Stop Spammers vs Vanilla Forums
Compare WordPress plugins and tools side by side. Pick products with “Compare” in the software directory.
| Feature | Stop Spammers v2026.6 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free + paid · ★ 4.4/5 Visit Details | Vanilla Forums v1.3.1 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 2.8/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 20,000+ | 100+ |
| Last updated | July 18, 2026 | July 3, 2020 |
| Editions | Stop Spammers Classic | Vanilla Forums |
| Pros | Checks IPs against StopForumSpam, BotScout and Akismet; Captcha challenge on login, registration and comment forms; Allow list, block list and activity reports | Embeds the forum or replaces blog comments with forum threads; Forum widgets for discussions, activity and active users; Single sign-on through jsConnect |
| Cons | Legacy build; new features are not planned; Successor Dam Spam is the recommended plugin; Several external lookups send visitor IPs to third-party services | Needs a Vanilla forum, hosted or self-hosted, to connect to; Last tested with WordPress 5.3 per the readme; Replaces native comments once a forum URL is set |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | 1 |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Spam checks run on each request at init, Captcha challenge on login, registration and comment forms, Checks 404 hits for exploit-scanning bots, Allow list and block list screens, Reports of caught spam, Tor exit node and hosting-provider checks, Logs IP address on user registration and login | Embed the Vanilla forum inside a WordPress page, Replace native blog comments with Vanilla threads, Discussion, activity and active-user widgets, Single sign-on with jsConnect, Choose forum category for embedded content and widgets |
| Integrations | ||
| Plugins | Akismet | — |
| Other | StopForumSpam, BotScout, Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Solve Media | Vanilla Forums |
| Requires WordPress | 5.0 | 3 |
| Requires PHP | 5.0 | — |
| Tested up to | 7.0 | 5.3 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | www.google.com, hcaptcha.com, verify.solvemedia.com, www.stopforumspam.com, botscout.com, rest.akismet.com, api-secure.solvemedia.com | — |