A Shortlist of the Best WordPress Comment Plugins in 2021. Improve the engagement quotient of your website by adding a comments section with each post. Apart from being a wonderful value addition for your posts, they help you communicate with readers and engage them in a fruitful conversation.
While the default WordPress commenting system isn’t all that effective, having an active comments section engages your visitors. That’s what a WordPress comment plugin helps you with.
You may have noticed, some websites have done away with comments sections altogether. That’s because a lot of time goes into moderating comments or tackling spam. But that doesn’t take away the fact that comments go a long way in creating some noise about your content.
Of course, maintaining 99.9% security and having a loading time of less than 1 second is important but having a comments section helps engage your visitors. You’ll soon see them turn your admirers after you reach out to them for an exchange of opinions and ideas.
So we suggest that you do have a comment system on your website. That’ll help you interact with your viewers and convert them into people you can participate in communication with.
Now without any further ado, we bring you the best WordPress comment plugins. Here they are.
1. Jetpack
Jetpack is a commenting plugin and much more. It comes with as many as 20 modules. One of them has a useful upgrade tool for the native WordPress comments.
Having Jetpack will allow your readers to simply click on a button and use their social information to leave their comments. They won’t need to fill in their information manually. It also lets your readers comment using the account they already have. However, it’s not a must that your readers do so. They can still opt to leave their comments through the traditional method of filling in their names, websites, email details.
Jetpack being a pack of WordPress-built plugins, you can make drastic improvements on your website. Before you get Jetpack, you should have a WordPress.com account. That’ll help you get access to some truly wonderful plugins with great commenting functionality. Automatic, the developers of WordPress.com runs Jetpack.
2. Postmatic
Having Postmatic allows your readers to subscribe to the new posts you make. Your readers can comment replies through email.
When the notification email reaches your readers, they can reply to it and leave a comment on your site. That makes engaging with your website very easy and hassle-free for your readers.
That’s a very handy engagement boosting feature for your website, isn’t it? Postmatic is simple, yet effective.
Related Plugins:
3. Disqus
Disqus is a very popular third-party WordPress commenting system. It’s popular for a reason. It takes away a lot of load from your server while also improving the user interface in the comments section.
However, there are certain issues with privacy that you should take into consideration before opting for Disqus. Make sure that you use the Disqus Conditional Load plugin to use Diqus. That helps lazy load Diqus comments.
Disqus comes with certain pros. These are-
- The templates offered by Disqus come with a better design than WordPress comments.
- The comments are loaded in real-time.
- You’ll receive recommendations of other content on your site from Disqus that helps deepen engagement with your readers.
- Your readers can not only sort comments by ‘best’, ‘newest’, or ‘oldest’, they can recommend them too.
There are its cons too.
- Readers can’t make anonymous comments as they have to register before making any comments.
- There are serious privacy issues too. Disqus uses the comments made by your readers to create an advertising profile of theirs. These profiles are sold to the highest bidder. That has made Disqus a controversial tool.
4. wpDiscuz
You might have guessed from the name itself, wpDiscuz has been launched as an alternative to Disqus. To put it simply, you get many of the benefits of Disqus minus its impediments.
Here’s what wpDiscuz gives you.
- Commenting with Ajax.
- Real-time commenting with live updates.
- Comments can be sorted based on ‘new’, ‘old’, and ‘most voted’.
- Commenting is anonymous
The only turn off in wpDiscuz is that its design is not as polished as that of Disqus. If you’re willing to compromise on that, you get a load of functionality without the privacy worries that Disqus comes with.
Related Plugins:
5. Simple Comment Editing
It’s just a simple twist to your native WordPress comments that’s the stand-out feature of Simple Comment Editing. Your users will be able to edit the comments they make even 5 minutes after they have clicked on ‘submit’.
Research shows that there’s a very high probability of humans noticing typo errors after they’ve clicked on ‘submit’. Simple Comment Editing lets readers edit their comments to correct any mistakes they might have made.
6. Lazy Load for Comments
Lazy Load for Comments helps more in enhancing the performance of your website than adding any new commenting functionality. A website that loads early translates into happier users. That again translates into users who are likely to engage with your website.
How does it work?
Lazy Load for Comments brings about these performance improvements by delaying the loading of the comments section until a user has scrolled down the page. The comments section always comes below the content of each post. That’s why there’s no negative impact on the user’s experience.
WordPress comment plugins make your comments section a place that gets your readers engaged. With an average WordPress site, you should stick to a native WordPress comment system. Disqus is attractive but it has serious privacy concerns.
You won’t see much of an improvement in the performance either unless there are lots of comments for every post. Native WordPress comments tools like Postmatic and Jetpack also make your comments section more engaging.
It’s wise to use a basic lightweight plugin. Don’t let a large comments section hamper the performance of your website. You know now how to have your readers hooked to your site. Our article is sure to come handy in helping you do so.
