You know the drill. You’re super excited about a new purchase, commenting on a thrilling discussion in a forum, or providing feedback to an organization. You spend your time completing forms, writing thoughtful comments, or customizing your order only to find yourself trying to “check all the boxes with a stoplight in them” before actually submitting your information.
Everyone hates CAPTCHA puzzles, yet businesses continue to use them to filter out spam. Today, we’re going to explore the six best alternatives to CAPTCHA, all of which can protect you from spam activities without frustrating your prospects and customers. Finally, we’ll show you how Akismet uses machine learning to get progressively smarter about permanent spam removal.
The downsides of CAPTCHA and why alternatives are needed
For years, users have been patient with CAPTCHA, which was one of the first solutions that helped pave the way to spam‑free websites. It stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” But like all solutions, there’s always room for improvement, and in today’s day and age, we need to find a better way to fight spam.
First, CAPTCHA puzzles are problematic for those with visual impairments, requiring not only the ability to see the CAPTCHA challenge but often to decipher extremely nuanced details within the images. Tests that require the user to type a string of characters can be difficult for dyslexic individuals, and some may be unfamiliar with cultural icons or graphics in visual ones.
Second, with so many technologies focused on enhancing user experience, frustrations like the inability to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle will stand out more, negatively affecting your conversion and engagement rates. Typically, CAPTCHA puzzles can take ten seconds or more to solve and interrupt your user at a critical point in their engagement journey — right before they check out, submit a comment, or request more information.
One study by SEO software company, Moz, found that many users abandon forms when they encounter a CAPTCHA — resulting in an overall conversion rate drop of three percent. Another study by Stanford found that only 71 percent of users even attempt to solve a CAPTCHA before abandoning the page altogether.
If that’s not enough, a CAPTCHA may incorrectly identify a real human being as a bot, blocking further interaction with a site, while allowing more sophisticated, advanced bots through.
Researchers at the University of California in Irvine recently conducted a study testing both humans and bots on popular CAPTCHA puzzles. The study found that bots solved distorted‑text CAPTCHA tests almost perfectly in less than a second, while human beings had an accuracy rate of between 50 percent and 84 percent, spending up to 15 seconds per puzzle.
Finally, it takes some significant computing power for CAPTCHAs to work properly, slowing down load times for web pages and adding to user frustration.
Unfortunately, efforts to improve CAPTCHA puzzles are still lacking. Audio versions were supposed to be a solid solution, but analysis shows that they’re more time intensive and significantly more difficult for certain users depending on their native language. Another study noted a 50 percent failure rate with audio options.
Forcing people to complete any kind of test is simply not the best option if you want to maximize engagement and conversions.
What to look for in bot and spam protection
Before jumping into the six alternatives to CAPTCHA puzzles, here are some key things you’ll want to look for when choosing your bot‑detecting solution.
First, you’ll want to be sure that your solution can successfully block bots and spam while allowing prospects and customers easy access to your site and offerings. Unfortunately, a static software solution won’t work, as bad actors are continuously trying to up their game with more sophisticated, human‑like bots all the time. Be sure your selected alternative can stay ahead of the bot creators.
Second, be sure your alternative is either much easier to complete, or, better yet, invisible to your prospects, customers, and visitors. Your goal is to reduce or eliminate friction to create a more positive overall user experience.
Along the same lines, look for a cloud-based solution so that your page load times are unaffected by the bot-catching activities.
Finally, you must ensure that your solution complies with global and local government data privacy rules and regulations. Remember that CAPTCHA alternatives cannot protect your site alone; instead, they must be one component of an overall security program to protect your site from malicious activity and threats.
What are the best alternatives to CAPTCHA?
Fortunately, several alternatives to CAPTCHA are available on the market today, working to block spam effectively, without negatively affecting your user experience. Here are the top six to consider:
1. Akismet
Founded in 2005, Akismet has been on a mission to rid the world of spam for nearly two decades. Its solution is different from CAPTCHA, primarily because it works completely in the background of a website and does not rely on user input to identify bot or spam attacks. As a result, it protects sites from unwanted bot activity without relying on prospects, customers, or visitors to prove they’re human.
More than 100 million customer websites rely on Akismet, which has successfully removed more than 500 billion pieces of online spam from the web. Used by both WordPress sites and others, Akismet has generated one of the largest databases of spam activity in the world.
In addition, the solution relies on advanced machine learning technology to continuously improve, staying ahead of the bad actors who are always looking for new ways to break through site protections.
Self‑hosted spam‑fighting solutions can negatively affect the performance of the site itself, slowing down page load speeds. Akismet is a cloud‑based solution, removing the operating activity from your site while delivering the protection you desire.
2. A honeypot
A honeypot anti‑spam trap is designed to trick harmful bots and spam generation programs into identifying themselves as spam. Like a real honeypot that attracts various people, animals, and insects, a honeypot anti‑spam trap lures bots and spam programs with something that’s not visible to human beings.
One of the most common honeypot anti‑spam traps is to incorporate a field within the code that is not required or even seen by a human completing the real contact, order, or comment form. A bot, however, will scan that field and complete it, revealing its identity as a robot spammer.
The honeypot then filters out and deletes that submission. While this method of spam detection can be effective for some basic bots, the honeypot anti‑spam trap can be circumvented by more sophisticated spam efforts.
3. Time‑based form submissions
Another CAPTCHA alternative is time‑based form submissions. The idea is that humans will take a certain amount of time to complete a form, submit an order, or write a comment, while bots typically submit spam responses much faster.
Although time‑based form submissions can work in theory to weed out the most basic bots, bad actors who are set on spam attacks can easily program a bot to slow down its activity. So companies that use this method are hoping that spammers targeting their site will be too unsophisticated to slow down their bot submissions and will just move on to other targets. This is, frankly, a fairly weak form of protection.
4. reCAPTCHA v3
reCAPTCHA v3 is a more advanced bot detection solution, helping site owners identify spam activity on their website and customize the level of protection to suit their risk tolerance.
Like the other CAPTCHA alternatives, version three doesn’t rely on user interaction to make the bot or spam determination, but works in the background of a website. It uses adaptive risk analysis to alert site owners of suspicious behaviors and should be placed on multiple pages so that patterns of abusive activities are more accurate.
While this sounds pretty lovely, there are a fair number of downsides to using reCAPTCHA v3. First, though it allows for more customized control by site owners, it also requires advanced setup and integration with Google’s API, which could be difficult for the average site owner.
There’s some pushback around privacy, as it provides Google with a lot of data, and it can also prevent the functioning of certain positive bots, like SEO crawlers.
And while it’s good at detecting spammers, it’s known to falsely label real user interactions as spam without providing recourse for these individuals.
5. Reimagined CAPTCHA puzzles
With reducing friction is the number one reason businesses want to find a CAPTCHA alternative, there have been developments in simplifying the puzzles themselves. For example, instead of presenting blurry pictures and asking users to identify some random item in each of them, organizations have added a field at the end of their form asking for the solution to a simple math problem.
Similar solutions require checking a box to indicate that visitors are human, using a slider bar before completing the submission, or playing a short drag‑and‑drop game to continue.
All of these function very much like popular CAPTCHA puzzles, but may be less frustrating for the user. Unfortunately, more sophisticated bots may be able to find ways to complete these tasks as easily or better than human beings. And any barrier, even if it’s quick to get through, will deter some positive activity.
6. General web security protections
If you run a site, you already know the importance of site security and probably have some general protections like firewalls, multifactor authentication, and malware detection in place.
While these can protect your site from a wide variety of cybersecurity threats and may prevent some spammy behavior in the process, they aren’t really designed to specifically address spam.
It’s important for every website to find a solution for this specific problem to keep your comment sections, form submissions, and order process free from spam and bot activity.
Why Akismet is the best CAPTCHA alternative
Whether you’re a WordPress user or rely on another website platform, Akismet is the best alternative to CAPTCHA. First and foremost, its ability to work completely behind the scenes means that your website visitors are released from the task of solving time‑consuming, frustrating puzzles before completing an order, leaving a comment, or filling out a form.
This fact alone means that you’ll improve your user experience, reduce friction in engaging with your organization, and increase conversions. All of those benefits ultimately lead to higher profits and long‑term success.
In addition, because Akismet has been on a mission to remove spam from the web for nearly 20 years, it has amassed a significant database of spam information and taken advantage of machine learning technology to stay ahead of spam creators. This experience and massive database means that Akismet is incredibly effective at identifying spam and is continuously improving its performance.
With 99.9% accuracy, though, it’s already at the top of the game.
Finally, Akismet doesn’t negatively affect the performance of your website because it operates in the cloud. This means that page load times don’t decrease, even as Akismet is busy protecting your organization from bot attacks and spam.
To learn more about how Akismet can protect your business, reach out today.
Frequently asked questions
What is CAPTCHA?
A CAPTCHA is a computer‑generated test used to differentiate humans from bots. It became a popular way to block spam attacks automatically in the early 2000s. CAPTCHA tests may include checking a box, typing a series of characters, or solving a visual puzzle before comments, forms, or orders are submitted.
Why is there a need to find alternatives to CAPTCHA?
CAPTCHA tasks can be extremely frustrating to users, especially when they’re difficult to solve or incorrectly identify a human as a bot. They create a poor user experience, reduce conversions, and can leave a negative brand impression. They also limit engagement with visually impaired visitors.
Is it possible to stop spam without CAPTCHA?
Yes, fortunately, there are alternatives to fight spam effectively without using CAPTCHA puzzles. The most effective is Akismet, which not only successfully removes and blocks spam from websites, but continuously improves its performance through machine learning.
What is Akismet?
Akismet is a cloud‑based, spam‑fighting solution that works completely in the background to rid your site of malicious activity. It requires no interaction from your users, which means no added friction in your user experience. Akismet has successfully removed more than 500 billion pieces of spam from the web.
Why is Akismet the best alternative to CAPTCHA?
Akismet is the best alternative to CAPTCHA because it successfully blocks spam by working behind the scenes, freeing your visitors from frustrating puzzles. With nearly two decades of experience, Akismet has one of the largest spam databases available and continues to improve its detection capabilities through machine learning technology.
Akismet 