CAPTCHAs put the work of stopping spam onto the people you most want to hear from. Puzzles slow everyone down, and they can shut some people out altogether: the W3C has documented for years how visual and audio CAPTCHAs fail people with disabilities. Even invisible versions decide behind the scenes: Google’s reCAPTCHA v3 documentation describes returning a score for each request and leaving it to you to decide what to do with low scores.

If you’d like to remove the CAPTCHA but are worried about what happens next, here’s a safe way to do it.

1. Install Cayve alongside your CAPTCHA

Don’t remove anything yet. Add your site and install the plugin. Your CAPTCHA keeps working, and Cayve starts checking every submission that gets past it.

New sites run in shadow mode for seven days: Cayve records what it would have done and lets every message through. Nothing about your forms changes.

2. Read a week of decisions

Open Cayve → Messages in WordPress and look at the Would have acted tab, or open the site in your dashboard. You’re checking two things:

  • Is anything real being caught? For each “would have held” or “would have blocked”, read the reasons. If one is a real customer, mark it as a real message; Cayve learns from it on your site straight away.
  • Is spam still getting past your CAPTCHA? Most sites find some does. Each one Cayve catches is spam your visitors’ puzzle-solving didn’t stop.

3. Switch protection on

When you’re comfortable, switch the site from Shadow mode to Protecting on its page in the dashboard. Cayve now holds and blocks according to the site’s rules, still with your CAPTCHA in place.

4. Remove the CAPTCHA

Take the CAPTCHA off one form first, ideally your busiest. Watch the decisions for a few days. If the held queue stays manageable and nothing real is lost, remove it from the rest.

5. Tune, if you need to

  • Too many real messages held? Raise the site’s hold score in its rules.
  • Too much junk delivered? Lower it.
  • A kind of message you’d rather see, like sales pitches? Set that category to Let it through.

What changes for your visitors

Nothing to check, nothing to solve, nothing to wait for. Your form goes back to being as short as you designed it.