No one likes spam, and small business owners are no different. Small business websites are common sources of spam. Yet, they are essential for modern businesses. For years, WordPress website owners have been relying on Akismet since 2005 to stop spam in its tracks. But now, newcomer CleanTalk is rising to challenge Akismet. Here is what you need to know about CleanTalk vs Akismet.
Akismet & CleanTalk: What is the Same?
CleanTalk and Akismet both filter out different types of spam. This includes comment form spam, contact form spam, and registration spam.
Akismet and CleanTalk are both cloud-based services. Information from your form entries is forwarded to their cloud servers, where it is assessed (in many ways) before being blocked as spam or let through to your site or email.
CleanTalk and Akismet are both good at what they do. I’m not a believer in putting all my eggs into one basket, so I also add reCAPTCHA and honeypot techniques to my contact forms. Yet, both CleanTalk and Akismet are good additions that help filter out spam from your inbox.
What Is Good About Akismet & Why I Left It?
Other than being good at fighting spam, I love that Akismet is:
- Is made by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. This means it is designed to take advantage of the existing WordPress infrastructure.
- Is free for bloggers and other personal users
Why I Left I left Akismet is that it is too expensive for small business owners. This includes me and most of my web design clients.
For business use, Akismet starts at about $250 Australian per year.
Why I Use & Recommend CleanTalk?
For small business website, the CleanTalk antispam service costs about $12 Australian per year.
$250 vs $12 per year …
For me, the choice is easy.