Akismet works sort of.

I suspect that the free version has some issues with it, but even on a moderately visited site, it lets far too many spam/ham crap in. 30- to 50 a day.

I downloaded WP ban an IP plugin to augment this highly touted program and by damn, even before putting in ANY IP address, by activating it, was already banned from accessing my site or any access to it. So much for ‘good plug-ins!’ Went to my hosting site (Inmotion) and began using their own IP denial program. WOW! This finally worked.

Akismet IMO is overrated and does not delete comments (simply delete option) in my comment queue which are ALL spam/ham that Akismet should have caught. I simply continue to get far too many comments waiting to be moderated every day in my spam column. NOT IMPRESSED. Hope someone else comes up with something better.

Akismet was good when it worked. Now most of my spam comes from China and it seems to do nothing to filter them. The Inmotion hosting IP filter did do the job that neither Akimeset of WP ban did.