Do you want to learn how to prevent spam registration on WordPress?

Attracting new leads and getting new clients is always tough. But when you’re fighting against spambots and fake registrations, it can feel even more discouraging.

That’s why, today, we’re going to share 3 surefire methods for protecting yourself against spam registrations in WordPress.

That way, you can rest assured that you’re always generating quality leads.

But first, let’s get clear on why spam registrations can be so harmful to your business.

Why Spam Registrations (Really) Matter

Some business owners might think that the occasional spam registration isn’t that big of a deal.

They think that if they can’t see any physical harm to their website now, then it must not really be a serious problem.

But there are actually 3 practical reasons for avoiding spam registrations on WordPress:

1) Paying too Much for Your Email Provider: Most email service providers (ESP) charge by the number of subscribers on your list.

That means if you have tons of fake registrations on your site, you’re looking at extra charges for your business that can really add up.

If you’re hit with a spam attack with lots of fake user sign-ups, you could pay hundreds of extra dollars each month just to keep those fake leads on your list.

2) Boosting Your Deliverability Rates: Having fake registrations on your list can also affect how you communicate with your genuine leads.

That’s because your email campaigns will have lower open and click-through rates which can affect your email’s deliverability rates.

That’s the fastest way to get into your genuine contact list’s spam folders.

3) Protecting Yourself Against Hackers: Most importantly, some spam registrations are hackers looking for a “way in” to your site.

Once they’ve signed up, they’re able to find vulnerabilities to exploit and do serious harm to your business.

That’s why it’s so important to learn how to prevent spam registration on WordPress.

With that in mind, let’s turn to our 3 methods for keeping your site safe from spam sign-ups.

Prevent Spam Registration (WordPress)

In this guide, we’re going to walk you through 3 methods on how to prevent spam registration on WordPress.

Let’s get started.

1) Create Custom Registration Forms With CAPTCHA

While there are many ways to prevent spam registrations from your WordPress site, the easiest is to start at the source: your registration form.

And to create safe registration forms, there’s simply no better tool than WPForms:

WPForms is hands down the best form builder plugin for WordPress. It lets you quickly and easily add all different kinds of forms to your site, including:

• Contact forms
• Payment forms
• Survey forms
• Newsletter forms

And, of course, registration forms.

Plus, WPForms comes with a drag and drop builder to make it easy to customize and embed any form on your site.

This is helpful when adding new features to a form, like their CAPTCHA addon:

This allows you to guard yourself against spam registration.

That’s because CAPTCHA is a protective measure that poses questions or assigns small tasks designed specifically for humans.

These custom questions or random math questions are created to stump spambots and verify that your new lead is, in fact, real.

All you need to do is generate your reCAPTCHA key from Google and activate the CAPTCHA addon in your WPForms plugin.

For more information on generating your reCAPTCHA key, check out this helpful resource: How to Set Up and Use reCAPTCHA in WPForms.

Once you’ve activated that, adding CAPTCHA to your registration forms couldn’t be easier. Just click the CAPTCHA feature, and it will automatically be added to your form:

Now your form is ready to prevent spam registrations on WordPress.

You can quickly and easily add this feature to all your forms to guarantee that your new leads are genuine prospects (rather than pesky and dangerous spambots).

Want to see it in action for yourself? Sign up for WPForms 100% risk-free today!

2) Use OptinMonster’s Native Honeypot Technique

If you’re using WPForms to protect yourself against spam registrations, you’ve got an excellent start.

But, sometimes, you need a more powerful lead generation tool to grow your list faster. This would mean you need to make different types of “optin campaigns” for your site.

Optin campaigns are something you’re likely familiar with. These are things like popups, floating bars, spin-to-win wheels, and more.

So how do you add these lead generation strategies to your site and protect those optin campaigns from spam registrations?

For that, your best option is OptinMonster:

OptinMonster is a premium WordPress plugin created to help you get new leads, increase conversions, and drive sales FAST.

It’s incredibly user friendly and lets you create all types of optin campaigns, such as:

• Popups
• Floating bars
• Fullscreen welcome mats
• Sidebar widgets
• Slide-in scroll boxes
• Inline campaigns
• Gated content
• And more…

These campaigns all help you boost user registrations and attract more leads. How does it work?

Everything starts with selecting from one of OptinMonster’s 50+ pre-made templates:

These template designs were created to save you time, energy, and headaches in the campaign creation process.

And while they’re ready to go out-of-the-box, you’ll likely want to make a few minor modifications. Doing so couldn’t be easier.

To change the text in your template, for example, you can use the inline text editor:

This lets you change aspects of your text, such as:

• Font size
• Font family
• Alignment
• Text color
• Line height
• And much more…

From there, you might want to add a new feature to your template. OptinMonster’s drag and drop editor makes this part a breeze.

That’s because all of our campaigns are built with “blocks.” Each block has a specific feature, such as:

• Text
• Video
• Images
• Chatbots
• Custom HTML
• Spacers
• And more…

When you locate the block you want to add, drag it from the left-hand side menu and drop it into place:

The best part is that these blocks fit into specific places in your optin campaigns, so everything always comes out looking professional and well-designed.

But, at this point, you might be wondering, “How does any of this help me prevent spam registration across my website?”

As you’re growing new leads with OptinMonster, you can feel safe against spambot attacks.

That’s because OptinMonster natively uses a method called the “Honeypot Technique.”

In most campaigns you build, you’ll have a form that asks for basic information like name and email address:

But what you don’t see is a hidden field operating in the background.

This is designed to trick spambots while they’re filling out the optin form.

Since only spambots can “see” the invisible form field, OptinMonster can filter out spammy leads based on whether or not that field has been completed.

This allows you to create stunning and high-converting campaigns across your site without worrying that you’ll gather too many fake leads.

It’s how companies like Crossrope were able to explode their list by over 900%.

Or how solopreneurs like Adam Enfroy could add over 11,000 subscribers to his list in just 1 year.

Not only could they achieve such massive success thanks to OptinMonster, but they were able to rest assured that this growth was genuine.

And if you want to take things to the next level, you can even add reCAPTCHA to your optin forms (the same way you did with WPForms earlier).

For a step-by-step guide on how to do that, check out this helpful resource: How to Add Google reCAPTCHA to Your Email Optin Form.

That gives you an added measure of preventing spam registrations on your WordPress site to keep your list extra safe.

Ready to see it in action for yourself? Click below to start your 100% risk-free OptinMonster account today:

3) Get Extra Safe With TruLead®

At this point, you have a powerful combination working for the authenticity of your lead generation strategy.

You’ve got WPForms protecting registration on your site’s pages.

And you’ve got OptinMonster filtering new leads from your optin campaigns like popups, floating bars, and so on.

While the honeypot technique that OptinMonster uses can be the perfect solution for small businesses, hackers are getting more clever every day.

They’re constantly working to find new ways to infiltrate sites, find weaknesses, and exploit them.

That’s why OptinMonster created an original lead verification algorithm called TruLead®.

TruLead® is one of the best and most advanced solutions for how to prevent spam registration on WordPress.

It allows you to fine-tune your lead verification filters, so you’re only letting in the most qualified leads to your list.

With TruLead®, you can filter leads by blocking:

• IP addresses
• Strings and characters
• Temporary emails
• Role-based emails
• Free emails
• And much more…

This is like having the ability to hand-select your new leads.

Not only does TruLead® prevent you from spambot registrations, but it also lets you filter out people who don’t fit your target audience.

For example, if you’re in business-to-business (B2B) sales, you can block role-based emails like “info@,” “admin@,” “help@,” or other email addresses that won’t serve your business.

This is important because sometimes people are drawn to your lead magnet, but don’t want to use their real email address.

TruLead® makes sure that anyone who gets on your list has enough interest in your products or services to use their real email address.

That means you’re paying to keep leads on your contact list that will never transform into customers.

TruLead® is a fool-proof method for preventing spam registrations on WordPress.

Want to try it out for yourself? OptinMonster users can signup for a free 30-day trial of TruLead® to get started.

That’s all for today! We hope you found this post helpful in your efforts to fight spam and fake registrations.

If you did find this article useful, you’d likely benefit from the following resources:

• Why Your Emails Go to Spam (& How to Fix It)
• How to Add reCAPTCHA to Your Email Optin Forms
• Permission-Based Email Marketing: Everything You Need to Know

These posts will have even more information on protecting yourself from spam and ensuring that you don’t come off as spam to your new clients.