Comment spam is one of the most irritating things for growing websites. If you ignore it, your blog will become full of spambots leaving comments or trackbacks on your blog posts.
Luckily, with WordPress, there are dozens of anti-spam plugins to help you eliminate spam on your site.
Here are the best anti-spam plugins you can use on your WordPress site.
1. Akismet
Akismet is currently regarded as a top anti-spam plug-in for WordPress, and with good reason. That’s because it offers high level of protection to help protect your WordPress site from spam.
The plugin is developed by Automattic, the team behind WordPress and it comes pre-installed with every WordPress installation.
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 a cloud-based service and requires you to enter an API key in order for it to work.
2. Antispam bee
If you are looking for an alternative to Akismet, I recommend checking out Antispam bee.
Antispam Bee is one of the most popular anti-spam plugin on the WordPress plugin repository for blocking spam comments and trackbacks effectively. Unlike Akismet, it doesn’t require you to setup an API key for it to work. Just install and activate it, and it just works.
You can block or allow commenters from certain countries as well as delete existing spam comments after x number of days. The plugin is free of charge and ad-free.
3. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk
If you are really struggling with controlling spam on your website, you should check out CleanTalk.
Like Akismet, CleanTalk is a cloud-based plugin that blocks spam comments, spam bot signups and trackbacks.
The plugin is an all-in-one anti spam solution for WordPress and integrates with many popular WordPress plugins such as bbPress, BuddyPress, and Contact Form 7.
4. Anti-spam by webvitaly
Anti-spam is an excellent light-weight plugin which uses invisible captchas to block all automated spambots in comments. The pro version also protect your site from manually submitted spam.
The best thing about this plugin is that it works out-of-the-box. You need not set up anything for this plugin.
5. WPBruiser
Formerly known as GoodBye Captcha, WPBruiser fights Brute Force attacks and eliminates spam-bots on comments, signup pages as well as login and password reset pages.
It does not require end-users to fill out a captcha box or other input field for a better user experience.
Have you been using any plugin that we didn’t include in the list above? Share your favorites in the comments below.