Rating: 1 star
Do not install this plugin: it’s unsupported since 2016 and does not work any longer.
]]>Rating: 1 star
spam everywhere …
]]>Rating: 1 star
Says stops 100% of spam. Have had 500 spam in last 3 months. Plugin is useless.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
I MEANT TO GIVE ONLY 1 STAR TO THIS PLUGIN!
I am very frustrated. After updating my wordpress core my paid Todd Lahman anti spam plugin (Simple Comments) started throwing errors.
I started by using this free product – but, it turned out to really be a bait and switch. You now must pay to really get a product that works. It was worth the price (when it worked), but since it no longer works – and Todd REFUSES to reply to my support tickets requesting help – I am done with any plugins from Todd Lahman.
I purchased his “Simple Comments” plugin for $29 for 1 year – support was to be included. But now, it simply won’t work – and he will not reply to my 4 support tickets that I submitted from his support website over a 5 week period.
So, the only thing I can do is to warn others to stay away from this developer. I believe his refusal to even acknowledge my support tickets is worse than terrible service. Why do people do this?
In case anyone is looking for a product that works well to stop forum spam and spam posts – I now use the “Anti-spam by CleanTalk” found in the WordPress plugin collection. And, it’s only $8 per year.
Mark P-R
]]>Rating: 1 star
Add insult to injury. The plugin author disabled the free keys from back when it was free and so now is no longer effective. Don’t waste your time installing this “free” plugin because it’s not. As others say, bait & switch. He could have at least grandfathered the users that got the free key back when it was free.
]]>Rating: 1 star
it’s just an advertisement for his other ****. don’t bother.
These are family friendly forums, please. Thanks. -mod
]]>Rating: 1 star
I’ve used and loved this plugin for a long time. Sometime this last summer, an ‘update’ was released, with no heads up, which basically destroyed this plugin. It reduced the spam protection, and apparently added it to its paid version. This is acknowledged by the author in the support pages for this plugin.
I contacted the author about getting a ton of spam after the upgrade and he said that his paid plugin ‘simple comments’ has stronger protection and has more features etc, so I should buy that one.
I think we deserved a little heads up or warning on the update release notes, sth like ‘the spam protection on this next update is reduced, install at your own risk etc’. Especially those of us with a low budget and and cannot afford to pay an annual fee for licences. Now I can’t even revert back to the old version that had the good protection.
So I find myself looking for a decent FREE spam protection plugin again.
]]>Rating: 2 stars
I believe I was using this plugin from the early days of it. Then I rated it 5 stars. At this time, maximum I can give – 2 stars.
Please understand, that these ratings are not for the commercial “pro” version. We should rate plugin that is hosted here and it is not stellar anymore.
]]>Rating: 1 star
*Jan looks for popcorn, gets coffee instead. Thankfully.*
These reviews and the replies sure are colorful for this plugin. Todd, you really need to refrain from implying legal threats as you’ve done in your other comments. You know what I am referring to and those comments were deleted.
Note: All comments and opinions below are mine and do not reflect the opinion of any other group that I may belong to. So there.
tl;dr I’m rating this plugin a 1 star. If this plugin were supported and provided functionality transparently then I may revise my review. But there is zero support for this plugin and I do not like having plugins that apparently serves to promote another commercial plugin.
Review begins below.
The Admin Pages
After I installed it I found this in the admin page.
https://cl.ly/image/450X033x3901
That’s a lot of way over the top advertisement don’t you think? Especially when the admin part is this tiny little 2 check boxes.
https://cl.ly/image/2W21320Q0t23
Two small check boxes buried beneath all that “Sell! Sell! Sell!”. I had to resize the font on my browser (that’s why the font is tiny) to be able to see the whole thing.
But What Does This Plugin Actually Do?
As far as I can see, all this plugin does is generates a password for each comment such as “gpK9GOUxU1LM” or “Esxji4SW3dQ9” that the commenter must copy and paste from the field that is marked with “* Copy This Password *” and paste it into ” * Type Or Paste Password Here *”
That’s not really useful to me as all that does is introduce another barrier to my commenters. I find that using other plugins afford me comment protection as well as pingback and trackback protection.
Spam protection is not easy but while this is not as burdensome as a CAPTCHA (which I will never use on my sites) it does inhibit comments. To me that’s not SPAM protection as much as it’s “BUG YOUR USERS” protection. Yes that will stop bots (maybe, I installed it on a test blog and that doesn’t get any comments) but I want to encourage real people to comment on my posts.
This doesn’t really encourage that conversation. I may be looking for anti-spam magic? but there are other plugins that do that successfully without adding anything obvious to the comment form.
GPL’ed code
Looking at the code your plugin that is hosted here is 100% GPL and I don’t see any issues there. There are whole sections in the includes directory that I do not think is even engaged but I didn’t do any tracing.
I sure do not see that code in the sparse admin settings page.
THE. PLUGIN. PAGE. (insert dramatic sound track HERE)
Here’s the problem I have with your plugin page on the WordPress repo.
The first 22 lines of your plugin page are dedicated to selling a plugin on your commercial site.
That’s 288 words for an advertisement that has nothing to do with the plugin that is hosted on WordPress repository here.
Not counting the About the Author or the language list you dedicate a whole thirty three words to your actual plugin on that plugin page on the bottom like an afterthought.
(That’s 33, 3 x 11, 30+3… well you get the idea.)
Only 11% of your verbiage has anything to do with your hosted plugin here and you toss in that last verbiage like an afterthought of “Oh yeah, I should probably talk about the plugin that I don’t provide any support for.”
Edit: Correction, it’s a total of 321 words when you combine the text verbiage. So 33 divided by 321… *looks for paper* 10% of the verbiage at the bottom. *Drinks more coffee*
That’s just thick. It’s oversell plain and simple. You’re using the space allocated to your plugin here to promote your other plugin that’s not hosted here.
Now plugin support has always been optional and you do get points for coming right out and saying “There is no support for Spam Free WordPress”
Support (or lack of) should be a critical part of the decision to use a plugin. That statement alone would make me not consider using your plugin for real.
But using the plugin page here to shill for your commercial plugin? That’s Just Not Cool? Todd. Not cool at all.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Have had this plugin on 3 sites for a few years and it have always delivered as advertized. And the few times that I had issues they were always dealt with promptly and friendly.
]]>Rating: 1 star
bait and switch
]]>Rating: 1 star
Getting loads of spam.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
“Spam Free WordPress” is really powerful and its a real Spam Free plugin. I suggest it to all webmasters who want to get rid of spam and spammers.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
]]>Rating: 5 stars
I LOVED this plug-in. I am new to web site development, so I have been trying out free versions of plugins before purchasing. I updated Spam Free WordPress recently, and now it isn’t working. And when I went to get support, I found that my username and password no longer work. I was planning to add this to my plug-in purchases, but now I am unsure…
]]>Rating: 1 star
It’s certainly a pity that the developer of this plugin decided to take the route of withdrawing functionality of this once excellent plugin. A better option would have been to cease development of the plugin and increase development of the premium version, without taking away functionality.
Having just started up a new website, I had done a lot a research on some of the best anti-spam solutions. I chose Spam Free WordPress as it was a free plugin that I could use in order to test the viability of the new site. If it was a viable option, then I would have happily paid for a solution. Now, after updating my plugin as part of the site maintenance, I have found that I have an ugly password field (or two) on my comments form and need to now purchase a solution in order to return the previous functionality back on. This has left me with more work to do and an unsavoury user-experience for site visitors.
The developer has certainly shot themselves in the foot, as I will definitely not be purchasing anything from somebody so unreliable and easily willing to make such drastic changes without concern for their customer base. I would worry what other actions this type of mindset would bring in the future, if they were willing to put so many people in a position where their websites lost functionality.
Thank you for making my ultimate decision for me of whether to use your product on a more permanent basis.
]]>Rating: 1 star
Spam Free WordPress was the best spam filter plug-in I’d found. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that it had changed to a licensed version and that the upgrade would lose functionality… I just went through and updated plug-ins as part of routine maintenance. After the upgrade, the plug-in is worse than useless. Look elsewhere.
I respect the need to make a living, but to remove features in an update is just downright shady. There’s no possible way I will ever purchase anything from this developer now.
]]>Rating: 1 star
It is a shame, a good solid plugin that really worked until some recent updates where it was downgraded.
I understand when a dev wants to make money from his work – that’s fair enough, it’s not unreasonable. What is unreasonable though is when a dev decides to remove or weaken functionality from his plugin in order to push his new “pro” version. A pro version should really mean extra functionality, like the ability to work with Jetpack comments or something similar.
I could have respected the decision to stop development on this plugin and only push the commercial version – at least then it would still work but everyone would know the score… that it’s no longer going to be free. But to deliberately break this version and ask people to pay for what they originally had is just low.
Given how good this plugin was, I would have probably paid for the pro version but now that I know how you treat your user base, I won’t. In fact, I’ve already switched to another plugin (that is less intrusive) because this one is broken!
]]>Rating: 1 star
Like the reviews before mine, this plug-in has stopped being effective recently. Been getting dozens of spam comment notifications in recent days. I used to recommend this to other wordpress users, but definitely can’t with how it’s working these days. Switching to something that works. Good while it lasted…!
]]>Rating: 2 stars
I’ve used this plugin since its early versions and although it needed some tweaking with almost every release to make it compatible with certain WP theme forms, it performed its spam filtration very well.
When version 2.0 was released, I did not update it after seeing the reference to the removal of the free license. With 2.0, the previous version, 1.9.3, had several of its options removed; supposedly, it works the same out of the box, while the author promotes his commercial alternative. As far as I’m concerned, 2.0 downgrades the effectiveness of the free plugin.
After keeping 1.9.3 as the active version, I am now getting lots of spam that is caught only because Akismet is installed. I’m suspecting that the license key mechanism used in versions prior to 2.0 is now broken, allowing spam comments to get through.
This plugin is currently a shadow of its former glory. I tried to be as objective as possible; for active blogs and publications, spam prevention is essential.
]]>Rating: 1 star
After the latest update, which seemed to remove my custom settings, now getting spam comments. It’s difficult to get support (I had previously registered for support but my login no longer works). If the source code for previous versions was available I’d consider rolling back to a version that worked, but no SVN source is available.
Moving to a different anti-spam plugin.
]]>Rating: 1 star
Use at your own risk. I had this plugin for ages (and disabled for most of it) and after updating a bunch of plugins and this one too it then kept having weird links on my site to other blog posts including political propaganda and Herpes cures. Eventually it kept bringing up nagging ads over my site for the “pro” version. Also this plugin seems to have somehow overidden my wp-admin page so that I was totally unable to access it. Deleting the plugin folder from the sites FTP successfully removed this banner. BE WARNED!
]]>Rating: 1 star
Was working fine until the plugin authors decided to create massive ads on both the front-end and dashboard of the website. As a professional designer it was embarrassing to get calls from clients this morning asking why they have spam on their websites.
What were they thinking…
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Todd Lahman spams himself with the latest update with a header that forces to buy a licence. This header also blocks access to your admin page login! I can try what ever I want … no removal possible!!!
]]>Rating: 1 star
Was happy with the plugin until today’s update, which displayed a message on the front page of several of my sites and also prevented me from accessing the admin area. Not the best way to encourage people to purchase the Pro version, I think.
]]>Rating: 4 stars
On a few blogs on our multi-user site, Akismet was letting a lot of spam through. I’ve been using this as a backstop on those troublesome sites, and it’s worked great.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
I had over 20k spam trackbacks on a site, I couldn’t get rid of them. I used disqus and couldn’t disable it because it’s tied into a lot of things. In any case, this plugin did the trick and continues to work when other plugins don’t.
The license key is a bit annoying but whatever, it’s free and it’s worth it.
]]>Rating: 1 star
Plugin requires a license, but you cannot acquire it from the developer’s website. Click Ad to Cart and it blocks you saying “This item is already in your shopping cart.” But click View Cart and it shows the cart is empty.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
We are using the plugin on a number of sites (more than 50) both single installs of WordPress and multisite. It just works and stops most spam. I have not seen a single false flagging.
]]>Rating: 5 stars
Good plugin, works pretty well as I see significantly less spam ?? happy camper!
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