How to stop spam emails with Contact Form7 reCAPTCHA settings

We often receive inquiries from people who have set up a contact form on WordPress and are receiving several English spam emails per day.

If you are using Contact Form 7, you can block spam emails by setting up reCapcha provided by Google.

Also, please note that reCAPTCHA setting is required for Contact Form 7.

What is google reCAPTCHA?

This is a spam attack prevention tool provided by Google. When you set it up in WordPress, the logo will appear in the bottom right.
Just having your logo on it will protect your contact form from spam attacks.

The most common version of reCAPTCHA is V3

Google reCAPTCHA V3 is currently the mainstream version.
In V2, you check "I'm not a robot" before submitting the form, whereas in V3, an icon appears on the website as mentioned above, protecting the user from spam attacks without them having to do anything when submitting the form.

Google reCAPTCHA Pricing

Google reCAPTCHA has three pricing plans

• reCAPTCHA Enterprise
• reCAPTCHA Enterprise Fraud Prevention
• reCAPTCHA

Other than "reCAPTCHA Enterprise fraud prevention", up to 1 million evaluations per month are free, so generally there is no charge.

If you are using the service without doing anything, you will be using the "reCAPTCHA" plan.

Google reCAPTCHA to change pricing plans from April 2024

Google reCAPTCHA will change its pricing plans from April 1, 2024.

1. "reCAPTCHA Enterprise" now includes transaction protection functionality,40$→1$The price will be reduced to . The free maximum of 1 million ratings per month will be reduced to 10,000.
2. A new "reCAPTCHA Standard" plan has been launched, which allows for 100,000 evaluations per month for 81 TP3T per month.
3. The previously free "reCAPTCHA" plan has had its name changed to reCAPTCHA Lite, and the maximum number of free ratings per month, previously 1 million, will be reduced to 10,000.
4. Non-profits and organizations will still have access to 1 million free ratings.

Change settings due to Google reCAPTCHA plan change

There is no need to change settings due to changes in Google reCAPTCHA plans.
For sites with a lot of traffic, you can switch to the reCAPTCHA Standard or reCAPTCHA Enterprise plan to perform more spam prevention evaluations.

reCAPTCHA settings in Contact Form7

Now, let’s explain how to set up reCAPTCHA in Contact Form 7. The settings are as follows:

• Contact Us
• Integration
• reCAPTCHA

It will be.

Issue a reCAPTCHA key with Google

Two types of keys are issued on the Google reCAPTCHA management screen.

Google reCAPTCHA management page is here

Once this screen opens, click on “v3 Admin Console”.

Click the "+" icon on the top right to register your site's domain.

Register your domain for reCAPTCHA

• Label - You can enter Japanese, but if you enter the domain, you can see which site is protected.
• reCAPTCHA Type – Score-based (v3)
• Domain - Add the domain you want to protect. No https required.

Once you have set up the settings, click the Send button.

Two types of keys will be issued.

Enter the generated reCAPTCHA key into Contact Form7

Contact Form7 integration, reCAPTCHA

• Site Key
• Secret Key

There are two fields to enter. Enter the two keys you issued earlier here.

If you did not set up reCAPTCHA in Contact Form 7

In the email settings, the destination of email (2) should default to the variable that outputs the email address you entered, but I get an error message saying "Insecure email settings are being used without sufficient protection."

Just because an error occurs does not mean you cannot contact us, but it is a good idea to set up reCAPTCHA.