No CAPTCHA
Stop asking customers to prove they’re human.
A CAPTCHA makes every visitor do a chore before they can ask you anything. It stops the simple bots, and it waves through the sales pitches, because a person typed them.
Ascue works after someone presses send. Your visitors get a plain form with nothing to solve. You get the real inquiries in your inbox, and the pitches and spam held back.
Free for 50 messages a month. Works with any form that can send an email.
What the puzzle costs.
Researchers had 1,400 people solve 14,000 real CAPTCHAs, the kinds websites use today. People took longer and failed more often than you might expect, and plenty of them simply left.
15–26s
for people to solve a reCAPTCHA picture challenge, and they got it right 81% of the time.
Searles et al., USENIX Security 202318–45%
of the same study’s participants quit after their first CAPTCHA, and they were being paid to finish.
Searles et al., USENIX Security 2023$1–3
per thousand reCAPTCHAs: what a human solving service charges to get a bot past them.
2Captcha’s price list, October 2026
“The very nature of the interactive task inherently excludes many people with disabilities.”
And it lets the worst ones through anyway.
- 01
Bots solve them better than people do.
Comparing its results with published bot attacks, the same study found that bots can match or beat people on both speed and accuracy across the CAPTCHA types it could compare. Bots that can’t solve one pay a solving service a fraction of a cent to do it.
- 02
AI writes spam that reads like a customer.
SentinelOne documented AkiraBot, which writes a unique message for each small business site it hits and gets past CAPTCHAs on the way in.
- 03
Salespeople are people.
The SEO audit, the website rebuild offer and the lead-list seller were typed by a person, who passed the puzzle in a few seconds. A CAPTCHA asks whether someone is human. It was never going to ask what they want.
The same message, two ways in.
What your customer goes through, and what reaches you, with a puzzle in front of the form and with Ascue behind it.
With a CAPTCHA
- 1 A customer writes three sentences about the job they need done.
- 2 They tick “I’m not a robot” and get a grid of pictures to sort.
- 3 Some solve it. Some try twice. Some go back to the search results and pick someone else.
- 4 A salesperson solves it in seconds and sends their pitch.
- 5 You open your inbox to the pitch, and never hear about the customer who left.
The pitch is in your inbox. The lead isn’t anywhere.
With Ascue
- 1 A customer writes three sentences about the job they need done.
- 2 They press send and see your thank-you page. Nothing to solve.
- 3 Ascue reads the message with your business description: a lead.
- 4 It lands in your inbox with the customer as Reply-To, marked Urgent if they need you today.
- 5 The salesperson’s pitch waits in Monday’s digest.
What each one catches.
None of these is perfect, Ascue included. They catch different things, which is why the best setup uses more than one.
A puzzle CAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA v2, hCaptcha
- What your visitor sees
- A checkbox, often a picture puzzle
- Simple bots
- Stopped
- Bots built to get past checks
- Often get through
- Sales pitches typed by people
- Get through
- Scams written to read like customers
- Get through
- When it’s wrong about a customer
- They’re stuck at the puzzle, and you never hear from them
- What it adds to your pages
- A script from Google or hCaptcha
An invisible check
reCAPTCHA v3, Turnstile
- What your visitor sees
- Usually nothing to do, sometimes a checkbox
- Simple bots
- Mostly stopped
- Bots built to get past checks
- Some get through
- Sales pitches typed by people
- Get through
- Scams written to read like customers
- Get through
- When it’s wrong about a customer
- They’re blocked or challenged, and you never hear from them
- What it adds to your pages
- A script from Google or Cloudflare
A honeypot
A hidden field only bots fill in
- What your visitor sees
- Nothing
- Simple bots
- Mostly stopped
- Bots built to get past checks
- Often get through
- Sales pitches typed by people
- Get through
- Scams written to read like customers
- Get through
- When it’s wrong about a customer
- Rare. Some forms keep the message as spam; some drop it
- What it adds to your pages
- One hidden field
Ascue
Reads each message after send
- What your visitor sees
- Nothing
- Simple bots
- Caught free, before any check
- Bots built to get past checks
- Blocked in bursts; the rest judged on what they wrote
- Sales pitches typed by people
- Held as pitches
- Scams written to read like customers
- Some get through
- When it’s wrong about a customer
- Delivered marked Ask me, or held 30 days for you to release
- What it adds to your pages
- Nothing, or a tiny script from your own site (WordPress)
Drop the puzzle. Keep the hidden defenses.
Taking the CAPTCHA off doesn’t mean leaving the door open. It means using defenses your visitors never see.
Step by step: removing a CAPTCHA safely- Keep a honeypot. A hidden field that people never see and simple bots fill in. Most form plugins have one built in or as a free add-on, and the W3C’s accessibility group recommends considering one. It’s one more thing a bot has to get past before Ascue even sees its message.
- Check what your form sends the visitor. Ascue doesn’t change emails your form sends to the person who filled it in. If yours sends a copy or a confirmation, a bot can type someone else’s address and use your form to mail them. Without a bot check, turn that copy off or keep an invisible check.
- Add an invisible check. On WordPress, Ascue’s plugin has one built in: a tiny puzzle the visitor’s browser solves in the background, served and checked by your own site. With other forms, if bots still pour through, a check visitors don’t interact with, such as Cloudflare Turnstile in its non-interactive or invisible mode, stops them before they reach Ascue.
- Let Ascue sort the rest. What’s left is the hard part: pitches typed by people, AI-written spam and real customers. Ascue reads each one with your business description, sends the leads through and holds the rest. When a bot floods your form, its attack protection blocks the bot without using your checks.
Questions about going CAPTCHA-free.
Can I really take the CAPTCHA off my contact form?
For most small business forms, yes, as long as something invisible still screens out simple bots. A honeypot does that without visitors noticing. Ascue then sorts what gets through, including the sales pitches no CAPTCHA was ever going to stop. How to remove it safely.
Won’t bots use up my checks?
Not the obvious ones. A check is used only when Ascue asks its model about a message, so messages its quick checks catch, messages blocked during a bot attack, and repeats of a message from the last day are all free. If you do run out, messages that need a check are delivered unsorted until the next month or an upgrade, not dropped. How Ascue handles bot attacks.
Does Ascue slow my form down?
No. Your visitor sees your thank-you page as usual. The WordPress plugin hands the message to Ascue, which answers at once and sorts it afterwards; if it hasn’t answered within 4 seconds, your form sends its normal email instead. With email forwarding, your form doesn’t wait on Ascue at all.
Is it accessible?
There’s nothing for visitors to see or do. The WordPress plugin’s browser check runs in the background without any input, so there’s nothing to make accessible. Your form works exactly as it did without the CAPTCHA.
What about privacy?
Ascue never sees visitors who don’t send anything: email forwarding adds nothing to your pages, and the WordPress plugin’s browser check is served and checked by your own site. For messages people do send, the plugin also passes on the visitor’s IP address for blocking bots, which Ascue turns into a keyed hash at once. Message text is deleted after 30 days unless you opt in to help improve Ascue, and never shown to another customer. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work with my form?
If your form can email you, yes: point its notification at your Ascue address. There’s a WordPress plugin for Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms and Elementor Pro, and form webhooks and an API for everything else. Read the setup guides.
Give your customers the plain form back.
Sign up, point your form’s notification email at Ascue, and take the puzzle off. Free for your first 50 messages a month, no card needed.