Antispam Bee – Great Comment Spam Fighting Option for WordPress
About 5 hour ago I have installed a great plugin, Antispam Bee (can be found in WordPress plugins repository) to test this alternative to Akismet. Not that there was anything wrong with that plugin but I get quite a few questions on FREE alternative for business bloggers and I just had to test.
Results are stunning so far, to say the least:
Needless to say I get my unfair share of comment spam, just as every other blogger and it helps when you have some form of automation. Antispam Bee so far exceeds all expectations and considering that it doesn’t query external DB to identify if comment a spam or not and doesn’t send your information to some external site (yes, Akismet does sent quite a bit of info on comment it tests for spam) – I like it.
I will continue testing it but so far it looks promising with variety of options, including ability to check honey pot project, this plugin can be superb alternative for anyone running a blog for profit or a commercial business site based on WordPress!
I also noticed slight increase in performance as I also disabled couple additional plugins I had running along with Akismet to battle the comment spam onslaught. While I haven’t tried it myself yet (will probably test later) Antispam Bee supposedly works quite nicely together with Akismet, you just have to adjust settings a bit so it doesn’t just delete comments but sends it for Akismet’s evaluation.
However – I personally don’t see the need to duplicate the effort as “this little bee” seem to do the job quite nicely by itself and doesn’t require any licensing!
Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think?
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
40 Responses to “Antispam Bee – Great Comment Spam Fighting Option for WordPress”
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[...] AntiSpam Bee – this one works together or instead of Akismet and one of the best I tried for functionality + compatibility [...]
Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe
says:
Great post, Alex. I wonder how anti-spam bee compares to Gasp?
Ana recently posted..Best Affiliate Marketing Programs that Pay
Ana,
I used GASP along with Akismet and results were about same as “Bee” by itself. As I write this comment right now I see it blocked or sent into spam, which auto cleans after however many day you choose, well over 4k spams. 12 hours into testing
But isn’t Akismet a ‘paid’ for plugin for new WordPress installations now? It looked that way to me last time i created a new blog, so I was kind of surprised it still comes pre-installed.
I’m happily using: http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/library/wp-spamfree/ which can also be used in conjunction with Akismet.
Regards,
Clive
Clive,
They request that you pay license fee if using blog for commercial purpose, personal blogs are still free and when you go to get Akismet API key, choose personal blog and then move the slider to $0 – so it becomes free. Obviously you have an option to donate, if you choose to do so.
I have used wp-spamfree but lately support for it have been “spotty” so keeping in mind alternatives, that are well supported is always a good thing to do.
BTW, I removed keywords from name in your comment, if you have any questions on that – please read my comments policy, right above the form.
I prefer not to lie when dealing with plugins, all my blogs are commercial to some extent. So, to me, Akismet is now a paid plugin.
BTW I think your comment policy is kind of lopsided (especially as you have Comment Luv installed) if your comment on my blog was Alex at HowToSpoter (kind of similar to what mine was before you ‘edited’ I’d hardly consider that a keyword you are chasing) it’s kind of annoying to be treated the same way as some spammer e.g. Clive at Make Money Online or similar BS!
Clive,
If I have left comment on your site including Keywords that means you have set policy permitting it, I always make sure I read it. On my site I get overloaded with SPAM and most of the time DO NOT even pay attention to comments that include keywords in name and SPAM it without questions or second thought.
I provide the benefits of backlink via CommentLuv even though I pay the price with HUGE number of spam comments posted on my blog just because of it but I made a conscious choice and stick to it.
I understand your feeling but my Comment Policy is what it is and designed NOT only regulate comments but also simplify my work, as I mention before I normally spam them without second look, although sometimes I do make exceptions and this is how your comment got posted in first place.
Alex
Didn’t realize that Akismet wasn’t free anymore. I’ve had my license key for quite awhile myself and I just use the same one.
Antispam Bee seems like a great alternative for people who don’t yet have a license key however.
Ray, see my reply to Clive above
Also same commenting policy applied to your comment
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the heads-up on Antispam Bee, this looks to be a very useful replacement for WP’s Akismit (also nice that it’s actually free too)
I did purchase WP Comment Ninja recently and I’ve been running that on my blog which looks to be working really well as it allows the spammers to make their usual comments but it hijacks the links they include for ones of my own.
Problem is it doesn’t distinguish between spammers and genuine commenters so everyone who leaves a comment gets their link replaced which isn’t as fair as I would have liked, so I think I’ll give Antispam Bee a go to see if it’ll be more thankful to my genuine site visitors.
Again thanks for the heads-up and all of your other great tips
Regards
David.
This free WP plugin absolutely kills all the bot comment spam.
It is available on WP org and from the author’s site at
http;//www.toddlahman.com/spam-free-wordpress/
Actually SpamFreeWordpress is donationware. It works beautifully
and is much superior to Akismet imho. Well worth reading the
author’s site which explains the objectives and functionality.
Works fine for me … down to about 3 comment spams a week from
a high number per day .
Twitter: earnwithnpn
says:
Hi Alex
Love the post. I had read about the paid version of askimet, and tonites job was to sit down and look for an alternative.
I’ve turned off Askimet just now so that i can see how the Bee does its job.
Thank You Alex for saving me some time with this Excellent Post, so G+ and Tweeted
James
Thanks, Appreciate the feedback and glad I could help
I guess most of us are still using the free Akismet license.
Yeah, but many of us also used that license long before it became “paid”. I know I do and I know you got yours at around same time as I did
Twitter: hblawhorn
says:
Hi Alex,
Well, you have done it again. Saved me a bunch of time. I had been kinder checking around to see if I could find something to replace Akismet and wp-spamfree. So this comes at just the right time.
I will certainly give it a try, but it sounds like just what I was hoping to find.
Thanks Again,
Herschel
Glad I could help Herschel
Hi Alex
Thanks for the “heads up.” I am definitely going to install spamfreeBee and give that a try. All my websites have ads and
ebooks for sale, so it’s only a matter of time before I will need
to pay for Akismet.
I am so glad you are keeping us up to date on what is going on in the “blogging” world.
on the topic of spam comments and keywords used as a name. I have left several comments on your posts including this one. I always read the post and leave a relevant comment. I’ve just discovered that my comments are NOT published. Presumably because i use my REAL name (Sydney), and my website has the word sydney in it. So are you taking sydney to be a keyword instead of a real name? (Sydney is an actual name you know, maybe not a common one, but it is a real name). So for this comment i’ve used a FAKE name, steve. Do i take it then that i need to use a fake name in order to get comments published here?
“Steve”
Sydney,
I consider keywords in name only something like “website keywords” or “Name @ website keywords” instead of names where they belong. Those I spam manually with rare exceptions. However I truly do get a lot of spam comments and sometimes real comments could end up there by mistake courtesy of the plugins I use. I apologize for that but as I write right now – there 3,186 comments in SPAM folder that will be autopurged after 24 hours. As you can imagine – I will not be able to check them all for false positives.
Twitter: hblawhorn
says:
Alex, I have a question or two. Are you using the settings as they show up on the plugin site? I just looked at the screenshots where you install the plugin and used the same settings. Would you recommend that. Did you get the two API keys and use that part of the plugin?
Herschel,
I pretty much do, except – I don’t like to get email notifications on spam as I get a LOT and don’t need emails on it and I only use honeypot project. I don’t block by country. Honeypot project is free to signup and while I’m not sure if it helps or not – I had an existing account for quite a while so just used API i have. It shouldn’t be necessary.
Twitter: hblawhorn
says:
Thanks for the help, Alex. I did sign up for HoneyPot and will use it, but I am not blocking by country either and do have on email. If I start to get too many, I will turn it off.
Twitter: KathleenGresham
says:
What’s killing me right now are “pingbacks” that seem to be bot generated. Apparently some plugin or app creates a page of “recommended site” links which then get show up as trackbacks on WP blogs.
My email is deluged with notices, and I have to delete constantly. I end up deleting all the SPAM myself in the Comment list on my blogs.
Will SPAM Bee catch those? I have been trying out the Spam Free WordPress, and it is certainly is not catching them.
Kathleen,
It catches a lot but some do filter through, although using just this plugin beats the combination of Akismet+GASP I used to have before
Hi, Kathleen !
You just mentioned “pingbacks” in your comment and thank you for that. I would like to know more what they are and how to handle them. Every time I get a notification from WordPress about a new pingback I really don’t know what to do and delete it. Do me a favor, refer me to an appropriate source.
Thank you !
Michael.
well i think that it surpasses Akismet.It has a lot more features in it and provides better security against spams.
Abhishek recently posted..Importance Of Guest Blogging
Antispam Bee is a great solution . I use this tool a lot and it seems to work really well .
Antispam Bee is an feature rich free WordPress plugin that reduces comment spam on your website.
It has a lot of great options that let you restrict comments that are posted. You can block comments from certain countries using the IPInfoDB service and search for known spammers using Project Honey Pot. You can also only allow comments in German or English.