iQ Block Country icon

iQ Block Country

by Pascal

View on WordPress.org
78 Quality Score
Active Installs
19/30

With 20,000 active installs, iQ Block Country is a mid-tier plugin in the geo-blocking space, well behind the million-install general-purpose alternatives but clearly solving a niche problem that has drawn a stable user base.

Update Freshness
25/25

The plugin was last updated on 2026-06-17, was tested against WordPress 7.0, and requires PHP 7.4, which together signal an actively maintained codebase compatible with current WordPress releases.

User Rating
12/15

An aggregate score of 78 out of 100 across 164 ratings is acceptable but indicates a noticeable share of users have run into friction, likely around edge cases in IP geolocation accuracy or rule configuration.

Support Health
8/15

Support health is the weakest signal in the profile, with zero out of zero support threads, meaning the developer has not engaged publicly through the official WordPress support forum for at least the current reporting window.

WP Compatibility
15/15

A perfect compatibility score reflects both the modern PHP 7.4 requirement and confirmed testing against WordPress 7.0, so installation on a current site should be smooth.

Scores higher than 68% of indexed plugins

About

Allow or disallow visitors from certain countries accessing (parts of) your website

Active Installs 20k+
Rating ★★★½ 3.9/5
Last Updated 2026-09-01 7:21am GMT
Requires WordPress 3.5.2+
Tested Up To 7.1
Requires PHP 7.4+

Security History

5 known vulnerabilities, all patched
5 Medium

Most recent: September 26, 2022

View details ▸

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What It Does

iQ Block Country enables WordPress site owners to allow or deny access to a site, specific pages, or sections based on the visitor's geographic location. It uses IP-based geolocation to identify a visitor's country and applies configurable blocking rules per page, post, or globally. Admins can manage whitelists, blacklists, and redirect behaviour from the WordPress dashboard.

Who It's For

This plugin fits sites whose content, products, or services are restricted by territory, such as online gambling operators, streaming platforms, e-commerce stores that cannot ship certain goods abroad, or news outlets with regional licensing and paywall obligations. It is also useful for education platforms that vary pricing by country and for legal or SaaS businesses bound by jurisdictional agreements.

Who Should Skip It

If your audience is uniformly domestic or you only need to stop bad actors by IP, range, or known spam source, a full country-blocking plugin is overkill and a lighter blocking tool like an IP deny list will do the job without the false positives that come with IP-to-country accuracy limits.

The Bottom Line

iQ Block Country earns a 78.46 out of 100 and is a competent, actively maintained choice when territorial access control is genuinely required by licensing, law, or product strategy. Its weak spot is the silent support channel, so operators of high-stakes sites should test redirect behaviour and caching interactions thoroughly before relying on it in production.

Tags

ban countries block Block countries block spam Geoblocking