Protect Your WordPress Blog From Spam With These Awesome Plugins

Nasty and relentless – spam is what nightmares are made of, at least for a blogger. Many of them get into blogging with full of enthusiasm, but completely unprepared for the sheer volume of spam they end up receiving. A huge percentage of comments and registrations in a blog may turn out to be spam- if you are not taking any precaution. And you know what- the agony of discovering spams in your website is not even the biggest concern!

What else can be worse than that?

We know many of you are perplexed at my last statement. But there is a bigger catch for you. Your website database can be overtaken by spam, leading to your permanent ban from search engine index. That means, countless hours of efforts and dedication- all vanished just because of a spam injection attack. One effective way of dealing with this is to prepare your website admin (backend) to help you fight against spam. Fortunately, in this sacred battle against the devil that is spam, we have a powerful group of ally on our side. We know them by the name of anti-spam plugins!

There is no shortage of powerful and efficient anti-spam plugins on the market that can help you stop and/or manage spam influx on your website. In this article, we’re gonna take a look at five anti-spam plugins that we believe to be the best. The solutions listed here are not only great at their job, they also differ from one another with cool and unique features. So, read on to find out which anti-spam plugin will best suit your needs:

Akismet

This is arguably the most popular anti spam plugin with about 5 million active installs and 4.8 stars ratings. It is developed by Automattic, the same company that owns WordPress. Hence, it does not surprise anyone when it comes by default with every WordPress installation. Akismet employs a web service powered by cloud servers which evaluate comments for spam. All comments posted on your site are automatically sent to Akismet’s servers. If the highly specialized algorithm cannot detect anything wrong with a comment, it gets published straight away. The comments that are determined to be spam get moved into the Spam queue. If Akismet cannot decide the nature of a particular comment, it’s stored in the Moderation queue and you get to decide their fate later.

If you’re planning to use the plugin for personal use, then you’re in luck as Akismet is free for personal and non-commercial use with up to 50,000 spam checks monthly. For commercial uses, however, you have to pay a dirt cheap price – only $5/month. It also seamlessly integrates with the Jetpack and Contact Form 7 plugin.

WP SpamShield

WP SpamShield is considered to be one of the very best anti-spam plugins out there with 100K active installs and 4.8 stars rating in WordPress.org. This entirely free plugin will protect your site against both bots and human spammers. The JavaScript and advanced algorithmic layer take care of the bots while their supremely efficient algorithm-based level of protection tackle both bots and human spammers, Comments, registration/ sign up forms, trackbacks, and pingbacks – it can track spam pretty much anywhere. It also has the ability to track and identify the IP address of spammers and put them on a blacklist to get rid of them for good. Proxy server users are automatically blocked by the plugin as well.

Many among us are not fans of adding captcha to our websites- mainly because it is somewhat inconvenient. Given this situation, WP SpamShield may just be the perfect solution for you.

The free version available in WordPress.org. You can try it if you think it will be an effective solution against spam.

Anti-Spam by CleanTalk

Anti-Spam by CleanTalk is a premium cloud-based anti-spam solution. According to WordPress.org, it has 60K active installs and 4.9 stars rating. This plugin has nothing to do with captcha and works in a similar fashion to Akismet. Incoming comments go through several validation checks in CleanTalk’s servers before they are published on the site. Comments flagged as spams are sent to the spam queue. This plugin also allows users to create their own blacklists by email, IP, country, etc. Anti-Spam can check comments, registrations, orders, bookings, subscriptions as well as existing comments. There’s also a free mobile app available to manage the anti-spam filters on your site.

You can use Anti-Spam for free for a free trial period of 14 days. After the trial period runs out, you have to pay $8/year for a single website.

WangGuard

WangGuard is another cloud based anti-spam plugin. This plugin is unique in that it doesn’t cover comment and form spams. WangGuard’s spam protection is focused solely on registration spam and spam users. It is compatible with standard WordPress, WordPress Multisite, BuddyPress, and bbPress registrations. The plugin does an excellent job of keeping your database clean of unwanted users and spammers. It also allows you to block users emails by domains. MailPoet Connector, Blacklisted Words are some of the add-ons available for WangGuard.

You can download the free version of WangGuard from WordPress.org page. But take note that it’s free only up to 5000 daily spam checks. Beyond this limit, you’ll have to buy the premium version which has varying degrees of pricing.

Anti-Spam Bee

Anti-Spam Bee has over a million active installs to boast of and it’s not hard to see the reason behind its popularity. It’s a clean and simple anti-spam solution. While the plugin is not as feature-heavy as some of its counterparts, still serve its purpose perfectly. This plugin employs a number of techniques such as matching the incoming comments against a public spam database, using regular expressions, validating the IP address of commenters, etc. to keep your site free from spam. Anti-Spam Bee may hold special appeal for stat / data enthusiasts as it provides users with meticulous statistical data that shows them where they stand in their fight against spam. It also complies with European data privacy standards.

Anti-Spam Bee is completely free for both personal and commercial use. The fact that you don’t have to worry about any annoying ads with this plugin either only makes it even cooler.

Final Words

As you can see, the current market offers anti-spam plugins that have a varying degree of features, price, and user orientation. There is no absolute best here since it depends on your budget, nature of traffic and feature preference. Feel free to experiment with the plugins that we have listed here before you settle for one. If we failed to include any of your favorite anti-spam plugins, let us know!