18 Best WordPress Comments Plugins in 2024, Comments represent the best and the worst of the internet, but we think we all agree that websites would be poorer without them.Websites are supposed to be a two-way street. The owner posts news, reviews and articles and the readership posts their comments. Those comments create a lively community that makes the website more engaging and a nicer place to spend time.
It’s what makes the web such an interesting place to be.
This article is going to highlight 17 of the best comment plugins for WordPress.
To Allow Comments or Not to Allow Comments
If you have used the internet for longer than five minutes, you will already know how divisive comments can be. Some regard comment sections as toxic pools of negativity while others consider them essential to maintain that two-way street.
We are of the latter camp. We consider comments and engagement a key element of running a website and think pages without comments are poorer for them.
We can think of four key reasons why you want to allow comments on your website.
They are:
We always read our comments because we often come across plugins, themes or WordPress tricks we hadn’t come across before. You are a valuable learning tool and we love you for it!
What to Look for in a Comment Plugin
We look for the same things in WordPress comments plugins as we do in any plugin. It must be easy to use, have a clear goal and clear benefits for use and either be free or reasonably priced.
Specifically for comment plugins, we look for an attractive front end with minimal hurdles to engagement. The more a user has to do to be able to comment, the less likely they are to do so.
We also like to see a clean, simple login system that makes it easy to leave an opinion without leaving your comment section open to spam.
The Best WordPress Comment Plugins
Here’s a quick look at what we feel are some of the best WordPress comments plugins in the market currently. We’ll get to each one of them in detail, later in this article.
Discover the most effective comment plugins for WordPress with comprehensive insights.
1. Jetpack Comments
Jetpack Comments is a modest WordPress comments plugin that bolts on to the very powerful Jetpack plugin. This addon enables users to log in and comment using social media accounts. It is compatible with WordPress.com, Twitter, Facebook, or Google accounts.
Jetpack Comments doesn’t change the comment form, add any other features or change the way comments look and feel but adding social media login is a very useful feature and something we look for in a comment plugin. For that, it is well worth considering.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Jetpack Comments is included within the free Jetpack plugin.
18 Best WordPress Comments Plugins in 2024
Read More : Special and useful HyperOS Features 2024
2. Simple Comment Editing
Simple Comment Editing has one key feature we liked enough to give it a place in our list of best comment plugins for WordPress. It has a neat cooldown function that gives the commenter five minutes to add, edit or change their comment before it’s published.
The basic plugin is free and works very well. It doesn’t require any configuration, just plug and play. You can hide the timer from users or show it, you can enable email notifications for comment updates and disable comment deletion.
There are customization options but they are basic unless you know CSS.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
The plugin is free to use.
3. CommentLuv
CommentLuv is both a WordPress comments plugin and an SEO plugin. It provides a slight upgrade to the native comments section by adding a reason for adding your website when commenting. The plugin will then provide a link to the latest blog and an optional backlink using ‘dofollow’.
Backlinks are a significant driver for commenting, so if you’re trying to build a lively community, adding ‘dofollow’ to comment links is an effective way to kickstart a new community.
You will have to watch how it works and moderate it carefully. Too many links and your site may be flagged as spam!
Pros
Cons
Pricing
CommentLuv is free to use. The premium version is not currently available.
4. Disqus Comment System
Disqus is probably the best-known WordPress comments plugin in the world and powers comments on many large websites. It’s a hosted solution that uses the cloud to provide the resources to manage comments. It’s a very flexible system that uses an API to link your comments section with the Disqus platform to keep everything tidy.
Disqus is good because a single login means you can comment on any site that uses it without having to login again. There is also the option to use social media to log in. It does have a slight downside in that logging in is mandatory, so anonymous commenting is out.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Disqus has a free option that is ad-supported and some premium options that are not.
5. Thrive Comments
Thrive Comments is a comment plugin from the people behind Thrive Themes. It’s a powerful plugin that adds gamification to commenting with votes, badges, and comment sharing. Social networks are built on this gamification so its efficacy is well known. You can now use those tools for your own benefit with this plugin.
Thrive Comments also allows social media login, share prompts to get commenters to share on their social networks and replaces the native comment section with a new and better looking one.
If you’re the analytics type, there is also the ability to measure lots of metrics around your comments too.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Thrive Comments works to $19 per month if purchased annually and can be used on 25 websites.
6. WpDevArt Facebook Comments
WpDevArt Facebook Comments is a WordPress comments plugin that allows users to leave comments on your website using their Facebook logins. It helps increase engagement by allowing anyone logged into Facebook to comment and by integrating comments on Facebook into your website comment section.
It’s a great idea if your target audience are Facebook users. It’s easy to set up, works seamlessly with both Facebook and WordPress, and makes it super-easy to leave a comment which should help increase engagement.
It isn’t the most attractive comment section in the world but for engagement, it’s hard to beat.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
WpDevArt Facebook Comments is free with three premium plans from $10 up to $31 per year.
7. wpDiscuz
wpDiscuz is a complete WordPress comments plugin. It provides a new look for the comment section, allows inline comments, live notifications of comments and updates, has a post ratings feature, social media integration, rich editor, supports media, and uses reCAPTCHA to help reduce spam.
We consider wpDiscuz the best comment plugin for WordPress in terms of looks, value, and ease of use. You have different styles to choose from, comments lazy load which helps site performance but also looks cool.
It also has a full reporting tool with graphs and metrics if that’s your thing.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
wpDiscuz is completely free although there is an optional addon bundle at $99.
8. Yoast Comment Hacks
Yoast is one of our favourite SEO plugins and we recommend it frequently. We are now going to do the same with Yoast Comment Hacks. It’s called ‘hacks’ because it uses the native WordPress comment section and tweaks it a little bit to provide some extra features.
Those features include a default minimum comment length to help avoid spam, an email link to reply directly to commenters, a redirect to thank first-time commenters, the ability to change the parent comment and implement a new, clean design for notification emails.
Yoast Comment Hacks isn’t as fully-featured as some of these other WordPress comments plugins but what it does, it does well.
It’s free too.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Yoast Comment Hacks is free to use.
9. Akismet
Akismet is probably the best-known WordPress comment plugin around. Partly because it comes installed with the CMS but also because it’s very good at what it does.
Akismet helps filter spam comments so you don’t have to. It links to the Akismet global spam database so it can filter out known spammers. It won’t replace admin moderation but it goes a long way in reducing the workload for busy websites.
Akismet uses the native WordPress comments section but keeps it clean very effectively. Well worth using if your current comment plugin doesn’t filter spam.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Akismet has a free option and premium options at $10 and $50 per month.
10. Comment Approved
Comment Approved is a simple plugin that adds an email notification option to any user who leaves a comment on your website. It adds an extra step in the native comments section in WordPress with a checkbox that can be checked to send an email once the comment has been approved.
You can also create a boilerplate response to thank the user for leaving the comment and hopefully encourage them to leave more comments.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Comment Approved is free to use.
11. GraphComment
GraphComment is another fully-featured WordPress comments plugin that transforms the way comments are handled. It’s a cloud solution similar to Disqus that includes guest commenting, customization options for the comment section, gamification elements with badges, social media login and a very usable dashboard for managing and moderating comments.
GraphComment also uses structured data for comments for SEO benefit and has voting options to help increase engagement and the quality of the comments. All data is stored on GraphComment servers but the plugin includes tools to copy all data to your WordPress database.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
GraphComment is a very polished plugin with a free option and two premium plans at $7 and $74 per month.
12. Lazy Load for Comments
Lazy Load for Comments is another simple WordPress comments plugin that does one thing well. In this case, the clue is in the name. This plugin is designed to help improve page load speeds and reduce server requests.
It does this by not loading the comments section until the user gets to it and begins reading. This means far fewer requests and a more responsive page. Simple but very effective.
Lazy Load for Comments works with most WordPress themes such as Astra and requires a single setting in the dashboard to work its magic.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Lazy Load for Comments is free to use.
13. No Page Comment
No Page Comment is another simple but very effective WordPress comments plugin. This plugin lets you take back control of comments by adding a dashboard that lets you enable or disable comments on posts, pages, and media anywhere on your website.
No Page Comment also lets you control comments on new posts, pages, and media as well as existing ones. You can disable comments site-wide, enable them and enable or disable trackbacks.
WordPress has basic commands for enabling or disabling comments but this plugin takes that much further.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
No Page Comment is free to use.
14. Replyable
Replyable is one of two WordPress comment plugins from the same developer, with the other being Postmatic, which comes next. Replyable takes the ‘subscribe to comments’ option and turns it up to 11.
Rather than bombard commenters with every single reply, Replyable uses machine learning to filter them and only alert on the most relevant. This improves engagement by only highlighting worthy comments. Users can also reply via email, although you may not want to use that as you want them to return.
The plugin can also collate multiple comments into a single email so users are actively engaged while not having their time wasted. It’s a very smart WordPress comments plugin that overcomes one of the most annoying elements of commenting on websites.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Replyable costs from $2.99 per month up to $9.99 per month.
15. Postmatic
Postmatic concentrates more on delivering content than making comments more convenient. It’s a different take on commenting as it enables you to reply to comments or add comments via email.
Leave a comment on a website, get notified of replies via email, and reply to the reply directly from that email. Simple but very effective. You can also send content, comment digests, newsletters, and a whole lot more.
Postmatic will also integrate with lead generation tools for extra engagement. Although it’s no Convert Pro, it has some useful engagement features you can use for popups and opt-ins.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Postmatic costs from $20 per month up to $95 per month.
16. ReplyBox
ReplyBox is one of the best comment plugins for WordPress in this list for handling privacy. It works a bit like Disqus but doesn’t use ads, doesn’t collect personal data, and doesn’t use you for monetization. For that alone, we recommend it.
ReplyBox is a hosted platform with a tiny API of less than 100KB. It uses attractive comment templates, integrates with Akismet, uses markdown for emojis, has nested comments for easy navigation, social media login, custom CSS options and works with most WordPress themes like Astra.
ReplyBox is one of our favorite WordPress comment plugins. Not necessarily because of the features but because of its insistence on privacy.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
ReplyBox costs from $6 per month up to $26 per month.
17. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded seeks to tackle the thorny issue of subscribing to comments. It makes it easy for users to control what comments they subscribe to, provides a quick way to unsubscribe, and controls what they are notified about.
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded also includes double opt-in for compliance and a one-click unsubscribe option within notification emails. There is also a very straightforward subscription dashboard where users can control their subscriptions and quickly follow or unfollow conversations.
It’s a concise but usable WordPress comments plugin.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Subscribe to Comments Reloaded is free to use.
Summary
A website without a thriving community is just not very engaging and nobody wants that. Creating a community is the number one goal of many websites, yet many seem content to use the basic WordPress comments feature.
You can do better than that.
Any of these comment plugins for WordPress takes that basic function and improves upon it. Some do one thing well while others offer multiple features. All can help you build a thriving community for your website.
Do you use a comment plugin for WordPress? Use any in this list? Have another to recommend? You know what to do!
Views: 12