From Akismet to Cloudflare Turnstile: My Journey to Finally Stopping WordPress Spam

If you’ve been running WordPress sites for any length of time, you know spam is inevitable. Whether it’s comment spam, fake contact form submissions, or bogus WooCommerce accounts, it’s just part of the deal. In fact, when friends or clients contact me to complain about the sudden inflow of spam comments, I usually congratulate them on their website being “found” sufficiently to attract the bots.

Resource: How To Tell if WordPress Comments Are Spam

Like many of you, I started fighting back with the tools that seemed most obvious, starting with Akismet.

Step 1: Akismet – The Default Starting Point

Akismet is bundled with WordPress by default, and it’s free for personal sites. So naturally, that’s where I began back in 2008. And to be clear, Akismet works. It stopped spam comments effectively.

But once I started using it on my commercial sites, I needed a paid license. Given the number of WordPress sites I manage and the amount of spam they attract, my total bill with Akismet eventually climbed to $550 per year. That’s not insignificant, especially when spam protection is supposed to be a quiet, background service.

Step 2: CleanTalk – Same Results, Less Money

In an effort to reduce costs, I moved to CleanTalk. At around $200 per year, it was far more affordable and included protection beyond comment spam—it helped with registrations, contact forms, and even added some general security features.

And like Akismet, it worked well. Spam was blocked effectively. But there was a new tradeoff: performance.

My hosting provider pointed out that CleanTalk’s approach—like Akismet’s—relies on real-time API calls. Every time a comment or form is submitted, it hits CleanTalk’s servers to check against their spam databases. Multiply that by thousands of submissions, and that starts to eat up resources. Even if the service works, it’s adding backend traffic and latency I didn’t want.

My hosting provider, whose expertise I trust, told me that while in concept CleanTalk and Akismet work the same way CleanTalk is more resource-heavy.

Step 3: Cloudflare Turnstile – The Game Changer

That's when I was introduced to Cloudflare Turnstile, and everything changed.

Unlike Akismet or CleanTalk, Turnstile doesn’t wait for the spam to show up so it can check against a blacklist. It stops bad actors before they ever get a chance to post.

It's a frictionless, invisible CAPTCHA alternative built by Cloudflare. Instead of relying on user-submitted data and pattern matching, Turnstile uses Cloudflare’s global intelligence network to determine if a visitor is a real human. And if they’re not—the submission never even happens.

I had briefly tried Google’s reCAPTCHA on a few smaller sites, but it was only about 90% effective. Spam still trickled in. Not with Turnstile.

My Experience: 4,000 Spams Blocked Daily—Zero Reached Me

Since switching all my sites to Turnstile, I’ve gone from thousands of spam submissions a day to zero getting through. That’s not an exaggeration—Turnstile has been 100% effective across my forms, logins, and comment areas. And the best part?

It’s completely free.

Simple Cloudflare Turnstile Plugin – Easy & Comprehensive Integration

To implement it, I’m using the Simple Cloudflare Turnstile plugin. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a one-stop solution that integrates with:

• WordPress core forms (login, registration, password reset, comments)
• WooCommerce (which I rely on heavily)
• Forminator, which is my preferred form builder
• Other popular form plugins like Contact Form 7, WPForms, and more

The setup was simple. No confusing API quota issues, no Google account nonsense. Just plug in your Cloudflare site keys, and you’re done.

Resource: See all my WordPress Plugin Recommendations Here

Obviously, this requires using Cloudflare, but frankly, you should be doing that anyway, and I was lucky to get all my sites running through Cloudflare about a decade ago.

Why It’s Better—In Every Way That Matters

Feature	Akismet	CleanTalk	Cloudflare Turnstile
Cost (What I am/was paying)	$550/year	$200/year	Free
Effectiveness	✅	✅	✅✅✅ (so far: 100%)
Supports forms beyond comments	❌	✅	✅
Bandwidth & performance load	❌	❌	✅
User experience	✅	✅	✅✅✅ (no challenge UI)

Final Thoughts

If you’re still struggling with WordPress spam—or just tired of paying for tools that feel like band-aids—I highly recommend trying Cloudflare Turnstile. It’s fast, effective, lightweight, and free. Paired with the Simple Cloudflare Turnstile plugin, it’s the cleanest solution I’ve found in over a decade of fighting bots.