CleanTalk Anti-Spam – Complete Spam Protection vs Kitgenix CAPTCHA for Cloudflare Turnstile

The Anti-Spam plugin is trusted by over 200,000 websites and powered by a global spam detection network. CleanTalk “eats” spam before it reaches your website. By using cloud-based, API-driven analysis and shared spam intelligence, it provides more advanced protection than local, standalone plugins that don’t use a cloud API — helping catch spam they may miss. 🛡️ Anti-Spam Protection for your entire WordPress site Contact forms — block spam submitted through Contact Form 7, WPForms, Elementor Forms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms, Formidable Forms, and many others. WordPress comments — automatically detect and block spam comments. WooCommerce — stop fake orders, spam registrations, and spam reviews. User registrations — prevent spam accounts and automated registrations. Subscriptions and bookings — filter unwanted and automated submissions. ✨ More Than Just Anti-Spam ✉️ Real-Time Email validation — detects fake, disposable, and suspicious email addresses. 📋 Anti-Spam Log — shows every checked request, so you can see what was accepted or blocked and review possible false positives. 🔒 Contact Data Protection — protects published email addresses and phone numbers from being harvested by bots. 👤 Real Person Badge! — identifies and highlights real people in WordPress comments and can automatically approve legitimate, non-spam comments. 🛡️ Spam FireWall — block known spam bots before they reach your forms. 🧩 No CAPTCHA. No Puzzles. Less Friction. CleanTalk analyzes submissions automatically in the background. Visitors don’t need to solve CAPTCHA challenges, select images, or complete additional verification steps. ⚡Quick Setup Install the plugin, connect it to the CleanTalk Anti-Spam service, and your WordPress site is protected. ⭐ Public reviews Anti-Spam, and the Catch It’s more than just a tool to combat spam; it’s an integral component that enhances the overall quality and performance of your website. techbusinessnews.com.au Improve Your Security WordPress Spam Protection With CleanTalk Anti-Spam The Hacker News. Free trial then $12 per year CleanTalk is an anti-spam plugin which works with the premium Cloud Anti-Spam service cleantalk.org. This plugin as a service https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#6-software-as-a-service-is-permitted 🗂️ Managing Multiple Websites? CleanTalk also works well for agencies, developers, and website managers. Protect and manage multiple client websites from one CleanTalk account with unlimited checks for spam. 💬 AntiSpam protection and moderation for comments Native spam protection for WordPress, JetPack comments and any other comment plugins. The plugin moves spam comments to SPAM folder or you can set the option to ban spam comments silently. You can also enable the option in the plugin settings to auto-delete comments from SPAM folder. CleanTalk can also automatically approve legitimate, non-spam comments, helping you spend less time moderating your blog. 📩 Contact Form 7 Antispam Plugin extends spam protection for Contact Form 7 (CF7). It can be used with any other third-party spam filters. How to protect your Contact Form 7 using CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin Contact Form by WPForms Antispam Plugin extends Contact Form by WPForms to provide spam protection. It filters spam submissions for each type of forms – simple contact form, marketing form, request a quote and etc. Antispam for WooCommerce & fake orders filter Anti-spam by CleanTalk filters spam registrations, spam reviews, and fake orders for WooCommerce (any eCommerce plugin as well). The plugin is fully compatible with WooCommerce 2.1+ and online stores. Many other great contact, signups and all kind of forms that supported by Anti-Spam plugin by CleanTalk Asgaros Forum Avada Forms AWeber form builder Awesome Support – WordPress HelpDesk & Support Plugin Back In Stock Notifier for WooCommerce | WooCommerce Waitlist Pro bbPress by John James Jacoby Brave Popup Builder – Popup, Optins, Lead Generation, Survey & Interactive Content Brevo – Email, SMS, Web Push, Chat, and more by Brevo Calculated Fields Form Chatway Live Chat – AI Chatbot, Customer Support, FAQ & Helpdesk Customer Service & Chat Buttons Contact Form Clean and Simple Contact Form by BestWebSoft – Advanced WP Contact Form Builder for WordPress Contact Form Plugin by Fluent Forms Ninja forms Contact Form by Supsystic Contact Form Email Constant Contact Forms Comments – wpDiscuz By AdvancedCoding Customer Reviews for WooCommerce Floating Chat Widget: Contact Chat Icons, Telegram Chat, Line Messenger, WeChat, Email, SMS, Call Button – Chaty Forminator Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form & Custom Form Builder Easy Digital Downloads – eCommerce Payments and Subscriptions made easy eForm – WordPress Form Builder Elementor – Build, Design & Manage Forms From One Place Elfsight Blocks for Elementor — 80+ Widgets Events Manager – Calendar, Bookings, Tickets, and more! By Marcus (aka @msykes) Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder with AI FiboSearch – Ajax Search for WooCommerce Flamingo Fluentbooking.com Formidable Forms – WordPress Form Builder for Contact Forms, Calculators, Quizzes & More Form Maker by 10Web – Mobile-Friendly Drag & Drop Contact Form Builder GeoDirectory – WP Business Directory Plugin and Classified Listings Directory GiveWP – Donation Plugin and Fundraising Platform gravityforms.com – Powerful data capture fueled by Gravity Forms Gwolle Guestbook Happyforms – Form Builder for WordPress: Drag & Drop Contact Forms, Surveys, Payments & Multipurpose Forms HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin HubSpot All-In-One Marketing – Forms, Popups, Live Chat Hustle – Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Optins, Popups JetFormBuilder — Dynamic Blocks Form Builder Jetpack – WP Security, Backup, Speed, & Growth Jotform – Online Forms — Customizable Payment, Contact, Quiz, Survey Form Builder Kadence Blocks — Page Builder Toolkit for Gutenberg Editor Kali Forms (Free & Pro) — Contact Form & Drag-and-Drop Builder Klaviyo Kulahub Landing Page Builder – Coming Soon page, Maintenance Mode, Lead Page, WordPress Landing Pages Leaky Paywall LearnPress – WordPress LMS Plugin for Create and Sell Online Courses Lead Form Builder & Contact Form By ThemeHunk Login & Register Customizer – Popup | Slider | Inline | WooCommerce MailChimp Forms by MailMunch MailOptin – Popup, Optin Forms & Email Newsletters for Mailchimp, HubSpot, AWeber Etc. My Sticky Elements – All-in-one Sticky Floating Contact Form, Call, Click to Chat, and 50+ Social Icon Tabs MetForm – Contact Form, Survey, Quiz, & Custom Form Builder for Elementor Newsletter – Send awesome emails from WordPress by Stefano Lissa Newsletters by Tribulant Software Newsletters – MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress NEX-Forms – Ultimate Forms Plugin for WordPress by Basix Nextend Social Login and Register by Nextendweb Ninja forms by Kevin Stover Piotnet by piotnet.com Product Enquiry for WooCommerce (Now with AI Assistant) By WisdmLabs Quform by quform.com QuickCal by quickcal.co RegistrationMagic – Custom Registration Forms, User Registration, Payment, and User Login By Metagauss Simple Registration for WooCommerce By Astoundify Smart Forms – when you need more than just a contact form By EDGARROJAS Strong Testimonials By WP Chill SureForms – Drag & Drop Contact Form & Form Builder, Payment Form, Survey, Quiz & Calculator By Brainstorm Force User Registration & Membership – Free & Paid Memberships, Subscriptions, Content Restriction, User Profile, Custom User Registration & Login Builder By wpeverest Visual Form Builder By Matthew Muro WP Booking System – Booking Calendar By Roland Murg User Frontend: AI Powered Frontend Posting, User Directory, Profile, Membership & User Registration By weDevs WS Form LITE – Drag & Drop Contact Form Builder By Mark Westguard Wufoo Shortcode By wronganswersonly WP User Frontend, UserPro WordPress Landing Pages ZeroBounce Email Verification & Validation By zerobounce Zoho Forms – Drag & Drop Form Builder for Websites – Contact Forms, Payment Forms, Order Forms & More By Zoho Forms Protection for the forms above works as a built-in feature of Anti-Spam by CleanTalk without requiring any additional actions from the user. Check existing users and comments for spam. Bulk spam comments removal. Spam comment Cleaner With the help of anti-spam by CleanTalk you can inspect through existing users, comments to find and quickly delete spam at once. To use this function, go to WP Console -> Comments -> Find spam comments/users. Private black lists for anti-spam service Automatically block comments and registrations from your private black IP/email address list. Hide «Website» field for comments This option hides the «Website» field from standard WordPress comments forms. After that spammers won’t be able to send spam links using «Website» field in the bottom of the comments form. Spam FireWall Spam FireWall allows blocking the most active spam bots before they get access to your website. It prevents spam bots from loading website pages so your web server doesn’t have to perform all scripts on these pages. Also it prevents scanning of pages of the website by spam bots. Therefore Spam FireWall significantly reduces the load on your web server. Spam FireWall also makes CleanTalk the two-step protection from spam bots. Spam FireWall is the first step and it blocks the most active spam bots. CleanTalk Anti-Spam is the second step and checks all other requests on the website in the moment of submitting comments/registers etc. How does it work? The visitor enters to your web site. HTTP request data are being checked in the nearly 5.8 million of the identified spam bot IPs. If it is an active spam bot, the bot gets a blank page, if it is a visitor then he receives a normal page. This process is completely transparent for the visitors. CleanTalk SpamFireWall is similar to Cloudflare’s DDoS protection and Bot Management solutions. However, it runs locally on your server, uses your existing hosting and DNS settings, and does not route all your HTTP/HTTPS traffic through Cloudflare’s cloud. Spam FireWall: Anti-Flood & Anti-Crawler Spam FireWall: Anti-Flood and Anti-Crawler options are intended for blocking unwanted bots, content parsing, shop goods prices parsing or aggressive website scanning bots. Learn more https://cleantalk.org/help/anti-flood-and-anti-crawler By default, well-known good bots — including AI crawlers such as GPTBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), Google-Extended (Gemini), and Copilot — are allowed. You can choose which of these bots to block individually in your private lists. Blocking a bot will stop the corresponding AI service from accessing your content. How to protect sites from spam bots without CAPTCHA? CleanTalk Anti-Spam protects websites from spam bots without using traditional CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or other visitor challenges. Instead of showing CAPTCHA puzzles, the service uses behavioral analysis, invisible JavaScript tests, and a global spam database to detect spam automatically in the background. This CAPTCHA-free anti-spam protection works for contact forms, comments, registrations, and WooCommerce checkouts without creating friction for real visitors. By replacing CAPTCHA with automated spam detection, CleanTalk helps improve usability, accessibility, and conversion rates while still blocking spam effectively. Sometimes CAPTCHA reminds us of the doodles of a two year old child. For users with vision problems CAPTCHA is an insurmountable obstacle. Users hate captcha. Captcha for users means “hate”. Unreadable CAPTCHA stops about 80% of site visitors. After 2 failed attempts to decipher CAPTCHA 95% of visitors reject further attempts. At the sight of CAPTCHA and after input errors, many visitors leave the resource. Thus, CAPTCHA helps to protect the resource spam both from bots and visitors. CAPTCHA is not a panacea from spam. Doubts concerning the Need for CAPTCHA? “Ultimately, CAPTCHAs are useless for spam because they’re designed to tell you if someone is ‘human’ or not, but not whether something is spam or not.” Matt Mullenweg Real-time email validation. Is email real or Not. It is very important to be sure that the user used his real email address. Spambots very often use fake email addresses, i.e. which addresses do not exist. CleanTalk will check email addresses for existence in real time. Non-existing email addresses also entail several other problems for website owners. Improve your email list with email validation without fake emails. Blocking disposable & temporary emails Block fake and suspicious users with disposable & temporary emails to improve email delivery. So, it also prevents malicious activity, spam bots, and internet trolls. Stops Spam in Search Form Spam bots can use your search form to make a GET request with spam text. CleanTalk Anti-Spam has the option to protect your website search form from spam bots. Each time, the search generates a new page and if there are many requests, this can create additional load. So, under some conditions, spam searches can be indexed, which affects SEO, You will always know what users were looking for on your site. Disable comments This option disables comments on your site. You can choose one or several options: Disable comments for posts Disable comments for pages Disable comments for media When using Disables comments, existing comments will not be deleted and will remain on the pages. Email, Phones Address Encoder CleanTalk Anti-Spam offers a feature called “Encode contact data” that is designed to encode all email addresses on the website pages. Encoding email, phontes addresses increases the level of protection of contact data from being abused, parsed, getting spammed and used in spam mailing lists by bots and online criminals. To reveal the encoded email address simply click on it and it will be decoded instantly. Honeypot field The option helps to block bots. The honeypot field option adds a hidden field to the form. When spambots come to a website form, they can fill out each input field. Enable this option to make the protection stronger on these forms. Learn more about supported forms here.

Kitgenix CAPTCHA for Cloudflare Turnstile adds Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA and anti-spam protection to WordPress, WooCommerce and a wide range of form, membership, community and ecommerce plugins. Challenges are not treated as a client-side decoration: submitted Turnstile tokens are verified server-side with Cloudflare before a protected action is accepted. The plugin is designed for site owners who want to reduce automated login attempts, fake registrations, comment spam, bot-driven checkout abuse and unwanted form submissions while using Cloudflare’s privacy-oriented Turnstile challenge rather than a traditional image CAPTCHA. Configuration, integration controls, diagnostics and local verification metrics are managed inside WordPress. The only service required for CAPTCHA functionality is Cloudflare Turnstile itself; no Kitgenix verification proxy is used. Learn more about Kitgenix WordPress plugins at Kitgenix. Supported WordPress and Plugin Integrations The codebase contains dedicated integrations for: WordPress login. WordPress registration. Lost-password and password-reset flows. WordPress comments. Custom login forms produced with wp_login_form(). WooCommerce login, registration, lost password, checkout and related account flows supported by the integration. Easy Digital Downloads. Elementor forms. Contact Form 7. WPForms. Gravity Forms. Fluent Forms. Formidable Forms. Forminator. Ninja Forms. Jetpack Forms. JetFormBuilder. Kadence Forms. MailPoet. bbPress. BuddyPress. wpDiscuz. Ultimate Member. MemberPress. Paid Memberships Pro. Kitgenix Plugin Score integration points included in the codebase. Each integration is loaded conditionally and can use integration-specific display/validation behaviour rather than forcing one generic hook onto every form system. Server-Side Turnstile Verification The browser obtains a Turnstile response token from Cloudflare’s official widget. When a protected form is submitted, the plugin sends that token to Cloudflare’s official Siteverify endpoint using the WordPress HTTP API. The protected action is allowed only when the verification result satisfies the integration’s validation flow. This server-side step is important because simply placing a widget in the browser is not sufficient protection on its own. The plugin tracks the most recent verification response, error codes and latency for diagnostics and can record aggregate verification metrics locally. Setup Verification for Login-Sensitive Forms Login, registration and other account-sensitive protections can be gated behind a setup-verification state. The administrator can verify the configured Site Key and Secret Key before those protections are treated as ready. This reduces the risk of enabling a broken key pair on a login screen and accidentally locking legitimate administrators or customers out of the site. Site and secret keys can be supplied from plugin settings or from supported environment variables/constants, allowing security-conscious deployments to keep the secret outside the normal WordPress options table. Replay Protection Turnstile tokens are intended to be short lived and single use. The plugin includes optional replay protection that hashes accepted tokens and temporarily remembers that hash. A token that is submitted again during the replay window can be rejected rather than being accepted repeatedly. The replay window is filterable for developers. Stored replay information is a hash/temporary value, not the raw challenge token itself. Honeypot and Layered Anti-Spam Controls An optional honeypot can be rendered alongside Turnstile. This adds a second low-friction signal for simple bots that fill fields a normal visitor never sees. The plugin also supports whitelisting logic so trusted requests can bypass the challenge where appropriate. Whitelist decisions can take account of configured rules and developer filters rather than hard-coding one bypass mechanism for every site. Trusted Proxy and Client IP Handling Sites may sit behind Cloudflare, another reverse proxy or a load balancer. The client-IP component can be configured to trust proxy headers only when the request path matches the trusted-proxy configuration. This avoids blindly believing spoofable forwarding headers from arbitrary visitors. Administrators can also choose whether the resolved visitor IP is included in the Siteverify request to Cloudflare. A developer filter is available to change that behaviour when required by a site’s privacy or infrastructure policy. Widget Appearance and Placement The plugin supports central defaults plus integration-level overrides for Turnstile appearance. Depending on the supported integration, administrators can control options such as theme, size, appearance and language, and can choose placement behaviour where the integration exposes more than one suitable hook. A manual shortcode is also registered: [kitgenix_turnstile] The shortcode is useful when the site owner needs to render the widget in a supported custom workflow. Rendering a widget alone does not automatically secure arbitrary custom PHP processing; custom form handlers must still validate the submitted token server-side. Diagnostics, Metrics and Site Health The plugin includes diagnostics for configuration and verification health, local counters for passed/failed checks, latency information, recent verification events and integration-level metrics. Site Health integration can surface configuration or connectivity issues to administrators. Developer Mode adds additional troubleshooting detail without changing the fundamental requirement that live submissions be verified correctly when protection is active. Settings Portability Settings can be exported and imported for controlled migration between WordPress installations. The transfer system is designed for plugin configuration rather than for exporting visitor submissions or unrelated site data. Performance and Script Loading The public Cloudflare Turnstile script is loaded only for pages/contexts where the plugin determines that a Turnstile widget may be needed. The loader includes duplicate-script detection so multiple integrations do not intentionally enqueue several copies of the same Turnstile API script. Public assets are kept separate from the admin interface, and admin-only diagnostics/settings code does not need to run as part of every anonymous form request. Privacy and Data Flow Turnstile is an external service provided by Cloudflare, so challenge rendering and server-side verification necessarily communicate with Cloudflare. The plugin itself stores configuration and limited diagnostic/aggregate verification data locally. It does not require a Kitgenix account and does not send form contents to Kitgenix for verification. The exact Cloudflare data flow, WordPress.org Hub request and Google Fonts admin request are documented in the External Services section below. Common Uses Protect a WordPress login page from automated credential attacks. Reduce spam registrations on WordPress or WooCommerce. Add anti-bot verification to WooCommerce checkout and account forms. Protect Elementor and popular WordPress form plugins with one central Turnstile configuration. Add a challenge to membership, forum and community registration/login flows. Replace more intrusive CAPTCHA experiences with Cloudflare Turnstile while keeping server-side validation. Developer Notes Shortcode [kitgenix_turnstile] Main settings option kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_settings Useful filters Script and display: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_script_url kitgenix_turnstile_freshness_ms kitgenix_turnstile_inline_style Verification: kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_url kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_timeout kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_sslverify kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_http_args kitgenix_turnstile_send_remoteip kitgenix_turnstile_remote_ip kitgenix_turnstile_token_from_request kitgenix_turnstile_error_codes kitgenix_turnstile_error_message kitgenix_turnstile_replay_message kitgenix_turnstile_skip_wp_login_validation Replay protection: kitgenix_turnstile_replay_ttl Whitelisting and proxy handling: kitgenix_turnstile_is_whitelisted kitgenix_turnstile_trust_headers kitgenix_turnstile_trusted_proxies Operational alerts: kitgenix_turnstile_alert_window_seconds kitgenix_turnstile_alert_failure_spike_min_failures kitgenix_turnstile_alert_failure_spike_failure_rate kitgenix_turnstile_alert_http_error_min_failures Developer logging action: kitgenix_turnstile_dev_log The plugin also exposes context-specific error-message filtering through kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_{context}_turnstile_error_message. Privacy and Local Data The plugin stores its configuration in the WordPress database. Depending on enabled features it also stores local operational data such as setup-verification state, aggregate integration metrics, the recent event log and replay-protection transients. The recent event log is limited to 50 events and contains operational fields such as time, integration, success/failure, error codes and Siteverify latency. It does not store raw form submissions, the raw Turnstile response token, the visitor’s raw IP address or the request URL in that log. Turnstile itself is an external Cloudflare service and receives data when a widget is loaded and when the server validates a token. See External Services below. External Services This plugin relies on third-party services for specific functionality. These connections are documented here so site owners can make an informed decision before enabling and using the plugin. Cloudflare Turnstile Cloudflare Turnstile is the CAPTCHA / bot-verification service that provides the plugin’s core protection. A Cloudflare account and Turnstile Site Key / Secret Key are required. When a protected widget is rendered, the visitor’s browser loads Cloudflare Turnstile from: https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/api.js The browser communicates with Cloudflare as part of the Turnstile challenge. As with normal web requests, Cloudflare can receive network/request information such as the visitor’s IP address and browser/request metadata, and Turnstile evaluates browser signals to generate a verification token. When a protected form is submitted, the WordPress server sends a POST request to: https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify By default, that request contains: The configured Turnstile Secret Key The Turnstile response token The visitor IP address as Cloudflare’s optional remoteip parameter when an address is available The remoteip value can be disabled by developers with the kitgenix_turnstile_send_remoteip filter. Cloudflare documentation: https://developers.cloudflare.com/turnstile/ Cloudflare Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/ Cloudflare Privacy Policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ WordPress.org Plugin API The shared Kitgenix Hub in wp-admin uses WordPress core’s plugins_api() functionality to request public WordPress.org plugin-directory information such as plugin details, active-install counts, ratings and media. These requests occur on Kitgenix administration screens. The plugin supplies WordPress.org plugin slugs to WordPress core; the outbound request itself is handled by WordPress and can include normal HTTP request metadata generated by WordPress. Responses are cached locally with WordPress transients to reduce repeat requests. WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/ WordPress.org Privacy Policy: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/ Google Fonts The Kitgenix administration stylesheet imports the Inter and Manrope font families from Google Fonts. This occurs on Kitgenix plugin administration screens, not as part of the Turnstile verification request itself. Loading those font resources causes the administrator’s browser to connect to Google-hosted domains such as fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com, which can receive normal request information such as IP address and browser headers. Google Fonts: https://fonts.google.com/ Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Google Terms: https://policies.google.com/terms Trademark Notice Cloudflare and Cloudflare Turnstile are trademarks or services of Cloudflare, Inc. This plugin is independently developed by Kitgenix and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cloudflare, Inc. WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks belong to their respective owners. References are descriptive and identify supported integrations. Support Development Kitgenix CAPTCHA for Cloudflare Turnstile is free software. If the plugin is useful to you, you can support continued maintenance and development through the Donate link shown on the WordPress.org plugin page. More WordPress plugins and development resources are available from Kitgenix.