to be spam protection, which is what we are interested in. The plugin has a dedicated system which filters spam and provides anti-bot protection for your contact forms, registrations, comment section, and all other forms on your websites without using Captcha. It is also compatible with many well-known services such as Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, and so on.
Besides these, the plugin has a host of other features designed to keep away hackers from your website and keep it malware free. One of this features the option to create a Black IP Access List as well as a White IP Access List which can block or allow specific IP address.
#6. Stop Spammers
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Stop Spammers WordPress plugin brings in a good mixture of captcha based and algorithm powered spam protection system for your website. It will keep your site safe from spam comments and login attempts by performing over 20 different spam checks. It can also block spam coming from over 100 different countries.
Now, the spam protection measures taken by the plugin can be seen as very much aggressive. Although this ensures optimal security, some of your genuine readers and website visitors might end up getting blocked. Just so this doesn’t happen, the plugin triggers a captcha screen to give users a second chance. Here, you will have the option to configure the captcha to use OpenCaptcha, Google reCAPTCHA, or SolveMedia Captcha.
#7. BulletProof Security
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Bulletproof Security WordPress anti-spam plugin is a fully featured security plugin for WordPress with integrated functionalities that will help you filter and prevent spam comments. Now it is worth noting that this is a freemium plugin. That is to say, you can use the plugin for free, but there are some advanced features and functionalities which if you wish to access, you will have to purchase the pro version.
Both on the free and paid version, the plugin delivers the spam protection functionalities that come with the well known Anti-Hacker tool, more specifically, JTC Anti-Spam. With the free version you get JTC Anti-Spam lite, but with the pro version, you get the full functionalities of JTC Anti-Spam.
#8. WordPress Zero Spam
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WordPress Zero Spam is a must-have anti-spam plugin if your WordPress site has registration forms. It gets you rid of the hassle to prove that you’re a human every time you are filling out a captcha. It removes the Captcha feature that is used for filtering a real human and a bot. The plugin blocks registration spams, comment spams, and automatically deletes them without any additional configuration. It removes the Captcha feature that is used for filtering a real human and a bot.
It is easy to set up. You need to install the plugin and activate it. The plugin blocks 99.9 % of spam registration and comments. It can easily block a spam IP address to access your site. It provides optional logging features, and you will be able to view the information about your spammer. WordPress Zero Spam’s functionality can be extended using action hooks. The plugin is fully compatible with WordPress caching plugins, and it aids in optimized performance. It also supports popular WordPress plugins like Contact Form 7, Nina Forms, WPForms, and others.
#9. WPBruiser
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Coming up next, we have WPBruiser – an algorithm based WordPress anti-spam plugin. Based on its algorithm it can detect spam comments and prevent them automatically. The plugin also doesn’t force any hard to read captcha images, which sometimes can cause problems for genuine visitors to your site.
It is worth noting that this WordPress comment spam plugin functions a bit more different compared to some of the other plugins we saw on this list. For example, the other plugins first analyzed to see if a particular comment was spam or not, and then they moved it to the spam folder for you to evaluate. But here, the spambots are prevented from leaving the comment in the first place. Besides this, the plugin can also help with preventing brute force attacks on your website. It is also known to integrate with other plugin and services to help you fight spam in login forms, registration forms, and much more.
#10. Blackhome for Bad Bots
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As the name suggests, Blackhole for Bad bots is a virtual trap for malicious bots. Bots are known to misuse server resources and act maliciously on your website. Blackhole for Badbots is a WordPress plugin that stops bad bots and saves your server resources for genuine visitors. The plugin adds a hidden trigger link in the footer of your WordPress site. You need to add a rule to your robots.txt file that forbids bots from following the hidden link. When bots deny the rules, they fall into the trap. You can view the trapped bots on your site.
This WordPress spam protection plugin is easy to set up and is focused & modular. It fully works with the WordPress API and other security plugins. The plugin is regularly updated and is future proof. Whenever a bit falls on your trap, you can enable a setting to send you an email notification. You can easily whitelist sites and blacklist sites that are full of bots. The settings menu also lets you whitelist IP addresses. To add fun, you can add a customized message to be displayed to bad bots. The plugin is highly secure and does not leak your privacy. By default, the plugin does not block any major search engines.
#11. Captcha Bank
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Captcha Bank is a straightforward yet powerful anti-spam plugin for your WordPress website. Using an automated spam protection system is excellent and problem-free. However, it always has that slim chance of getting followed by an advanced spambot. In case, you like the security guaranteed by captcha; this plugin will serve you nicely. The plugin comes packed with a plethora of different captcha validators.
You can use math operation captchas, text-based captcha with customizable text color, background, and styling and much more. So will have lots of options to find and stick with something that is easy for your human users to validate, but at the same time impossible for spam bots to get through. On top of all this, the plugin can also notify you based on various events such as a user-success login, user-fails login, IP address block, unblock, and so on.
#12. Spam Destroyer
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We have gone through a variety of different anti-spam WordPress plugin giving you spam protection in a variety of different ways. Some plugins required you to use API keys, some plugins leveraged their cloud database, other used algorithms, and we also had plugins that used captcha.
Spam Destroyer is a WordPress spam protection plugin which will work to protect your site from spam comments without captcha automatically, and without aid from any third party services. If you don’t want to expose your site’s content outside and still wish to have automated protection without forcing your user’s to go through the trouble on entering the captcha, then this probably the best plugin for the job.
#13. Captcha Plus
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Captcha Plus, as the name suggests, is a captcha based spam protection plugin for your WordPress website. This WordPress anti-spam plugin can help you integrate captchas into your login page, registration forms, while filling out password recovery forms, comments, and much more. The plugin is super easy to use which can adequately protect your website from spammers. There are also different types of captcha validators which you can use to help your human users whereas fend off bots once and for all.
You will get access to math-based captchas, character recognition, and much more. On top of that, you get enhanced captcha protection with letters, numbers, and images. You can also hide captcha for registered users and whitelisted IP addresses to provide them a more accessible interface.
#14. Anti-Spam Pro
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Next up is Anti-Spam Pro, a WordPress spam comments blocker which functions without using user troubling captchas or even admin worrisome moderation queues. All you have to do is install the plugin, and it gets to work, protecting your website from all possible spam related issues.
The plugin has a built-in system which helps it to detect if the comments coming in are bot-generated for manually submitted. If it is a bot, then it will get immediately blocked. Now, if the comment is being manually registered, then the plugin will run many more tests to see if it is spam or not. Overall all, you will get a potent system which is known to automatically block 100% of all spam messages to your site without causing any inconvenience to you or your users.
Any Other Anti-Spam WordPress Plugins?
So these were our picks for the best WP anti-spam plugins. All these plugins are more than capable of filtering out any spam that you receive on your website.
Our winner: CleanTalk Antispam
In addition to this you can also try to use a good security plugin along with a good Hosting company which filters out the spam traffic automatically.
We hope you found this list to be helpful, and do let us know if you decided to use one of the plugins we mentioned here. Leave a comment on how it has helped you fighting the war against spammers.
Also, if you know of some other powerful and efficient anti-spam plugins, you would like to share with us, then feel free to comment below. Your message will be shared and appreciated.
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