HTML Forms & Contact Form for WordPress vs CleanTalk Anti-Spam. Spam Firewall & Bot protection

Trusted by over 200,000 websites and rated among the top anti-spam solutions for WordPress in 2026. No CAPTCHAs, no puzzles, and no visitor friction — just automatic spam blocking for forms, comments, registrations, subscriptions, and fake orders. Powered by a global spam detection network that includes over 1,078,000 websites and helps stop spam before it reaches your website. Install it in less than 30 seconds and start protecting your site immediately. Superpowers Stops spam comments. Stops spam registrations and logins. Stops spam contact emails. Stops fake orders eCommerce sites and online stores. Antispam for bookings. Antispam subscriptions. Stops spam surveys, polls. Stops spam in WooCommerce. Antispam for Search Form. Real-time email validation. Check if an email is real or fake. Checks and removes the existing spam comments and spam users. Blocking disposable & temporary emails. Block messages by languages, countries, networks and stop words. Public reviews 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. Compare reCAPTCHA & Akismet VS CleanTalk CleanTalk vs Google reRECAPTCHA CleanTalk vs Akismet 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 AntiSpam protection 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. 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 comments for spam. Bulk spam comments removal. Spam comment Cleaner With the help of anti-spam by CleanTalk you can inspect through existing comments to find and quickly delete spam comments at once. To use this function, go to WP Console -> Comments -> Find spam comments. Check existing users for spam. Bulk spam accounts removal. Spam users cleaner With the help of anti-spam by CleanTalk you can inspect through existing accounts to find and quickly delete spam users at once. For use this function, go to WP Console -> Users -> Check for spam. Also, you can export a list of spam users to the CSV. 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. Low false/positive rate This plugin uses multiple anti-spam tests to filter spam bots having as low false/positive rate as possible. 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. All the CleanTalk Spam FireWall activity is being logged in the process of filtering. 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. You can never contact them by email, the client will never receive any notifications from you (account activation letter, password recovery, email distribution, notifications, etc.), if you use email marketing for your clients, then a large number of nonexistent emails in the mailing list may result in your IP address being added to various blacklists of email servers. 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, Anti-Spam protection for website search forms repels spam bots. If your search form gets data too often the CleanTalk Anti-Spam plugin will add a pause and increase it with each new attempt to send data. It saves your web server processor time. Spam protection allows you to not forbid indexation for the crawler bots if you really need it but simultaneously you will get protection from spam bots. 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.

Narrative Forms is the HTML form plugin for WordPress. Instead of dragging boxes around a builder, you write plain semantic HTML, or paste it straight from an AI like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and Narrative Forms turns it into a real form with fast AJAX form submissions and stored, exportable data. Any input with a name attribute is saved. That is the whole idea: forms are just HTML, so there is no field type registry, nothing proprietary to lock you in, and no ceiling on what your form can be. If you want a clean, fast, developer friendly HTML form plugin, a simple contact form, or a custom form that a heavy form builder cannot easily produce, this is it. It stays lightweight, loads its assets only on pages that contain a form, and is built to scale to millions of submissions. Why an HTML form plugin beats a drag and drop builder Most WordPress form plugins lock you into a drag and drop form builder and a fixed list of field types. If the builder does not offer a field, you cannot have it. Narrative Forms is an HTML form plugin with no field registry: a field is simply an HTML element with a name. Need a multi step layout, an unusual input, a custom widget, or markup your designer already wrote? Paste it in and it works. You keep full control of the markup, the classes, and the look, so your contact form or custom form renders exactly the way you built it. Drag and drop made sense years ago. Today you describe what you want or paste what you already have. No builder, no bloat, and no fighting a clunky UI to recreate a form you can already picture. That is why people who outgrow a drag and drop form builder move to a real HTML form plugin. Build forms with AI: paste from ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini Because forms are just HTML, any large language model can build one for you. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or your favourite AI for a contact form with a name, email, a dropdown, and a file upload, copy the HTML it returns, and paste it into Narrative Forms. There is no proprietary field format to satisfy, so whatever the AI generates simply works as an HTML form. That makes Narrative Forms an AI friendly form plugin: you bring your own model, paste the markup, and ship the form. The free plugin is completely model agnostic, so you are never tied to one AI. Prefer it built in? AI form generation that writes the HTML for you inside WordPress is on the Narrative Forms Pro roadmap. For now, the free HTML form plugin already works with any AI you paste in. Everything in the free HTML forms plugin The free HTML forms plugin is a complete forms solution, not a teaser. Here is what every install includes: Fast AJAX form submissions. Forms submit without a page reload, and there is a graceful fallback when JavaScript is turned off, so the form never breaks for a visitor. AJAX form submissions also keep your pages cache friendly, because the page can stay static while the form posts in the background. A built in HTML editor. One click field buttons generate the markup for common fields, and a live preview shows the form as you type. Write the HTML by hand, scaffold it quickly with the buttons, or paste a form an AI wrote for you. The editor never hides your markup behind a visual builder, so what you see is what ships. Email notifications. Send a clean, readable email for every form submission, to yourself or any address, in plain text or HTML. Each field is formatted tidily, and you can route different forms to different inboxes with separate email actions. Webhook actions. Send form data to any URL when the form is submitted. Connect your forms to Zapier, Make, a CRM, or your own endpoint with a webhook, no code required, and add more than one webhook action per form so one submission can fan out to several services. File upload form fields. Accept a file upload field with a maximum file size and a maximum number of files per field. Uploaded files are stored safely in the WordPress media folder and recorded with the submission, so building a file upload form is one paste of HTML away. Stored form submissions and CSV export. Optionally keep every submission in a fast, indexed database table that you browse in the admin. Run a CSV export of your form submissions at any time; the export streams in batches, so it works even with very large numbers of submissions and never times out. Layered spam protection. Stop bots with a honeypot, a time trap that rejects instant submissions, a same origin referrer check, a limit on the number of links in a message, and an optional rate limit per IP. You can also switch on Cloudflare Turnstile for a privacy respecting CAPTCHA. This spam protection adds no third party tracking to your site. Custom messages and redirects. Set your own success and error messages, redirect to any URL after a successful submit, and use template tags so the form behaves exactly how you want. Clean, optional styling. A calm, minimal stylesheet ships with the plugin and is on by default, and you can switch it off in one click if your theme or custom CSS should own the look. Semantic wrapper classes keep your theme in charge of how your HTML form appears. Every output is escaped and every input is sanitised, following WordPress coding and security standards, so the plugin stays review safe and secure. Contact forms, custom forms, and every form in between Narrative Forms is a general purpose form plugin, so the same HTML first workflow covers almost any form you need to build. Use it for a simple contact form, a lead capture form, a support request form, a job application, an RSVP, a survey, a registration form, a file upload form, or a custom form with a layout that a drag and drop builder cannot easily produce. Because a field is just an HTML element with a name attribute, you can mix text inputs, email fields, dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, date pickers, textareas, and file upload fields in any structure you like. Agencies and developers reach for this HTML form plugin when a client needs a form that does not fit a builder’s template: a multi column layout, a branded card, a stepper, a pricing calculator, or markup a designer handed over. You paste the HTML, give the fields names, and the form is live with AJAX form submissions, stored data, and CSV export. There is no template to fight and no field type you cannot add, which is the difference between an HTML form plugin and a drag and drop form builder. It is also a great fit when you want to keep your stack lean. A single lightweight form plugin handles your contact form, your file upload form, and your custom forms, with email and webhook actions for routing, layered spam protection to keep out bots, and stored form submissions you can export to CSV whenever you need them. Whether you collect a handful of submissions a month or millions over time, the same plugin scales with you. Developer friendly HTML form plugin Narrative Forms is built for people who like control. Prefill fields with template variables such as {{ user.email }}, {{ get.utm_source | default:’direct’ }}, or {{ site.name }}, using providers like user, URL parameters, post, site, and date, each with filters such as default, upper, lower, date, and truncate. On the front end, public JavaScript events (nrfm-submit, nrfm-submitted, nrfm-success, nrfm-error) let you push conversions to Google Tag Manager or your dataLayer, show a toast, or run any custom logic with a tiny nrfm.on() helper. Filters and actions sit at every decision point, including the form HTML, validation, and webhook request arguments, so you can extend this HTML form plugin without forking it. Built to scale to millions of form submissions Narrative Forms is engineered for sites that collect a lot of data. Form submissions live in a dedicated, indexed database table rather than bloated post meta, so lookups stay fast as the table grows. Repeated reads are cached, queries are paginated and bounded, CSV export streams in batches, and heavy work can run in the background so the front end stays quick. Whether you collect ten form submissions a month or millions over time, this lightweight form plugin is designed to stay responsive. Scaling to millions describes the architecture, indexed storage, caching, and bounded queries, rather than a benchmarked guarantee. Who this HTML forms plugin is for Developers and agencies who want a contact form or custom HTML form they fully control, without a heavy builder. Anyone who uses an AI assistant: generate the HTML, paste it, and you are done. Site owners who need reliable form submissions, email notifications, file upload forms, and CSV export without the bloat. Teams that have outgrown a drag and drop form builder and want a faster, lighter way to build forms. Common uses include contact forms, lead capture, support requests, job applications, RSVPs, surveys, file uploads, registrations, and multi field custom forms that a drag and drop builder cannot easily produce. Upgrade to Narrative Forms Pro Narrative Forms Pro keeps the same lightweight, HTML first core and adds the power features that busy sites and agencies need: Conditional logic: show or hide fields, and trigger actions, based on what the visitor enters. Save and resume: let visitors save a long form as a draft and finish it later from where they left off. Submission notifications: a badge for unread form submissions in the admin so a new entry never slips by. Require login: restrict any form to logged in users only. Schedule windows: open and close a form automatically on the date and time you set. Advanced webhooks: reusable webhook templates, automatic retries with backoff, and a delivery log for every call. REST API: read form submissions programmatically and connect your forms to anything. Share links: generate a hosted, shareable link to any form. AI form generation, which writes the HTML for you from a plain language description, is on the Pro roadmap. Today the free HTML form plugin already works with any AI you paste in. Learn more at https://narrative-forms.com/?utm_source=wordpress.org&utm_medium=readme&utm_campaign=free Publish form submissions with Frontend Submissions (Views) Most form plugins keep submissions locked in the admin. The Narrative Forms Frontend Submissions add on turns your form submissions into front end content with reusable Views: display any form’s submissions as a public directory, a testimonial wall, a photo gallery, a job board, an event timeline, or product reviews, with instant search, pagination, single pages, per field privacy, and approval moderation. Frontend submission display is a paid add on that requires the free Narrative Forms plugin. Collect with the form, publish with a View. Learn more at https://narrative-forms.com/?utm_source=wordpress.org&utm_medium=readme&utm_campaign=free Privacy Narrative Forms uses the Appsero SDK to collect some telemetry data, but only after you confirm it. This helps us troubleshoot problems faster and make product improvements. The Appsero SDK does not gather any data by default. It only starts collecting basic telemetry when you allow it through the admin notice. We collect the data to ensure a great experience for all of our users. Integrating the Appsero SDK DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY start gathering data, and never without your confirmation. Learn more about how Appsero collects and uses this data. External services This plugin connects to external services only in these optional cases, and each is off until you enable or allow it. Cloudflare Turnstile (optional CAPTCHA). Used only if you enable Turnstile. When a page with a form loads, the browser requests https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/api.js to render the widget; on submit, the server sends the Turnstile token, your secret key, and the visitor’s IP address to https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify to verify it. Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/ Privacy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ Webhooks (optional, configured by you). Used only if you add a Webhook action. After a successful submission, the submitted form fields plus limited metadata (timestamp, IP address, user agent, referrer) are sent as JSON or URL encoded data to the exact URL you configure, on a domain you choose. Example URLs in the UI are placeholders and receive nothing. The destination is your choice, so consult that service’s terms and privacy policy. Appsero (optional usage analytics). Off until you allow it through the admin notice; nothing is sent before that. It then sends basic environment details (site URL, WordPress and PHP versions, active theme and plugins, locale, and the admin email used to confirm) to https://api.appsero.com, plus an optional survey if you deactivate. No form submissions or visitor data are sent. Privacy: https://appsero.com/privacy-policy/