Prevent spam in form submissions

Updated

Use Webflow settings to keep your form submissions free of spam.

If you’ve published your site to the webflow.io staging subdomain or to a custom domain using a Site plan, you can enable email notifications for form submissions received on your site. And, if you fully own a website (that is, it’s not a client’s site), then you can also access this data under Forms in your Site settings and in the Editor.

There are four main methods of preventing spam in form submissions: CAPTCHA systems, bot detection, spam filtering, and the honeypot technique.

CAPTCHA systems

CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) systems are authentication tests designed to differentiate bots from human site visitors. Webflow supports CAPTCHA systems via the reCAPTCHA field, which asks site visitors to identify themselves as human before submitting a form.

While CAPTCHA systems are effective at preventing automated spam, they can negatively impact user experience, and can also be circumvented by more advanced bots.

Bot detection

Webflow supports bot detection through a native site-level setting:

  1. Go to Site settings > Forms > Bot detection
  2. Turn on bot detection
  3. Save your changes
  4. Publish your site

Webflow’s bot-blocking setting uses AI to analyze mouse movements, inputs, and other signals on your site to separate bots from valid site users and block form submissions from bots. When this setting is enabled, bot detection applies to all forms on your site. You can use this alongside other spam prevention methods like reCAPTCHA and spam filtering.

Spam filtering

Webflow supports spam filtering through a native site-level setting: 

  1. Go to Site settings > Forms > Spam filtering
  2. Turn on spam filtering 
  3. Save your changes‍
  4. Publish your site

Spam filtering checks all form data sent on your site to determine and filter out spam submissions. When this setting is enabled, spam filtering applies to all forms on your site.

Honeypot technique 

The honeypot technique is a spam-defense technique that uses a hidden form field to detect spam. When a bot fills out the hidden field, the form submission is recognized as spam and discarded.

To use the honeypot technique on your Webflow site, you can include a hidden form field in your form and use custom code to block form submissions. Learn more about using the honeypot technique in Webflow.

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