11 Best Commenting Systems & Platforms for Websites in 2025

If you own a website, commenting systems are super important. They’re like the foundation of conversations online, letting people share their thoughts and interact with what you’ve posted. But there are many options out there, which can make picking one web comment widget tricky.

This guide will review the top 11 commenting systems. We’ll examine their offerings, ease of use, and compatibility with your website, which should help you choose the one that best suits your site.

What are Commenting Systems for Websites?

Commenting systems, called commenting platforms, are essential for websites like blogs and news sites. They allow visitors to interact with content by leaving comments directly on the page.

These systems help build a community around the website’s content, making it more lively and engaging.

The central part of any commenting system is the comment box, where users can write and post their thoughts. But many systems go beyond this essential function. They offer extra features like threaded comments so users can reply to specific comments and start sub-conversations. 

There are also moderation tools to handle spam and inappropriate content, reaction buttons for quick feedback, and analytics to track engagement.

Check out the following options to add a comment widget to your website:

Best Commenting Systems for Websites & Blogs

1. Common Ninja’s Comments Plugin

Common Ninja is a platform where you can find 200+ widgets for various purposes on your website. Those helpful website widgets can be used on any platform, regardless of the CMS (Content Management System). You can accomplish many things based on the widget, such as creating a tournament bracket, displaying Amazon reviews on a website, adding a Telegram Chat widget, and adding comments functionality to a website.

Common Ninja’s Comments plugin is a comments system with upvotes/downvotes, email notifications, reply threads, and moderation tools. Furthermore, it allows you to display comments based on the domain and URL path, which can be helpful in many circumstances.

So, if you are looking for a simple comment widget for your website, Common Ninja would be an excellent choice, as you can also use its 200+ other widgets.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to create a comments widget for your website using Common Ninja:

Features

• Comment display modes: Common Ninja’s Comments plugin has four different comment display modes:
  1. Per URL path of a website: Displays comments specific to the URL path of a domain
  2. Per Website: Displays comments particular to the website (all comments posted on any page will be displayed on the comments widget)
  3. Per Path: Displays comments that are specific to the current page or path
  4. All: Displays all comments regardless of whichever page they were posted
• Anonymous or verified comments: Enabling email addresses as a requirement for posting comments for readers can reduce spam. This also enables automatic email notifications for replies to the posted comment.
• Comment moderation tools: The comment system lets you manually approve comments and check comment stats on its comment moderation page.
• Comment form adjustments: You can enable features such as upvoting and downvoting and also allow replies. These two features alone will increase engagement drastically and create ongoing conversion among readers. Furthermore, you can show or hide the commenter’s avatar and the date of the comment posted on the comments form widget on your website.
• Email notifications: You can turn on or off the email notifications feature, which will send you an email every time someone comments on your website.
• Localization: Suppose your website serves a local audience whose native language isn’t English. In that case, you can translate front-end messages and create a custom comment form for your local readers. However, if your site also receives a significant portion of international readers, I recommend keeping it as it is.
• Integrations: Common Ninja supports several integrations for the Comments plugin. Security tools such as reCAPTCHA and OOPSpam, as well as Google Analytics, MixPanel, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and Twilio, can be used directly.
• Style your comments widget: Common Ninja’s Comment plugin is highly customizable. Without coding knowledge, you can select a pre-designed color skin and/or change the comment widget’s appearance on the element level. But if you want a personal touch, there is a custom CSS field to add your own styles.
• Integrate comments to your websites: You can easily add the created comments widget to any and all of your website by simply embedding the installation code.

Common Ninja’s Pricing

Common Ninja’s Comments plugin is free to use. However, the free plan is limited to features such as email notifications and lacks advanced customization. Paid plans start at $10 per month for five widgets. These five widgets can be five different commenting form widgets or five separate unique widgets, such as a Facebook feed widget, Image Hotspot, Logo slider, audio player, and contact form widget.

Related: 20 Best Online Form Widget Creators for Website Owners

2. Hyvor Talk

Hyvor Talk is a commenting platform designed for website owners looking to foster community engagement through comments.

The platform can be embedded on any CMS or static site using plugins or manual installation code. Users can engage in real-time discussions, creating a dynamic and interactive experience.

You can customize the appearance and behavior of the comments section with just a few clicks, aligning it seamlessly with their website’s design.

Hyvor Talk can handle large volumes of users and comments, making it suitable for small blogs and large news sites.

Features

• Privacy and No Ads: Hyvor Talk prioritizes user privacy and does not track users or display ads, making it GDPR compliant. This commitment to privacy ensures a clean and focused commenting experience.
• Top-notch Moderation: Hyvor Talk provides advanced moderation tools, including IP moderation, assigning badges, shadow banning, and email moderation. These tools help maintain a healthy and respectful discussion environment.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): SSO allows users to comment using their accounts on your website, streamlining the login process and enhancing security.
• Multi-Language Support: The comments embedded are available in over 30 languages, catering to a global audience.
• Integrations: The platform integrates with many services and frameworks, including WordPress, React, Vue, Svelte, Slack, and Hyvor Blogs, providing developers with flexibility.

• Email Notifications: Users can receive email notifications for replies and mentions, while admins get alerts for new comments.
• Team-friendly: You can add multiple team members as admins and moderators, facilitating collaborative moderation efforts.
• Spam Detection: It has a trainable spam detection system powered by Akismet that helps keep the comment sections free of unwanted spam.
• Paid Memberships: The tool enables paid subscription memberships powered by Stripe, offering an avenue for monetization.
• Badges: You can assign badges to users to recognize and reward their contributions to the community.
• Data Ownership: You own your data and can export it anytime in various formats, such as WordPress WXR or Hyvor Talk JSON. 

Hyvor Talk Pricing

• Premium Plan is ₤12 per month for 1K pageviews and has features like unlimited websites, comments, moderators, and real-time comments
• The business plan is ₤40 per month for 250K pageviews and includes all premium features, such as single sign-on and branded emails.

3. Commento

If you run a blog, you can add Commento to let your readers leave comments. It offers customization options to match the look and feel of your website with just a few lines of CSS.

Users can sign in using their existing accounts from other services, simplifying the login process.

Features

• Easy Integration: Adding Commento.io to your website is straightforward and can be completed in under ten minutes. To embed the Commento widget on any website, you need just a couple of lines of simple HTML.
• Rich Text Support: It supports rich text formatting, allowing users to enhance their comments with styling and structure.
• Voting System: Users can upvote and downvote comments, which helps the community spotlight the most important discussions.
• Automatic Spam Detection: The platform comes equipped with automatic spam detection to keep the comment sections clean and focused on quality content.
• Privacy-Focused: Commento.io stands out for its commitment to user privacy. It does not track users, display ads, or sell user data, making it a GDPR-compliant choice for website owners concerned about their audience’s privacy.
• Fast: The platform is known for its bloat-free design, ensuring that it doesn’t slow down your website. It is significantly lighter than many of its competitors, with a minimal impact on page load times.
• Moderation Tools: It provides robust moderation tools, including the ability to approve or reject comments, ban users, and mark comments as spam.
• Sticky Comments and Thread Locking: Admins can pin important comments to the top of the discussion and lock threads to prevent further comments on specific topics.
• Email Notifications: Both users and admins receive email notifications for new comments, replies, and mentions, keeping the conversation active and informed.
• Import Comments: If you’re switching from another system like Disqus, Commento.io allows you to import your existing comments so you don’t lose any historical discussions.
• Self-Hosted Option: For those who prefer to manage their infrastructure, Commento.io can be self-hosted, giving you complete control over your data.

Commento Pricing

• Monthly Subscription is $10
• Annual Subscription is $99

4. ReplyBox 

ReplyBox is a commenting system that aims to provide a clean, efficient, and user-friendly environment for discussions on websites and blogs. 

It is built with privacy in mind. It doesn’t track users, display ads, or handle personal data inappropriately, ensuring website owners’ and users’ peace of mind.

Features

• Lightweight Design: With a focus on speed, ReplyBox is 15 times lighter than Disqus, making it an agile solution that won’t slow down your website. This contributes to better SEO rankings, as Google favors faster-loading pages.
• Modern and Mobile-Friendly: ReplyBox’s design is modern and minimalist, which makes it look good on all devices.
• Clean Commenting and Moderation: ReplyBox offers a worry-free commenting section with tools to combat spam using Akismet and other methods. It also provides instant moderation control for new comments, allowing for a simple and effective manual approval system.
• Engagement Features: ReplyBox supports markdown, allowing for links, lists, quotes, code blocks, and emojis. It also features nested comments for natural discussions and email notifications to keep users in the loop.
• Localization: The platform supports multiple languages, making it accessible to a broader audience and allowing users to connect in their preferred language.
• Pin a Comment: You can highlight important comments with a simple click, ensuring that valuable insights aren’t lost in the conversation.
• Comment Upvotes: Users can upvote comments, which allows them to show agreement or appreciation without needing a full reply.
• WordPress Integration: ReplyBox can be seamlessly integrated with WordPress, allowing for the easy import of existing comments and synchronization
• Social Login: Users can authenticate via Google or X in just two clicks.
• Webhooks: Notify external services when new comments are added, streamlining workflows and integration with other platforms.

ReplyBox Pricing

Its price is set based on the number of page views (billed annually):

• 20k pageviews is $5 per month
• 100k pageviews is $13 per month
• 250k pageviews is $22 per month

5. Cusdis

Cusdis is a lightweight, open-source commenting system built with a focus on simplicity and ease of integration. This makes it an excellent choice for small to medium-sized websites and blogs. 

Features

• Moderation Dashboard: Cusdis doesn’t require user sign-in for commenting, so all comments are held for moderation by default. The moderation dashboard is provided for easy comment management.
• Lightweight SDK: When gzipped, the JavaScript SDK required to embed Cusdis into your website is only around 5kb. This ensures that adding Cusdis won’t significantly impact your site’s load time.
• Privacy-Friendly: Cusdis doesn’t require users to sign in to comment and doesn’t use cookies. This approach respects user privacy and complies with GDPR.
• Email Notifications: Site owners will receive an email notification when a new comment is posted. This feature includes a Quick Approve link, allowing for easy moderation from mobile devices without needing to log in to the dashboard.
• Webhook Integration: Cusdis allows you to set a webhook URL that will be triggered when new comments are posted. This enables integration with other tools and services, such as Telegram.
• Built-in i18n and Dark Mode: The platform comes with built-in internationalization support and a dark mode, catering to a global audience and modern design preferences
• Universal Embed Code: You can embed Cusdis on any website, making it a versatile solution for various platforms and frameworks.
• One-Click Import from Disqus: If you’re migrating from Disqus, Cusdis offers a one-click import feature to transfer your existing comments seamlessly.

Cusdis Pricing

It offers a free Self-host and Cloud plan. For $12 per year, you can get Cloud Pro to access unlimited benefits.

6. OpenWeb

OpenWeb is a social engagement platform that aims to transform how users interact with content and each other on digital platforms. 

It provides a suite of tools designed to build and nurture online communities around content, enabling publishers to host vibrant conversations directly on their sites. 

Features

• Community Engagement: OpenWeb’s core functionality revolves around creating an interactive space for users to engage with content through comments, polls, “Ask Me Anything” sessions, and live blogs. This fosters a sense of community and keeps conversations on the publisher’s site rather than on external social networks.
• Moderation Tools: OpenWeb provides robust moderation tools that help maintain the quality of discussions. These tools include AI moderation, which utilizes artificial intelligence to moderate comments, and manual moderation tools, which allow users to moderate comments manually. There is also a feature for comment screening, ensuring that comments are screened for abuse before posting.
• Commenting Methods: The platform allows text commenting, enabling users to interact with content via a text comment box. This feature is essential for any commenting system and is well-received by users for its ease of use.
• Analytics: While specific data on analytics features is unavailable, OpenWeb likely offers insights into user demographics and emotional reactions to content. These analytics can help publishers understand their audience better and tailor content to their preferences.
• Tagging and Emojis: Although there isn’t enough data available, tagging and emojis are standard features in commenting systems that enhance user interaction. Tagging allows users to mention others within their comments, while emojis enable them to express emotions more vividly.
• Topic Tracking and Insights Dashboard: OpenWeb includes a module that allows users to track topics of interest, helping them stay engaged with relevant content. The insights dashboard provides valuable data to publishers, offering a deeper understanding of their audience’s behavior and preferences.
• Advertising Modules: OpenWeb offers several advertising modules, which can be a significant source of revenue for publishers. These modules are designed to integrate seamlessly with the content, providing non-intrusive advertising options.

7. Thrive Comments

Thrive Comments is a WordPress comments plugin that revolutionizes the website commenting experience. It’s part of the Thrive Suite of tools, such as Thrive Architect, designed to improve website engagement and conversion rates. 

The plugin offers customizable styles so you can tailor the look of your comments section to match your site’s branding. This includes options for colors, fonts, and layout.

It integrates social sharing features that permit users to share their comments on social media platforms. This not only amplifies the reach of your content but also drives traffic back to your site.

Features

• Engagement-Focused Design: Thrive Comments is built to encourage user engagement. It turns the comment section into an interactive space where users can like, reply, and upvote comments, similar to social media platforms. This approach increases user interaction and keeps visitors on the site longer.
• Comment Moderation: The plugin offers a robust moderation system that allows website owners to manage comments effectively. You can set which user roles can moderate comments, approve comments before they go live, and even hold comments that contain specific words or too many links. This helps maintain a high-quality discussion environment.
• Conversion Boosting: Thrive Comments leverages comments to boost conversions by allowing post-comment actions. For instance, you can redirect first-time commenters to a welcome page, show repeat commenters a social share prompt, or even display an opt-in form after they leave a comment.
• Email Notifications: Users can opt-in to receive email notifications for new replies to their comments, keeping them engaged with the conversation even after they’ve left your site
• Badges and Achievements: To further gamify the commenting experience, Thrive Comments allows you to assign badges and achievements to users. This rewards active community members and encourages others to participate more.
• Lazy Load Comments: For performance optimization, Thrive Comments can lazy load the comments section, ensuring that it doesn’t affect the initial page load time. This is crucial for maintaining fast site speeds and good SEO rankings.
• Mobile Optimization: Thrive Comments is fully optimized for mobile devices, ensuring a seamless commenting experience across all platforms.
• Analytics and Reporting: The plugin provides analytics and reporting features, giving you insights into the most active commenters, most commented posts, and overall engagement levels.
• Spam Protection: Thrive Comments has built-in spam protection to keep your comments section clean and focused on genuine engagement
• Integration. If you’re using other products from Thrive Themes, Thrive Comments integrates seamlessly, allowing you to leverage the full power of the Thrive Suite.

Thrive Comments Pricing

It is $49/year for Thrive Comments WordPress plugin.

8. Disqus 

Disqus is a widely recognized commenting platform that has become synonymous with website engagement. 

It offers a suite of features designed to enhance the user experience, increase audience interaction, and provide publishers with valuable insights. 

Features

• Moderation Tools: Disqus offers a comprehensive set of moderation tools to help maintain a positive and constructive environment. Moderators can approve or reject comments, mark them as spam, and ban problematic users. The platform also provides automated pre-moderation settings to filter content based on specific rules and criteria.
• Engagement: It is designed to increase engagement by providing a dynamic space for users to discuss content. It supports threaded comments, allowing for nested replies and conversations within the comment section. Users can upvote or downvote comments, sort them according to various criteria, and share individual comments on social media.
• AI Moderation: Using artificial intelligence, Disqus can automatically moderate comments to reduce the burden on human moderators. This AI system learns from moderator actions to improve its filtering accuracy over time.
• Analytics: Disqus provides publishers with analytics to track engagement metrics such as the number of comments, likes, and popular threads. This data helps publishers understand what content resonates with their audience and how to foster more interaction.
• Monetization: Disqus offers monetization options through its Reveal advertising program. Publishers can earn revenue by displaying native ads within the comment section and control the type and frequency of ads shown.
• Customization: The platform allows publishers to customize the appearance of the comment section to match the website’s design. Publishers can modify colors, fonts, and layouts to create a seamless user experience.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Disqus supports SSO, enabling users to log in with their existing accounts on the publisher’s site. This feature simplifies the login process and encourages more users to participate in discussions.
• Email Notifications: Users can subscribe to email notifications to stay updated on new comments and replies. This keeps the conversation going and brings users back to the site.
• User Profiles: Disqus users have profiles where they can track their comment history, badges earned, and other engagement metrics. This personal touch encourages users to become regular contributors.
• Community Management: Publishers can manage their community with tools like user badges, which reward the most active and constructive participants. This gamification aspect motivates users to engage more with the content.
• Integration: Disqus can be easily integrated with various content management systems, including WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr, making it accessible to a wide range of publishers.

Disqus Pricing

It has a Basic plan, which is free, although it supports ads.

• Plus Plan: Tailored for publishers with a monthly average of up to 900,000 pageviews
• Pro Plan: Designed for publishers with a monthly average of up to 5,000,000 pageviews
• Business Plan: It is set up to cater to large publishers and enterprise-level organizations. Please reach out to their customer support for pricing details.

9. Metype

Metype is a comprehensive user engagement and commenting system designed to enhance the interaction between content creators and their audiences. 

This tool offers customizable configurations, allowing publishers to tailor the comment system’s look and feel to match their website’s style. This flexibility ensures that the engagement tool seamlessly integrates with the site’s design.

It provides robust administration tools for managing properties and moderating comments effectively. Publishers have full control over the discussions taking place on their sites.

Features

• Interaction: Metype enables real-time commenting, allowing users to engage with content as they consume it. This immediacy fosters a dynamic conversation around the content, encouraging users to participate and share their views.
• AI-Driven Moderation: To maintain the quality of discussions, Metype employs advanced AI-driven moderation. This system filters out toxic comments and trolls, ensuring that conversations remain constructive and on-topic.
• Story Reactions: Users can express their reactions to stories through a range of emotive options. This feature enables publishers to gauge audience sentiment towards the content.
• Audience Hook: By engaging readers with stories they love, Metype helps to hook the audience, increasing the time spent on the site and fostering brand loyalty.
• Single Sign-On: The system supports single sign-on (SSO), allowing users to navigate different digital properties without needing to re-authenticate. This feature provides a seamless user experience across various platforms.
• Conversations: The platform is designed to host meaningful conversations, enabling users to express themselves through custom reactions and comments. This feature helps in building a community around the content.
• Toxicity Meter: The toxicity meter is a unique feature that helps monitor the quality of conversations. It alerts administrators to potentially harmful content, allowing for timely intervention.
• Ownership of Comments: With Metype, publishers gain full ownership of all comments made on their properties. This aspect is crucial for maintaining control over the content and discussions.
• WordPress integration: Use the Metype comments system on your WordPress website to manage comments easily.

10. IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate is a feature-rich comment system that enhances and encourages conversation on your blog or website. It is offered by the team at Automatic, which also developed the most popular content management system (CMS), WordPress.

Offers widgets that display blog comment stats, recent comments, popular posts, recent comments made by the user, and top IntenseDebaters.

Allows users to create profiles, adding a personal touch to the conversation and enabling others to learn more about each commenter.

Features

• Moderation/Blacklisting: The platform offers robust moderation options, allowing publishers to customize settings to moderate by keywords, number of links, commenter email, and IP addresses.
• Comment Threading: IntenseDebate improves the conversation within the comment section by allowing users to reply directly to an individual comment. Indented replies make it easier to follow various conversations.
• Plugins API: IntenseDebate has opened its code for developers to introduce their creations into the debate, including video comments, polls, YouTube videos, smileys, and more.
• Reply-By-Email: This feature enables users to respond to and moderate comments via email, which is particularly useful when they’re on the go.
• Email Notifications: Commenters receive email alerts when a response to their comment is posted, linking them directly to the response. This keeps the conversation flowing and engages users.
• Reputation Points & Comment Voting: With IntenseDebate, users can build their commenter reputations based on the quantity and quality of their comments across all sites. This helps bring quality comments to the forefront.
• RSS Readers & Tracking: IntenseDebate integrates with RSS readers like Google Reader and Bloglines, enabling users to read and post comments directly from their RSS reader.
• Facebook Connect: IntenseDebate’s Facebook Connect integration allows anyone with a Facebook account to post comments on your site, opening up the debate to a broader audience.
• X Integration: The system allows commenters to send a simultaneous X post when they post a comment, helping to spread the word about the site and drive new traffic.
• WordPress Plugin Functionality: IntenseDebate’s WordPress plugin includes two-way comment sync, admin panel integration, search engine optimization, trackbacks, profile sync, and post settings, making it a powerful tool for WordPress users

11. GraphComment

GraphComment is a modern comment platform that aims to allow active community engagement on websites. 

User profiles are directly displayed on comments, providing a snapshot of the commenter’s activity across different communities. This helps build a connected audience.

The platform offers a selection of elegant themes, allowing publishers to seamlessly integrate GraphComment into their web design.

Features

• Innovative Interface: GraphComment introduces Bubble Flow, a unique graphical user interface that enhances readability and cleanliness in discussions. This innovation allows for large-scale discussions while maintaining an organized conversation flow.
• Real-Time Engagement: The live Discussions feature enables real-time messaging, akin to a chat system, which keeps the conversation lively and continuous, even with a large number of participants.
• Quality Discussions: The platform employs the Bubble Rank algorithm to prioritize the most relevant discussions. Comments and responses are sorted to display the most interesting ones first, ensuring quality interactions.
• Notification Center: A real-time notification system alerts users about responses, votes received, or badges earned, directly linking them to the relevant point in the conversation.
• Media Integration: Users can embed images, GIFs, and videos directly into comments, and they can fully integrate with media services like YouTube and Instagram.
• Engagement Badges: GraphComment provides a badge system that rewards user actions on the site to engage further the community, which can be deactivated if necessary.
• Discussion Sharing: GraphComment offers a unique sharing feature that lets users share an entire discussion with a unique URL or on social networks.
• Text Formatting: Users can format text within their comments, making words or phrases bold, italicized, underlined, or hyperlinked to emphasize their points.
• WordPress Integration: GraphComment boasts full integration with WordPress, allowing for easy comment management and synchronization with the WordPress database.

GraphComment Pricing

• The Basic Plan is available at no cost and is suitable for all types of websites, whether commercial, professional, or personal.
• Starter Plan costs $29 monthly and is ideal for highly demanding personal blogs.
• Pro plan, priced at $59 per month, caters to start-ups and small media ventures.

Conclusion on Best Commenting Platforms for Websites

Choosing the perfect commenting system can turn your website or blog into a lively community center. Whether you value user interaction, seamless integration, or powerful moderation tools, there’s an option that suits you. 

Pick the one that matches your objectives, improves user experience, and encourages an active exchange of thoughts and ideas.

Some have plugins or apps developed specifically for CMS, such as WordPress, while for others, such as Google Sites, you will have to install the embed code where you want to display the comments box on your website. If you are not sure how to add a comments box to your website, please contact your web developer.

Also, check out these social media widgets to boost engagement and increase conversions on your website and marketing funnels.