Spam has always been the thorn in the flesh for Web Developers. Most of the developers spend a lot of time deleting spam which they could have otherwise utilized productively. There have been many instruments to fight spam, but few have been as effective as Akismet over a period of time. Akismet is offered by Automattic and was launched on October 5, 2005. Automattic Inc. is a web development corporation most noted for WordPress.Akismet is a hosted web service that saves time by automatically detecting comment and trackback spam. It is hosted on their servers, but the user is provided access to it through plugins and API. Akismet monitors millions of blogs and forums, watching the methods and tricks used by spammers in real time. Each time a new comment, trackback, or pingback is added to the user’s site, it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs tests on the comment and returns with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Akismet has its competitors in Mollom, Defensio among others, but it has been able to maintain its grip over the market. Akismet has deleted more than 28 billion spams as of June 2011. Akismet is free for personal use while it charges for businesses. It has got three different plans with $50 a month for companies with multiple low traffic sites, $5 for small non-personal sites, and the price varies for personal sites or blogs.
While Defensio and Mollom are cheaper, Akismet maintains the stranglehold because of its algorithm which undergoes frequent fortification and has been able to keep its customers satisfied by fighting spam effectively.
Do check out http://akismet.com/ for more details!
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