I can assure you it is TRUE, and it is very GOOD. ??
1. No. See the FAQ.
2. No. Only the Pro version has a settings screen.
3. That’s up to you. You can use it with Akismet as a backstop if you want.
Personally if I had to choose only one option, I would use this plugin or similar alternatives, not Akismet. Akismet is a reactive defense that examines comments after they have been submitted. AntiSpam (and others) use methods that stop most spam comments from ever being made. This is much better for saving server resources (performance cost) and your time. It’s impossible to vet false positives among hundreds and thousands of spam comments, and spam comments that get through Akismet are frequent enough to be a real pain. Better to use Anti-Spam alone and then only allow trusted previous commenters to skip the moderation queue.
One one site where I use Anti-Spam with Akismet, I have seen a big increase in spam caught by Akismet after a recent update that improved Akismet. Why this is happening and whether it means Anti-Spam is missing more spam I do not know yet, but I’ll look into it and post my findings later. Someone give me a nudge by replying here next month (late January 2015) if I don’t post something about this before then.
