Akismet Anti-Spam

by Automattic
Tested with WP 7.1.3 Free, GPLv2

Our take

Akismet is the quiet workhorse of spam protection: it checks every comment and many contact form submissions against a huge shared spam database and usually gets it right. It is free for personal blogs, but business and commercial sites are expected to buy a plan, and every comment is sent to Automattic's servers for checking.

Good

  • Catches most comment spam with no setup
  • Works with Contact Form 7 and other popular form plugins
  • Keeps a history of every spam decision

Watch out

  • Commercial sites need a paid plan
  • Comments are sent to an outside service, so mention it in your privacy policy

Akismet filters spam out of your comments and contact forms before it reaches you. Each new comment is checked against data gathered from millions of sites, and anything that looks like spam goes straight to the spam folder instead of the moderation queue.

How Akismet works

After activating the plugin you connect it with an Akismet API key. From then on, each comment carries a history showing whether Akismet caught it or cleared it, and whether a moderator changed that decision. Links inside comments are shown in full, so hidden or misleading URLs are easy to spot. The worst spam can be discarded automatically to save database space.

Main features

  • Automatic spam checks for all comments
  • Support for popular contact form plugins
  • Status history for every comment
  • Count of approved comments per user
  • Automatic discard of the most obvious spam