RobArt Email Guard

Keep your email addresses visible to customers, but harder for spam bots to collect.

Publishing an email address on your website makes it easy for customers to contact you. Unfortunately, automated email harvesters can also scan page content, collect addresses, and add them to spam lists.

RobArt Email Guard helps protect publicly displayed email addresses and mailto: links without replacing them with images, awkward “name [at] domain” text, or compulsory contact forms. Visitors can still click to email you, while common scraping methods have a much harder time finding an address in your page source.

Enable automatic protection for emails in your content, or use a shortcode when you want precise control over individual addresses. Choose between two free obfuscation methods, view discovered and protected emails in the admin area, and adjust link styling to fit your website.

Why choose RobArt Email Guard?

• Protect email addresses from common harvesting bots — obscure the addresses and mailto: links shown on your website.
• Keep email links clickable — genuine visitors can still open their email application from a link.
• Automatic email protection — detect and protect addresses in posts and pages without manually updating each link.
• Two free protection methods — choose HTML entity encoding or JavaScript hydration.
• Precise shortcode control — protect individual addresses and customise their link text or protection method.
• Protected Emails report — see discovered addresses, where they appear, and their protection status.
• Flexible link styling — change colours, hover colours, underline styles and bold appearance without writing CSS.
• Works on your own website — free email protection does not require a third-party scanning service.

Two ways to protect emails for free

1. HTML entity encoding

Transforms an email address and its mailto: link into HTML character entities. Browsers interpret these entities and display a working email link, while the raw markup is less straightforward for basic harvesting scripts to extract. No JavaScript is required.

2. JavaScript hydration

Leaves the email address out of the initial page source and recreates its clickable link in the visitor’s browser. This is a useful option when you want to make addresses less accessible to bots that collect only the original HTML.

You can choose a default protection method in settings and override it for individual shortcode links.

Automatic email protection — no shortcode required

Turn on automatic scanning and RobArt Email Guard identifies email addresses and mailto: links in post and page content and protects them as your pages are displayed. Existing content does not need to be rewritten to benefit from this feature.

For email links placed directly in theme templates or page-builder elements, the shortcode offers more direct control where it can be used.

Protect a specific email with a shortcode

Add a protected, clickable email link wherever WordPress processes shortcodes:

[raeg_secure_email address="[email protected]"]

Use custom link text:

[raeg_secure_email address="[email protected]" text="Email our team"]

Choose a protection method for one address:

[raeg_secure_email address="[email protected]" method="js"]

The shortcode also supports method="encode". The method="reveal" option requires Pro.

See which email addresses are protected

The Protected Emails report helps you identify the addresses your site is displaying and protecting. It shows the email address, the location where it was encountered, and its status.

The reporting feature can record protected addresses seen in page-builder content, theme templates and other front-end output as those pages are viewed. Use Re-scan to refresh the report.

Make protected links match your design

Use your theme’s existing link appearance or configure link colour, hover colour, solid/dotted/dashed underline, and bold styling from Email Guard settings. The raeg-email CSS class is available for additional theme-level control.

Free features and Pro upgrade

Included in the free plugin:

• HTML entity encoding
• JavaScript hydration
• Automatic email scanning and protection
• [raeg_secure_email] shortcode
• Protected Emails report and re-scan
• Email link styling controls

Available in Pro:

• Click to Reveal — an email address is retrieved from your own server when a visitor clicks, rather than appearing in the initial page source.
• Reveal appearance options — use an inline link or compact pill, with custom button text.

Pro is optional; the free version includes both standard obfuscation methods and automatic protection.

What this plugin can and cannot stop

Email obfuscation is not a guarantee against every scraper. HTML entity encoding can be decoded, and browser-based bots can run JavaScript. Click to Reveal (Pro) adds an interaction step, but a sufficiently capable bot could still retrieve a revealed address. RobArt Email Guard is designed to reduce exposure to automated email harvesting, not to promise complete prevention of spam.

Uninstall

Deleting RobArt Email Guard through the Plugins screen removes its settings and stored options. Protection is applied when content is displayed, so uninstalling does not rewrite your stored content. No custom tables are left behind.

External Services

RobArt Email Guard does not send data to external services during normal free-plugin operation. Email protection happens on your own website.

Click to Reveal (Pro) contacts your own website’s WordPress admin-ajax endpoint to retrieve an address after visitor interaction. This request does not use a third-party provider.

For activated Pro licences, licence validation and update delivery contact the RobArt licence server at robart-illustration.eu when checking a licence or fetching a Pro update.