61
Zero Spam for WordPress
It stops the bots but brings its own political drama.
HealthyGrowingPoor rating
61/100
The plugin blocks spam well but uses aggressive nags and controversial political code.
Active installs
~25,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 20k+
Rating
4.1★
143 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+96%
Growing fast
37 → 73 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORverified rating is 3.77★
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
Growing fast · +96% in the last year
37/day a year ago→73/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayZero Spam for WordPress has a functional core that users credit for reducing spam when properly configured, but it is widely criticized for aggressive, non-dismissible upsell nags, a controversial political code injection added in v5.2.15, and settings being wiped on major updates.
What people like
- +Effective at blocking spam when correctly set up and integrated×3
- +Consolidates multiple anti-spam techniques into a single plugin
- +Auto-loads a database for spam detection
Common complaints
- −Persistent, non-dismissible upsell banners and upgrade notices that redirect users to a sales/payment page instead of dismissing×5
- −Version 5.2.15 introduced a politically motivated code module (class-ukraine.php) that disables spam protection and injects an unsolicited banner on .ru, .su, and .by domain sites (since 5.2.15)×4
- −Major updates wipe previous plugin settings, causing spam to resume until settings are manually reconfigured
- −Free version appears to allow significantly more spam through compared to the paid version
- −Auto-loading 2 MB of database info on every page is considered excessive
- −UI is cluttered with sales and licensing prompts, making basic tasks like blocking a specific IP difficult to find
- −Plugin reportedly adds its own ads to the user's site
Review trustMostly organic
- 3.77★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.10★
- 8%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
2024-02-152025-04-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 143 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-04-14★★★★★Pay to useHamid Aminirad
- 2026-03-13★★★★★Giving options to meet your needsAmibe Websites
- 2026-03-09★★★★★I love itmatteo raggi
- 2026-02-23★★★★★Cluttered spammy and confusingWordlen
- 2026-02-04★★★★★Very useful pluginGerard Kanters
- 2026-01-26★★★★★Dashboard HijackerFields
- 2025-03-26★★★★★Generally a good spam soloution – with a few issuesdavidritter
- 2024-02-02★★★★★Great extensionherecomes1-shot
- 2023-05-24★★★★★Very Effective, Prompt SupportEli
- 2022-12-20★★★★★Politics Ruin Yet Another Good Thingcodejp3
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNAlternatives to Zero Spam for WordPress
Top Anti-spam plugins, ranked by score.For 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.
46
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
72
Prior 7-day baseline
39
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
176
Mean release-day peak (30d)
98
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-36.1%
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
2.11
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
67%
5★ share in analyzed sample
8%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
3.78 → 3.77★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered