Contact Form 7 vs Spam Master
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| Feature | Contact Form 7 v6.2.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.0/5 Visit Details | Spam Master v7.7.9 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.2/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 10M+ | 200+ |
| Last updated | October 21, 2026 | August 20, 2026 |
| Editions | Contact Form 7 | Spam Master · Spam Master Pro ($) |
| Pros | Completely free, with no upsells in the code; Several spam options: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, Turnstile, quiz, disallowed list; Stripe payment field and Brevo contact sync built in | No captcha and no visitor-facing puzzles; Honeypot and blocklist checks on forms and registrations; Works with WooCommerce, WPForms and BuddyPress |
| Cons | No visual drag-and-drop builder; forms are markup; No conditional logic or multi-step forms without add-ons; Does not store submissions without Flamingo | Sends blocked-attempt details to the vendor service; Some features are only in the Pro edition; Depends on the vendor service being reachable |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | 1 |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Drag-and-drop builder | No | — |
| Conditional logic | No | — |
| Multi-step forms | No | — |
| Payments | Yes | — |
| File upload | Yes | — |
| Calculations | No | — |
| Entries in admin | No | — |
| Spam protection | Yes | — |
| Free version | Yes | — |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Form-tag markup editor for fields and mail templates, Block editor contact form selector, REST API for forms and submission feedback, Quiz and Really Simple CAPTCHA tags, Spam check against the WordPress disallowed comment keys, Saves submissions to Flamingo when that plugin is active | Firewall that blocks flagged requests with a 403, Honeypot checks for spam bots, Licence key requested from the vendor service, Weekly stats email to the site administrator, spam-master-validation shortcode, UPGRADE TO PRO link in the plugin row |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | Stripe | — |
| Brevo (Sendinblue) | — | |
| E-commerce | — | WooCommerce |
| Plugins | Akismet, Flamingo | WPForms, BuddyPress |
| Other | Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile | Spam Master vendor service (learn and licence API) |
| Requires WordPress | 7.1 | 5.0 |
| Requires PHP | 8.3 | 7.4 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | Yes |
| External services | api.stripe.com, www.google.com, www.recaptcha.net, challenges.cloudflare.com, api.sendinblue.com | www.spammaster.org |
| Blocks | 1 | — |
| Shortcodes | 2 | 2 |