Recaptcha and Contact Form 7 Conflicts

One of the most popular WordPress contact plugins is Contact Form 7, however it is fairly common for users to find themselves being flooded by unwanted emails. We have a great blog post online containing information on how to stop spam being received yet a recent update to one of the recommended integrations can throw up conflicts between Recaptcha and Contact Form 7 submissions. I take a look at how to keep Recaptcha active on your forms…

Recaptcha and Contact Form 7

Recaptcha from Google is a free security service that protects your websites from spam and abuse. Up until recently, it seamlessly worked alongside Contact Form 7 – the site owner needing to obtain a site key and add a shortcode to their Contact Form in order for it to work.

Lately, I’ve been contacted by a number of clients telling me that since the introduction of V3 of Recaptcha they’ve found that the service either doesn’t work at all or the forms are not allowing the user to submit. In order to get Recaptcha and Contact Form 7 to work again, I’ve been using a plugin that allows backward compatibility for V2 – with the not so imaginatively titled name – Contact Form 7 – reCaptcha v2.

What’s required to stop the conflicts?

Once installed, all you need to do is select the previous version of Recaptcha from the settings tab under Contact, and your Contact Form 7 form submissions / spam detection work as they should. The ‘I’m not a robot’ box is back and submitters are required to complete the check in order to send their message.