La Sentinelle antispam vs MUTE – Contact Form Spam Blocker Without CAPTCHA

Feel safe knowing that your website is safe from spam. La Sentinelle will guard your WordPress website against spam in a simple and effective way. It has antispam filters for comment forms and registration forms and can be extended to support plugins. The default settings should catch most spambots, and there is a settingspage to set it up according to your wishes. Current features include: 3 antispam features; Honeypot, Nonce, Form Timeout. These 3 spamfilters depend on JavaScript on the frontend. 1 antispam feature; Stop Forum Spam. Settingspage to set things up according to your wishes. Transparent to the visitor, no nagging with Captcha’s or other annoying things. By default no use of third-party services and no tracking of visitors. Lightweight and simple code. Logging for WordPress Comments and which spamfilter marked it as spam. Logging for Custom forms and which spamfilter marked it as spam. Statistics for every form how many spam submissions were blocked. WordPress forms that are protected: WordPress Comments form. WordPress Login form. WordPress Register form. WordPress Lost Password form. Form Plugins that are protected: Caldera Forms. Clean Login (Login form). Contact Form 7. Easy Digital Downloads (Login form, Register form). Everest Forms. Formidable Form Builder. Forminator. Newsletter Optin Box plugin (noptin) (standalone forms). Ultimate Member (Login form, Register form and Lost Password form). WooCommerce (Login form, Lost Password form). WPForms Lite. WP Job Manager plugin (submit job form when registering is enabled). Support If you have a problem or a feature request, please post it on the plugin’s support forum on wordpress.org. I will do my best to respond as soon as possible. If you send me an email, I will not reply. Please use the support forum. Translations Translations can be added very easily through GlotPress. You can start translating strings there for your locale. They need to be validated though, so if there’s no validator yet, and you want to apply for being validator (PTE), please post it on the support forum. I will make a request on make/polyglots to have you added as validator for this plugin/locale. How to choose an antispam plugin When you look through the WordPress Plugin Repository you will see more than a hundred antispam plugins. Which one is the best one? Short answer, there is no “best one”. No spamfilter and no method for spamfiltering is perfect. Slightly longer answer, you could try about twenty and choose the one that fits your needs best. But there is also a really long answer. There are different methods that can be used against spam, and every method has its drawbacks. In my opinion, having a low number of false positives is more important than perfectly marking all spam, you don’t want to miss out on important people or information. Nagging the user in some way has a similar effect, the user might not even want to bother with that and just walk away. Third party services: Services like Akismet, OOPSpam, Stop Forum Spam and also reCAPTCHA offer third party services to check for spam. This can be very effective, but you are giving user submitted data away to these third parties and are also giving your users up for tracking them. Captcha’s, reCAPTCHA and Quizz Questions: You are annoying your users and probably sending some of them away. This especially counts for reCAPTCHA for visitors who have third party cookies disabled. Blacklists: Often running behind the facts. That goes for the way of getting users off that list, and also in getting users on that list. Referer check: check if the Referer header is set correctly. You can never trust it is set correctly. Modern browsers are limiting the use of Referers, though for now that is mostly for third-party domains. JavaScript methods: Spammers often (always?) don’t use JavaScript, they just post the form with spammy data. Drawback for this method is that statistics say that about 1 percent of users has JavaScript disabled. Also, some websites have broken JavaScript, which might make the spamfilter break as well. Activation email for registering users. Users only get activated after clicking a link in an activation email. You still have all the non-activated users in your site however. You could have a bright idea about combining several methods, but then you get the drawbacks of all the methods you use. Another complication of choosing a good plugin is that most antispam plugins don’t tell you what methods they use. The documentation doesn’t tell you, and looking at the source code just leaves you confused at the chaos that it often is. My main motivation for writing this plugin is to offer a plugin that does spamfiltering with JavaScript methods in a simple and effective way. The claimed 1 percent of users that has JavaScript disabled will also be tech-savy enough to enable it again for your website. Compatibility This plugin is compatible with ClassicPress. Contributions This plugin is also available in Codeberg.

SPAM NEVER STOPS. Start with your site. ── MUTE : Good for the world. Still getting spam through your contact form? Tons of junk flooding your inbox every day? Every day, countless WordPress site owners open their inbox to find it buried under fake inquiries, promotional garbage, and suspicious links — all submitted through their own contact form. Real customer messages get lost. You waste time sorting through it all. And no matter how many times you delete them, the spam just keeps getting sent again. MUTE is a spam blocker that puts an end to that — silently, automatically, and without making your real visitors jump through any hoops. The Problem You’re Probably Dealing With You’re not alone. These are the situations we hear about every day: You run a restaurant. Your contact form was meant for customer inquiries — but every time you open it, it’s full of scam emails and unsolicited sales links. Exhausting before the day even starts. You manage an e-commerce site. Your inquiry form is buried under spam every night. Real customer questions keep getting pushed to the back, and response times are slipping. You run a salon. A message from a new client gets lost among spam emails. By the time you reply, they’ve already moved on. You’re in sales at a small business. Every morning you sift through virus-laden links and shady solicitations just to find the one real lead that came in overnight. Your team has started ignoring the contact form because it’s mostly junk — sales pitches, phishing emails, fraudulent messages. Real customer needs go unanswered. You added CAPTCHA to stop the spam. Customers complained it was frustrating to use, inquiries dropped — and it’s not really helping anyway. The spam kept coming. You’ve tried other anti-spam plugins. Bots still slip through. The junk never stops. People keep trying to sell you SEO services and marketing tools through your contact form. Every morning, your inbox is full of sales pitches instead of real customer messages. Bots (automated programs) are constantly crawling the web, hunting for unprotected contact forms to exploit. Once they find yours, the fake submissions keep getting sent again and again. Standard solutions like CAPTCHA ask your real visitors to prove they’re human — that friction costs you leads. There’s a better way. How MUTE Solves It MUTE works as a silent spam blocker running in the background of your site. It detects bot behavior before a form is ever submitted — no puzzles, no checkboxes, no interruption for real visitors. How it works: A lightweight script loads automatically on every page of your site It monitors form activity using multiple detection layers — honeypot traps, behavioral analysis, and browser checks Bots are identified and blocked before their fake submissions ever reach your inbox Real visitors experience absolutely nothing different — their messages go through normally The result: your inbox contains only real inquiries from real people. What Changes After You Install MUTE The restaurant owner who dreaded opening the contact form can now check it without stress — every message there is a real inquiry. The e-commerce team that was always behind on replies can now respond to real customer questions quickly. Better response times, better service. The salon staff who worried about missing a new client’s message can now reply with confidence — every message that arrives is real. The sales team member who wasted every morning sorting through junk can now get to real leads immediately. More time for actual work. Staff who had lost trust in the contact form now check it every day — because they know what’s there is genuine. Real visitors never encounter a CAPTCHA. Your form stays smooth and easy to use. Your contact form does what it was always meant to do: connect you directly with real customers. Checking it goes from a chore to a natural part of the day. Key Features Silent spam protection — blocks bots automatically, with zero impact on real visitors No CAPTCHA required — no friction, no puzzles, no drop-off in form completions Works with popular form plugins — Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Elementor Forms, Ninja Forms, Jetpack Forms, and more One-line installation — activate the plugin and it works. No settings to configure Live stats in your WordPress dashboard — see how many spam submissions have been blocked 14-day free trial — no credit card required to get started Requirements A free MUTE account is required. Sign up at mute-it.com — no credit card required for the 14-day free trial. External Services This plugin connects to an external service operated by Ryu-Raku Inc. to provide spam detection and account management features. Your site communicates with this service to enable spam blocking and to display your account status in the WordPress admin panel. No personal visitor data is collected or transmitted. Service URL: https://mute-it.com/en/ Terms of Service: https://mute-it.com/en/legal/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://mute-it.com/en/legal/privacy/