CleanTalk Integration

Automatically check every form submission against CleanTalk’s cloud-based spam database, blocking bots and spam without showing visitors a CAPTCHA. CleanTalk is built into the free Contactum plugin — no Pro required.

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Requirements #

• An active CleanTalk account — get a free access key at cleantalk.org

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1. Get Your CleanTalk Access Key #

1. Sign up (or log in) at cleantalk.org and copy your access key.

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2. Connect CleanTalk in Contactum #

1. Go to Contactum → Settings → Integrations → CleanTalk Spam Protection.
2. Paste in your Access Key.
3. Save.

Contactum sends a test request to CleanTalk to confirm the key is valid. On success you’ll see “API key is valid. CleanTalk spam protection is active.” If the key is invalid, you’ll see “API key is invalid.” instead. You can also re-check a key at any time without leaving the page, using the on-demand verify action.

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3. Enable CleanTalk on a Specific Form #

1. Open the form in the builder.
2. Go to Form Settings → Integrations.
3. Toggle Enable CleanTalk on for this form.

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4. Configure Field Detection #

Field	Description
Email Field Name	The internal name of the field CleanTalk should read the submitter’s email from. Leave blank and Contactum automatically uses the form’s first Email-type field
Name Field Name	Optional — the internal name of a field to send as the submitter’s name, for better spam scoring

Unlike most integrations, these are internal field names, not smart tags — check the field’s Advanced settings in the builder if you’re not sure of its exact name.

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5. How It Works #

When a visitor submits a form with CleanTalk enabled:

1. Contactum resolves the submitter’s email (from your configured field, or auto-detected) and name (if configured), along with their IP address and how long they spent on the form before submitting — a classic bot-detection signal (submissions completed suspiciously fast are more likely to be flagged).
2. This data is sent to CleanTalk’s spam-checking API.
3. If CleanTalk flags the submission as spam, it’s blocked — the visitor sees a rejection message (CleanTalk’s own explanation, when available) and no entry is created.
4. Blocked submissions are recorded in Contactum’s activity log for your review.

CleanTalk fails open: if the CleanTalk API is unreachable or errors out, Contactum lets the submission through rather than blocking a legitimate visitor over a temporary outage on CleanTalk’s side.

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Troubleshooting #

“API key is invalid” #

• Reconfirm the access key was copied exactly from your CleanTalk dashboard.

Legitimate submissions are being blocked #

1. Double-check your Email Field Name mapping — if it’s wrong, CleanTalk may be scoring against an empty or incorrect value, which can affect its spam judgment.
2. Review blocked submissions in CleanTalk’s own dashboard for the specific reason given.

Spam is getting through #

1. Confirm the form actually has Enable CleanTalk toggled on and saved.
2. Confirm your access key still shows as valid — an expired or invalid key means every submission is silently allowed through (fail-open behavior).

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Notes #

• Included in the free Contactum plugin — no Pro upgrade required.
• Auth method: a single access key, verified against CleanTalk’s API.
• Credentials storage: stored in wp_options under the key contactum_cleantalk.
• Fails open, never fails closed — a CleanTalk outage or misconfiguration never blocks legitimate visitors from submitting your form; it simply skips the spam check for that submission.