65
Spam Protect for Contact Form 7
Banishing pesky spammers like Eric is easy until your backend breaks.
HealthyDeclining
65/100
The plugin stops specific spammers well but sometimes breaks the WordPress backend.
Active installs
~15,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 10k+
Rating
4.1★
12 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-41%
Declining fast
65 → 38 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORdownloads down 41% vs a year ago
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Declining fast · -41% in the last year
65/day a year ago→38/day today
Reviews
what people actually saySpam Protect for Contact Form 7 is praised for stopping spam and being easy to set up, but some users report it breaks the WordPress backend and fails to block keywords or phrases reliably.
What people like
- +Effectively stops spam, including specific spammers or bots×2
- +Easy to set up and use
- +Allows blocking of specific keywords, email addresses, or domains
- +Eliminates spam for some users
Common complaints
- −Breaks the WordPress backend and conflicts with other plugins
- −Keyword/phrase blocking often fails, allowing spam to be sent×2
Review trustMostly organic
- 4.08★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.10★
- 0%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
- past spikeReview timing — up to 25% of all reviews landed in a single month
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2024-03-162025-05-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 12 total
Latest reviews · 12 analyzed
- 2025-08-15★★★★★This plugin breaks the WP backendHudsonValleyWebDesign
- 2024-09-10★★★★★Good pluginwebmaster1234
- 2024-06-06★★★★★Nice, simple and useful!Artan
- 2024-02-21★★★★★Perfect and works very wellTarjeet Singh
- 2023-06-10★★★★★Doesn't Workdivy39993
- 2023-02-06★★★★★Manual blocking for the wincon
- 2022-06-21★★★★★It stopped Ericpixelbiz
- 2022-02-01★★★★★Not Working, Sadly :(martymcleod
- 2021-09-06★★★★★Looks Greatlcwduk
- 2021-09-04★★★★★Simple to usemuaadelsharif89
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
38
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
39
Prior 7-day baseline
28
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
48
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-2.6%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
25%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
2.45
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
75%
5★ share in analyzed sample
0%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.08 → 4.08★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered