Akismet vs Contact Form 7 – PayPal & Stripe Add-on
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| Feature | Akismet v5.7.2 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.7/5 Visit Details | Contact Form 7 – PayPal & Stripe Add-on v2.5.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.2/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 5M+ | 7,000+ |
| Last updated | August 18, 2026 | October 7, 2026 |
| Editions | Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection · Akismet paid plan ($) | Contact Form 7 - PayPal & Stripe Add-on · Contact Form 7 - PayPal & Stripe Add-on Pro ($) |
| Pros | Checks comments and contact form submissions against a shared spam database; Works with Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms; Stats through a dashboard widget and REST endpoints | Per-form PayPal and Stripe settings inside the Contact Form 7 editor; Payments history stored as a post type; PayPal sandbox mode, currency and language options; Works with PayPal only, Stripe only or both |
| Cons | Needs an Akismet API key from akismet.com; Commercial sites must buy a paid plan; Submitted content is sent to Akismet for checking | Free version adds a 2% per-transaction fee; Form email is sent before payment; payment-gated email is Pro; Stripe Connect and PayPal onboarding run through the vendor's server |
| Mentioned in our posts | 2 | 1 |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Checks comments before they are saved, Spam checks for Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7 submissions, Scheduled deletion of old spam and orphaned comment meta, Block statistics dashboard widget, REST endpoints for key, settings and stats, Webhook endpoint for Akismet account updates, Stats ability for the WordPress Abilities API | PayPal and Stripe tab in each Contact Form 7 form, Payments list stored as a custom post type, Cron job that checks pending payment status, Redirect to Stripe Checkout after submission, PayPal Commerce Platform and standard PayPal checkout, Sandbox mode, currency and PayPal language settings, Custom cancel and success return URLs, Dashboard widget with payment summary, No 2% per-transaction fee ($) |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | — | PayPal, Stripe |
| Plugins | Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Jetpack | Contact Form 7 |
| Other | Akismet | — |
| Requires WordPress | 5.8 | 4.7 |
| Requires PHP | 7.2 | 5.5 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | Only if you agree |
| External services | rest.akismet.com | api.stripe.com, wpplugin.org, www.paypal.com, ipnpb.paypal.com, api.wordpress.org |