DocsForms

Spam protection

Honeypot, timing, rate limits, disallowed words, link limits, Akismet and CAPTCHA keep spam out — and spam is kept for review instead of deleted.

What runs on every form#

CheckDefault (Settings → Forms)
A hidden honeypot field bots fill inAlways on
Minimum time to fill in the form2 seconds
Submissions per visitor per 10 minutes8 (counted by a hash of the IP address, never stored)
WordPress’s disallowed words (Settings → Discussion)On
Links allowed in a submission3 (0 allows any number)
Akismet, when it’s activeOn

A submission that fails the content checks is kept with the status Spam and no actions run. Look through Spam in Native AI → Forms now and then.

CAPTCHA#

For forms that need more, add a CAPTCHA: connect reCAPTCHA (v2 or v3) or Cloudflare Turnstile in Integrations, choose it in the form’s spam settings, and place the CAPTCHA element where the check should appear.

Order of checks#

Bot checks (honeypot, timing) → rate limit → the answers → validation on the server → CAPTCHA → content checks (disallowed words, links, Akismet) → files → the submission is saved → actions.