Spam protection and limits
Spam protection for Tessolo forms — human verification, rate limits and monthly quotas — and a checklist for when submissions don't arrive.
Human verification
Published forms can show a verification widget that tells humans from bots. Most visitors see a checkbox or nothing at all; suspicious traffic gets a challenge.
It's a site-wide setting, not per form, and there's nothing to configure once it's on.
It stops automated submissions. It won't stop a person typing nonsense — nothing does.
Rate limiting
A single visitor submitting the same form repeatedly is slowed down automatically. Real people never notice; scripts do.
Monthly quota
Each plan includes a number of submissions per month, from 50 on Free up to 100,000 on Business. See plans and limits.
You're emailed at 80% so it isn't a surprise. At 100% new submissions are refused until the month resets or you upgrade — and the visitor sees an error rather than a silent failure.
The quota counts submissions recorded, so blocked spam doesn't eat it.
When submissions don't arrive
Is the site published?
Only the live site records anything. The editor preview validates the form but stores nothing.
Does the form have a submit button?
Its action has to be Submit form. A button that only looks like one does nothing. The pre-publish check flags this.
Submit once on the live page yourself
Open the published address — not the editor — and send a real submission. If it appears under Form submissions, the form works and the problem is notification.
Check the notification address
Settings → Form notifications. Submissions can be recorded perfectly while nobody is told. Check spam, and add the sending address to your contacts.
Check the quota
If you're over the monthly limit, submissions are refused. The Billing page shows where you are.
Reducing spam that gets through
- Turn on human verification. Biggest single win.
- Add one required field a bot won't fill sensibly — "What's this about?" as a dropdown.
- Don't put your notification address on the page. A form that reaches you is enough; a visible address gets scraped.
- Fewer, better fields. Long forms attract low-quality submissions from people guessing.
Auto-replies and webhooks
Send an automatic email reply to people who fill in a Tessolo form, or push each submission to another system with a webhook, per form.
Uploading and organising
Upload images, video, documents and fonts to a Tessolo site's media library by dragging, pasting or pressing Upload, then search, file into folders and delete.