WordPress anti-spam plugin · pay once
Stop spam. Hide your inbox. Pay once.
Spam Defender filters comment spam on your own server, puts Google reCAPTCHA on every form your site has, and hides your email address and phone number from the bots that harvest them. Search engines still see them. You pay once, with no monthly spam-check allowance.
One-time payment for one site. No subscription. Replaces Akismet.
Fieldnotes Garden Design
- Phone
Akismet cost
Akismet charges every year. Spam Defender charges once.
Akismet is free for personal blogs, but a business site needs a commercial plan, priced by how many spam checks you use each month. Move the sliders to see what that adds up to.
Akismet counts each comment or submission it checks, spam or not.
Akismet plan you’d need: Pro, £8.95 a month
£537.00
£299.00
Paid once. Updates included. No monthly checks to count.
Akismet figures from akismet.com/pricing in GBP, billed yearly: Pro £8.95 a month for 500 checks and one site, rising £8.95 a month for each extra 500 checks up to 2,000, and Business £41.95 a month for 5,000 checks. Checked October 2026. Akismet says protection carries on if you go over your allowance, and its Personal plan is pay what you can for non-commercial sites.
What it does
Three jobs, one plugin.
Each part works on its own, so you can switch on only what you need.
Comment spam, sorted on your own server.
- Hold, spam or reject comments with links, and choose how many links it takes
- Count the Website field and bare domains like example.com, or remove the field
- Invisible honeypot and time trap catch bots without bothering people
- Blocks bots that post straight to WordPress without loading your form
- Your own blocked words, plus pingback and trackback control
- Regular commenters and logged-in users skip the link rule
- See why each comment was caught on the Comments screen
reCAPTCHA on every form it finds.
- Scans your site and lists every form a CAPTCHA can protect
- Switch each one on or off: login, registration, comments and more
- Choose reCAPTCHA v2 checkbox, v2 Invisible or v3
- Set your own v3 score threshold
- Skip the CAPTCHA for logged-in users
- A safety switch so wrong keys can never lock you out
Your inbox, hidden from harvesters.
- Hides email addresses and phone numbers from bots, including mailto: and tel: links
- Choose which crawlers still see them: search engines, SEO tools, social previews, AI crawlers
- Checks that “Googlebot” really is Google before showing it anything
- People see your details as normal
- Works with page caching
Forms it protects
Found for you. Ticked by you.
Spam Defender lists the forms on your site, grouped by where they come from, with a switch for each one. Contact Form 7, WPForms and Gravity Forms are listed form by form.
v2 checkbox
The familiar “I’m not a robot” tick box. Visitors sometimes get a picture puzzle.
v2 Invisible
No box at all. A puzzle only appears when Google is suspicious of a visitor.
v3 score
Never interrupts anyone. Google scores each submission and you choose the cut-off.
Setup
Protected in ten minutes.
Install and switch off Akismet
Upload the zip under Plugins. The Comment Filter starts working straight away with sensible defaults.
Add your reCAPTCHA keys
Pick a version, paste the free keys from Google, then tick the forms you want protected.
Turn on Contact Shield
Choose which crawlers may see your contact details. Everything else gets a placeholder.
License
Pay once. Stay protected.
Buy directly from us and use it for as long as you run your site. There’s no subscription and no allowance of spam checks to run out of.
Running more than one site? Email hello@andrewhill.org.uk and we’ll sort out extra licences.
Every feature. No yearly bill.
£299 or $299, once
- Comment Filter, CAPTCHA and Contact Shield
- WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, WPForms and Gravity Forms support
- Future updates included
Questions
Good to know before you buy.
Can it really replace Akismet?
For most sites, yes. Akismet checks each comment against a shared database on Automattic’s servers. Spam Defender works differently: it catches the bots themselves with a hidden honeypot, a time trap and a check that the comment came from your real form, then applies your link and blocked-word rules. Add reCAPTCHA on top and very little gets through. Nothing about your commenters is sent away for filtering.
Do I need to pay Google for reCAPTCHA?
Most sites don’t. Google gives reCAPTCHA keys away with a free monthly allowance that covers typical small and medium sites. Check Google’s reCAPTCHA pricing page for the current limits if you run a very busy site.
Will hiding my email address hurt my SEO?
No. You choose which crawlers see your real details. Google, Bing and the other main search engines are allowed by default, and Spam Defender checks they really are who they say they are using a reverse DNS lookup. Scrapers pretending to be Googlebot get the placeholder.
Does it work with page caching and Cloudflare?
Yes. The recommended Strong level encodes your contact details in every page and shows them with JavaScript, so a cached page is safe to serve to anyone. If your site is behind Cloudflare, choose Cloudflare as the visitor IP source in the settings.
What if I set the wrong reCAPTCHA keys and get locked out?
Add one line to wp-config.php to switch the CAPTCHA off, log in and fix the keys. The settings page shows the exact line.
Which form plugins are supported?
WordPress login, registration, lost password and comments, plus WooCommerce (login, registration and the classic checkout), Contact Form 7, WPForms and Gravity Forms. If Spam Defender finds a form plugin it doesn’t support yet, such as Elementor Pro Forms, it tells you so rather than pretending to protect it.
I have another question
Email Andrew at hello@andrewhill.org.uk and you’ll get a reply from the person who built the plugin.