Enable Minimum Time to Submit

Convert Forms protects your forms from spam bots by requiring users to spend a minimum amount of time on the form before submission. Bots typically fill out and submit forms almost instantly, while real users take time to read and enter information. By enforcing a time delay, you can filter out automated submissions and reduce spam.

How it works

When enabled, the form tracks how long the user has been on the page before allowing submission. If the form is submitted faster than the specified time, it is flagged as spam and blocked.

Spam bots attempt to bypass normal user behavior by:

  • Injecting data directly into form fields without interacting with the page.
  • Submitting the form immediately after the page loads.
  • Skipping natural actions like reading the form or reviewing input.

Since real users take time to read and fill out a form, this restriction makes it difficult for bots to submit spam while remaining unnoticed by genuine visitors.

How to setup

This option is enabled by default with a minimum time of 2 seconds. If you want to adjust this value, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Behavior panel.
  2. Open the Security and Restrictions section.
  3. Enable the Minimum Time to Submit option.
  4. Enter the desired time in seconds in the input field below.

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If a user attempts to submit the form before the minimum time you configured, they’ll see an error message prompting them to wait a little longer before submitting the form.

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How the timer works

To ensure the timer works accurately, we don’t rely on when the page first loads, as caching or other extensions can cause issues. Instead, we wait until the page is ready, and then we start the timer.

Here’s how it works: when the page is ready for interactions, we send a quick background request (called an XHR request) to start the timer. This background request happens very quickly and only once for all forms on the page.

The timer then starts when the background request is finished, which might be slightly later than when the page first opened. However, this difference is usually less than a second, so it won’t affect the user experience. This method ensures that the timer is accurate, even if your website uses caching to speed up page loading.

Last updated on Mar 31st 2025 15:03