In “What to see for in a Comment System,” I described features like comment moderation, analytics, social integration, and dashboard settings. On this post i’ll review four popular comment systems and discuss the highlights of every.

Disqus

Disqus is accessible for existing blogging platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger and might even be integrated directly right into a custom HTML site. Disqus comes with standard features like comment moderation, spam filtering, Akismet integration, blacklisting and whitelisting, and appearance customization.

Disqus includes additional features that make it unique as a comment system.

• Real-time discussions. Disqus comments appear in real-time, allowing you to construct an active community of commenters. Login and account requirements ensure quality discussions and blacklisting and whitelisting permits you to further moderate comments.
  

  Disqus comments happen in real-time.

• Email moderation. Comments in Disqus may be moderated via your email account using three commands, ensuring you’re always in charge of the comments in your site.
• Social integration.Social sharing, reactions, and tagging help connect commenters across social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook and allows commenters to tag Twitter and Disqus users using the @mentions.
  

  Disqus has many social integration features.

• Discovery. Disqus added its discovery feature in 2012, allowing users in finding additional content for your site in addition to link to related content within the Disqus network. This will lead to longer visits and a rise in referral traffic from the Disqus network.
• User analytics. The Disqus dashboard provides information at the users commenting for your site, including user reputation, history, post approval rating, likes from other users, and more.
• Single sign-on. Disqus includes a single sign up feature so one can integrate the Disqus user login along with your existing site. Disqus also includes options to log in using social network accounts.

Disqus offers a stripped-down free version. Enhanced versions, with API access, aren’t free. If you want to try Disqus on a WordPress blog, Disqus can sync comments so that you don’t ought to worry about losing comments in case you pick one more comment system afterwards.

Livefyre

Livefyre is another comment system with a bunch of useful features. Livefyre currently supports WordPress, Tumblr, and Joomla integration in addition to custom HTML integration. Support for Blogger and Drupal is being added.

Livefyre includes several features that set it other than other comment systems.

• Real-time comments. Like Disqus, Livefyre also allows real-time commenting. Machine-learning spam filters and community flagging helps keep real-time comments clean and relevant to the discussion. Multiple moderators, bans, and whitelists also help keep spam comments under control.
• Live listeners and comment notifiers.Livefyre lets users see who’s participating in a discussion — whether or not they are listening or actively commenting.
  

  Livefyre shows who’s participating in a talk.

• Social integration.Livefyre lets users check in using social media accounts or OpenID or even lets users tag friends from Facebook, Twitter, and Livefyre accounts. Livefyre’s SocialSync allows users to automatically sync conversations to your site with their Facebook and Twitter posts.
  

  Comments lets users register using social media accounts.

• User activity and conversation tracking. Livefyre’s dashboard permits you to keep track of user activity and reputation in addition track conversations.
• Media integration. Users can embed rich media like YouTube or Vimeo videos, Spotify and SoundCloud tracks, images, or even Wikipedia articles.

Livefyre is free for a basic version. Other, enhanced versions and integrations cost a monthly fee.

IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate by Automattic— creators of WordPress — is another popular comment system. IntenseDebate might be installed with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Typepad, and custom sites.

IntenseDebate comes with many helpful features which are easily controlled throughout the comment system’s dashboard.

• Comment settings.IntenseDebate allows you to easily control comment settings with check boxes within the dashboard. You may decide whether to enable threads, comment voting, images, clickable links, and other options.
  

  IntenseDebate Comment Settings.

• Subscription settings. Subscription settings give users the choice to sign up for comment threads using RSS feeds or email subscriptions, which inspires commenting.
• User reputations. Commenters are assigned reputations in line with their credibility and history commenting for your site. You could have the choice to cover or display user reputation indicators.
• Social logins. IntenseDebate enables user logins using Facebook Connect or Twitter, letting users comment using their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
• CSS customization.IntenseDebate is customizable using your personal CSS and springs with full documentation on the way to accomplish that. You can also link to CSS file from in the IntenseDebate dashboard.
  

  IntenseDebate permits completely custom CSS.

• Plugins. IntenseDebate allows you to install plugins to incorporate additional features that aren’t natively built into the system. Plugins for social sharing, polls, emoticons, and YouTube embedding are all available. You too can create your individual plugin using the IntenseDebate plugin API.

IntenseDebate has many more customizable features which can be too numerous to list here. You’ll subscribe to a free WordPress.com account and test IntenseDebate before committing to using it in your existing site. IntenseDebate is free with registration.

WordPress

While third party comment systems provide additional useful features, many prefer the simplicity of WordPress’ integrated comment system. The WordPress comment system can only be used with an installation of WordPress and can’t be used with other blogging platforms like Tumblr or Blogger.

WordPress offers most of the core features needed for an awesome comment system and WordPress plugins is additionally installed for extra features.

• Automated moderation. WordPress includes settings for moderating comments. You’ll decide even if users must provide a reputation and email address or if users needs to be registered and logged in before commenting. You can even require administrator approval before a comment is approved and make allowance previously approved commenters to post without approval.
• Nested comments. WordPress allows threaded comments and lets you choose what percentage levels deep threaded comments would be nested.
• Simple spam filtering. WordPress includes integrated spam filtering with Akismet and allows you to clear out comments with specific keywords and, also, blacklist commenters using specific IP or email addresses.
• Plugins.Third-party WordPress plugins help you enhance the default WordPress comment system. Plugins can be found for advanced spam filtering, social integration, comment subscriptions, comment rating, and more.
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  Free third party plugins can enhance the usual WordPress comment system.

WordPress is a free, open-source blogging platform and its comment system is included.