How to prevent fake bot signups?
We recommend to use forms created in GetResponse, as they can be easily secured. Forms created through third-party services are outside of our scope of support.
Building an email list is an important task. You need to make sure that you do it properly to have a high-quality list and achieve best results in the email marketing world. Our blog post “25 ways to build your contact list: your ultimate playbook” explains all the important aspects you need to consider when building your list.
Once you’ve built your list, you need to regularly monitor it and take action at the first signs of sender reputation loss, such as decreasing open and click rates, or an increasing spam complaint rate. To make sure your list is a high-quality one, maintain its hygiene. You also want to protect your list from fake bot sign-ups. There are two main types of fake bot sign-ups.
Main types of bot signups
- Bots that sign up hundreds or thousands non-existing email addresses to unprotected forms.
- Bots that sign up one existing email address to hundreds or thousands of lists. This is called mailbombing.
How can I protect my list from fake bot signups
- Add reCAPTCHA to your forms to block automated bot signups before they reach your list. It helps distinguish real users from malicious traffic by analyzing behavior in real time, reducing fake entries, improving data quality, and protecting your list with minimal friction for genuine subscribers.
How can I add a reCaptcha to my sign-up form
- Go to Forms and popups.
- Choose your form and click Edit design.
- Click on the sign-up form element and expand the Subscription settings tab.
- Enable the reCPTCHA toggle.
- Save your project.
How can I add a reCaptcha to my sign-up form on a landing page or a website
Legacy landing pages
Forms added through our Legacy landing pages builder don’t support reCaptcha.
The workaround would be adding a code of the form created in Forms and popups with reCaptcha enabled through the custom code block.
For a landing page
- Go to Tools > Landing pages.
- Choose your landing page, hover the mouse over the action menu and choose Edit settings.
- Scroll down to the Subscription settings section and enable the reCaptcha toggle.
- The settings will automatically save after a few seconds, wait until you see the Changes saved message.
For a website
- Go to Tools > Website builder.
- Choose your website and click Edit website.
- Click on the sign-up form element and expand the Subscription settings tab.
- Activate the reCAPTCHA option.
- Save your website.
What additional steps can I implement to prevent bot signups
You can disable plain HTML form signups in List Settings.
This setting works only in case of plain HTML forms. It does not apply to subscriptions through our webforms or API. You can read more about it here.
- Go to Contacts > Lists.
- From the Actions menu of a given list (three vertical dots) choose Settings.
- In the Subscription tab, switch the toggle for Disable plain HTML form signups to ON position.
If you use an API subscription and the above doesn’t help, you can also reset your API key.
To do that:
- Go to Integrations and API > API.
- Hover over the three dots to the right of your API key and select Regenerate.
