If you have been debating whether you should enable DISQUS or CommentLuv as the commenting system on your blog, probably you will find this helpful.
I also plan to briefly cover (due to requests from many of my readers) how you can enjoy most of the premium CommentLuv features without losing an arm and a leg.
My Story With Commenting Systems
Those who know this blog since its inception, know that I was highly motivated by Michael Hyatt (by the way, he continues to inspires me to this day).
Since he loves Evernote, I started using it as well and I continue to explore and enjoy this amazing tool. He recommended (and used) Standard WordPress Theme, I jumped onto the bandwagon (and by the way, that proved to be the best thing I did ever!). And so on…
Well, Michael also spoke highly of the DISQUS blog commenting system which he continues to use even today. It looked like a no brainer. So, I installed DISQUS and honestly, it is an awesome commenting system with powerful features.
DISQUS sure has the elegance in look and feel when compared with any other third-party commenting system of that nature.
Benefits Of Using DISQUS
You definitely want to know why DISQUS is popular and why some of the top bloggers use this commenting system, don’t you?
So, here are some of the top benefits of DISQUS commenting system:
-
Once you log into DISQUS from one website, you don’t have to fill your name, email or any other information on any other website in the world that uses DISQUS. You are ON!
-
Every commenter’s reputation (like Author Rank) can be checked from anywhere. It allows you to easily know who is a genuine commenter and who is not by looking at where all they have commented before and what kind of comments they leave.
-
You automatically get notified when your comment on any website (that uses DISQUS) gets a reply.
-
All your comments get indexed by search engines since it is stored separately inside of the DISQUS system as well. Just a little extra for as a comment author. A good thing for genuine commenters.
-
Last but not the least, DISQUS does allow you the lazy loading which you can setup to occur when the user scrolls down. This helps reduce page loading time for your blog posts without negatively impacting your visitor’s experience.
Drawbacks Of Using DISQUS
Having mentioned about all the good stuff, now is the time to talk about some of the things that kept me nervous and I want to list them here:
-
I hardly got any traffic from my comments on DISQUS enabled blogs. Not even from Michael Hyatt’s website which has thousands and thousands of people visiting daily and commenting actively.The reason for that is, people have to click twice before they could see my website’s link and most people, won’t do that. DISQUS wants people to visit DISQUS before visiting the commenter’s website which seems unnecessary.
-
It is a large plugin to install filled with functionality and so it took longer to load and that is why ‘lazy loading’ is almost a need when you use DISQUS. Not a very exciting thing.
-
This was a bummer. I needed to update the plugin’s PHP code ( every time I upgraded as well) to make sure CloudFlare worked fine with my website. DISQUS had JavaScript which needed manual changes to be made to be compatible with CloudFlare.
CommentLuv Was A Natural Fit
The default commenting system of WordPress is great and some of the top marketers online use them for simplicity and out of box solution. People like Derek Halpern, Neil Patel and even Darren Rowse do not have any special commenting system.
However, I am not one of them and therefore, I need to be a little more sophisticated than these large brands are so that I can, one day, have a shot at becoming them.
CommentLuv seemed to be a great alternative to DISQUS considering that it has a large community of bloggers who love using the system. In addition, it looked very organic, giving a look and feel similar to WordPress’s default commenting feature.
When I started to evaluate, here are some of the distinct benefits of CommentLuv which gave me the final push to switch:
-
People don’t need to login anywhere. You enter your name and email address (and if you have a website, that too) and add your comment. No complications!
-
Just like DISQUS, I could setup my CommentLuv installation to send emails to my commenters when I replied to their comments.
-
When I left comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs, not only do I get a link back to my home page, I also receive a link (“nofollow” is fine) to my latest blog post as well. That is a great way to build deep linking profile. It came naturally through CommentLuv.
So, I decided to give that benefit to my commenters as well. Why not give back what you receive? This just makes common sense! -
CommentLuv gave me an opportunity to create a policy, so certain type of my commenters could also receive “dofollow” links while others remained “nofollow”. It’s a great way to build loyal community.
-
CommentLuv works great alongside of CloudFlare without any issues. I never have concerns about my site breaking because of CommentLuv so far (and it has been over a year at least since I changed).
-
Last one from my list, but not the least, is the vibrant and alive CommentLuv community that is so welcoming and supportive. I have been able to build a few great relationships in the blogosphere through blog commenting in this community.
Can You Afford CommentLuv Premium?
CommentLuv is a combination of 8 or 9 small plugins (I don’t want to go back counting at this time. I am sure you can figure this out if you get serious!).
When you buy the premium version, you get them all bundled up under one umbrella. However, if you don’t want or can’t afford to pay the premium price, you can still get them one by one and install them for your WordPress website.
What You Can Get With Free Version Of CommentLuv
If your goal is to participate in the community and enjoy the benefits of CommentLuv’s main attractions, you can get them without spending money using the free version of CommentLuv.
Just follow these steps:
Step 1 : Install CommentLuv free plugin from WordPress Plugins directory.
Step 2 : Install GASP plugin (Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin) from WordPress Plugins directory.
Step 3 : Install Twitter Link Comments from WordPress Plugins directory.
Step 4 : Install Subscribe to Comment Reloaded (Instead of Reply Me) from WordPress Plugins directory.
Step 5 : Install KeywordLuv plugin (Instead of Keyword Name) from WordPress Plugins directory.
With these 5 plugins in place, you have pretty much gained the awesome look, feel and functionality of CommentLuv and you are ready to enjoy the benefits!
Much More With Premium Version Of CommentLuv
Obviously all of the above come packaged under the premium installation package. But wait, there is more to CommentLuv than just the plugins listed above. For example:
-
You get the premium support (which is priceless). I do not want to struggle on my own when a technical issue shows up at my door. Premium brings that peace of mind!
-
The Anti-Backlinker plugin, which is one of the hottest add-ons to the CommentLuv plugin is available to only Premium members.
-
And then comes the goodies in terms of the ability to create commenting policies to have a better control on who gets a “dofollow”, ”nofollow” and how. Such flexibility is not available to you when you are using the free version.
Conclusion
Even with the limitations with the free version of CommentLuv, it is worth giving it a shot especially if you are about building communities and increasing engagement on your website.
The philosophy is simple – you reward your commenters and they will come back to you and bring some more!
Your Turn To Share Your Thoughts
If you aren’t using CommentLuv on your website yet, what is your reason? I think I am interested in learning your perspective. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
If you are already using it, I know I have not shared everything in detail. Would you like to add your two cents about your experience with CommentLuv?
Please click here to go to comments section and share your thoughts. Thank you kindly.
Hey Gauraw,
I started blogging in August 2012 with commentluv Premium and it’s amazing how this plugin draws engagement. As a matter of fact, it’s the engagement magnet.
I know the broken link issue that comes with it but Andy was smart enough to come up with the Anti-Backlinker baby to handle this. this may not be a quick solution for huge site (Like adrienne Smith pointed out in her latest post) but I think it’s a major step forward.
I still don’t have any intention to take this plugin down for any. It’s still my favorite commenting plugin.
Some people have argued out that commentluv is not a commenting system on its own. It’s an addon to the traditional WordPress commenting system. I think this reasoning is correct. Whatever it is, it is what works really good
Hi Enstine,
I tend to agree with people when they say it’s not a commenting system because it really isn’t. It is just an extension to the existing WordPress’s functionality and I think that is the beauty of it.
You don’t have to depend on external servers, third party services being up or down and your commenting is up and running as long as your server is up and running. Isn’t that awesome?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate you taking time to share these!
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Enstine,
I spoke to Andy yesterday and he’s agreed about something that I had suggested to him with CommentLuv and dealing with broken links so hopefully that update will be out soon. See, Andy listens to us! 😉
~Adrienne
Hi Kumar, it’s nice to read this great post here again and I hope my friends who have been clouded by Diqus would know and understand why they ought to be using commentluv commenting system.
I have always loved and appreciated the wordpress commenting system plus commentluv plugin because it has always help me know about other bloggers. And thanks to it for bringing me to your blog today.
It’s just a no brainer to know and be able to discern which comment system you should be using. You should learn to be independent in your thoughts and cations. I hate when I have to act because somebody feels is the best thing to do.
I realized many of my friends, switched to using Disqus because most of the top bloggers are using it. They don’t understand and grasp why, they just jumped into that bandwagon which to me I feel is wrong.
Thanks for sharing the differences sir. It’s much appreciated!
Sam
Hi Sam,
You are right. It is very important to know why I need what I need. Doing something because somebody else is doing, may not be he best thing to do in every situation.
However, there are some people we trust knowing that if they are saying something, it must be for a reason. In those cases, we usually know about their character and their level of integrity and therefore, I don’t see a reason to not do if they say we should do it.
For example, I trust what Michael Hyatt teaches and I don’t need to question his recommendation simply because I knows what he is doing and if he recommends something, he knows it works. So, I decided to do as he said and it wasn’t a bad thing that happened to me 🙂
I just found a better commenting system and so I changed mine. But, at that time when I was starting out with this blog, DISQUS gave me a good plug and play plugin which gave a professional level of interface to my blog. And barring CommentLuv’s incredible features which no other plugin can beat, I think DISQUS is a solid system for commenting overall.
But you are right in general about the concept. We should be able to make our own common sense decisions and not to be a sheep who is just follows what everybody else is doing. I agree 🙂
Have a great day my friend!
Cheers!
Kumar
Hi Gauraw,
Now a days with the premium version of CommentLuv it’s easy to handle commenting system for a blog. And the major benefit of using this plugin is that we are able to drive more traffic to our blog. There is always a concern related to backlinks, broken backlinks. I would like to share that now we have antibacklinker plugin invented by Andy. We can use it with CommentLuv premium.
CommentLuv is favored by many successful bloggers. Thanks for sharing your experience.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi,
You are right about broken links which seem to be a ongoing issue and to some extent, Antibacklinder helps with that as well. However, you still need to use Screaming Frog or Xenu for periodically identifying broken links on your blog because no matter what you do, people who comment, sometimes, change their URLs later or even close their blogs.
Situations like that need some attention and unfortunately, there is no automatic way to deal with these situations 🙂
Thank you for dropping by and taking time to share your thoughts with us here!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Wonderful post showing us the pros and cons of both, Discus and CommentLuv 🙂
Having tried both, I can well relate to all that you mentioned, and I agree with you completely. When I was on Blogger platform, 3 years back when I started my blogs, I started using Discus and it did well way back then and of course, we didn’t have CommentLuv that time. But you had other options and I chose Discus.
However, when I switched to WordPress, I lost quite a number of comments along the way as I moved to CommentLuv Premium as it was just introduced by Andy with all the lucrative offers attached to it. Perhaps I didn’t know the right way the transferring of comments was done 2 years back when I moved to WordPress, but I learnt all that with time.
Now of course, bloggers have so many options, especially the free CommentLuv that people use and that’s just as good too I feel if you can’t afford the premium version though you need to add a few plugins for security, spam, etc. I would any day vouch for Commentluv premium if you want to build your community and relationships with fellow bloggers for all the benefits your mentioned. And nothing better to have it for this one main reason beside the new friends you make through the links, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice weekend 🙂
Absolutely Harleena. Being part of a community and then being able to build your own community is becoming more and more important and if a commenting system such as CommentLuv helps you do that, why would you not go for it? 🙂
I didn’t know you also had tried DISQUS before switching to CommentLuv. Well, in that case, your story is pretty much similar to mine because you might as well have seen not much traffic coming to you through your comments while you were still with DISQUS?
But, glad we are part of CommentLuv’s thriving community and having a great time connecting with new people, fellow bloggers and develop some great relationships!
Regards,
Kumar
Hello Mr. Kumar
I hope you are well.
When I started blogging ( a little over a year ago) I cannot remember who recommended that I use Commenluv. I am using the free one, and I am ok.
I have been on sites where they use Disqus and it was difficult to leave a comment…
Hi Ms Gladys,
if you have difficulty leaving comments on DISQUS powered blogs, may be we should talk sometime and I will guide you through the process. That because I think it’s just a bit of different way of commenting and not difficult to pick up. I am sure you will be able to feel ease with it just as soon as you know how easy it is to do it 🙂
Thank you for sharing your story with CommentLuv and DISQUS both. Appreciate you!
Regards,
Kumar
I’m a long-time user of CommentLuv. When Andy brought out the premium version with discounts for early customers, I jumped on it. I was only using it on one of my blogs at first, but when my wife’s blog and couple of my other blogs started to get hit with spam, I incorporated CommentLuv, and the spam dropped to almost nothing.
One important thing about commenting is that it should be easy to use, with a link back to one’s blog or blog post. The fact that CommentLuv gives both is HUGE!
More importantly, it’s extremely frustrating to comment on a blog and not have a way to give a decent link back to your blog. I have stopped visiting some interesting niche blogs largely because of the inadequacy of the commenting system used.
Just as an aside, I came to this post because of the link that was shared on the CommentLuv Facebook page. Great Post!
Thank you Mike for sharing your thoughts and experience with CommentLuv. I wasn’t on CommentLuv until it really became popular and as I shared in my story, I was pretty much content with DISQUS until it became a challenge to manage it alongside Cloudflare.
But then, I am glad I switched when I did and it has been a wonderful journey since then. No issues, no hassles!
Wow! I didn’t know that my post was shared on CommentLuv’s page. Thank you for letting me know about it.
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
So glad you made the switch. I’ve been using CommentLuv Premium for a long time now and it is awesome!
It works so well and is so easy to do. I like the way I can choose which blog I want to click after I comment. Usually I try to make it coherent to something I’m reading.
-Donna
Hello Kumar,
Like most of your readers here, I’ve experienced both external commenting systems and have come to the conclusion that commentluv beats Disqus flat! Though on some of my blogs, I have retained the traditional WordPress comment setup for personal reasons.
The most annoying aspect of commentluv however is that it encourages comments that are just made for the link luv…if one goes the commentluv way, that may be one’s biggest challenge.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Always,
Terungwa
Well I’m using disqus and default commenting system for my blogs. It depends on the nature of blogs to use commenting system. Like for some blogs there we get lot of comments so we can’t handle it. In that case we need to use disqus.
Thanks
Hi Kumar,
Disqus and Comment luv are the two best spam filters techniques .But i was totally Unaware about the difference between these two Spam filters.
Thanks for Sharing.
Hey Kumar,
I would like to just clarify one thing if I may. CommentLuv Premium is not a commenting system, it’s just a plugin to enhance and encourage more comments. Of course you did point out that you’re using the WordPress commenting system but when it’s worded this way people get confused.
But moving on to your main points here I have to agree.
I understand the reasoning behind these other commenting systems and they were created to help encourage more social conversations. While that’s all good and some of them have improved so that the comments you get do belong to you but the way I view this, it’s not physically on your blog so in all reality you don’t.
A lot of people refuse to sign up with a commenting system in order to comment so they just won’t. I don’t blame them but I signed up with all those systems when they first came out because I did want to support my blogging friends but I have never set up profiles so I never get the comment responses unfortunately.
I started using the free version of CommentLuv because it did help get more comments but I ended up liking the fact that I could follow someone’s link to their blogs. That’s how I met so many of the bloggers today and to me that alone is worth it. When Andy created the premium version he was asking for beta testers and I jumped on that. How darn fun to test this baby out and let him know what we liked, what we didn’t and what could be improved upon. That’s what I admire about Andy, he’s always listening to us and trying to improve it.
With the addition of the Anti Backlink plugin I now have no spam. So people can be encouraged to follow those links all they want but when they try to spam my blog they never get through. I just love it.
I can’t speak highly enough about CommentLuv Premium and I know Andy will continue to improve it as time goes by. It’s my favorite plugin so far and none can top it.
~Adrienne
Hi Kumar,
I always loved to comment on Disqus enabled blogs. You have lots of advantages. Such as… you have to login, you don’t get any backlink to your blog post, you don’t get any traffic to your blog. You can’t ask for more, can you? It’s really wonderful, I don’t know why you switched to CL.
Oh, and the ultimate reason is that lots of blogging kings, queens and gurus use Disqus. So we have to use it too, isn’t that so? 🙂
Yeah! Absolutely!
“Expect the unexcpected” 🙂
Hey Kumar
Sorry I have not been over in a while. Concentrating on my business :>
A big fan of comment luv too. I also have premium. I believe in supporting such a great tool
Commenting is a huge part of blogging and the community. I wish I had more time these days for it.
But it helps us meet people (like you) and also learn new things from each other.
And rewards people for commenting too.
Win-win-win
ashley
Hi Gauraw,
In my opinion Discus is not that much good to handle. Readers don’t like to comment using it. Now a days in the modern era of blogging many famous bloggers are recommending CommentLuv. As we all know there is a free version and a premium version of CommentLuv which can be used.
Now a days the debate over brokenlinks is running for the blogs which are using CommentLuv but may be it will be solved soon.
The main reason to use CommentLuv is increasing in the rate of traffic.
Thanks for sharing this informative post.
~Ravi
Hey Kumar,
Great comparison and I think Commentluv is better than Disqus as it offers some better option as compare to disqus and it also attracts readers to comment on our blog. I am using free commentluv and I am ok with its service. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
i think comment luv is good for user engagement, it increases the user engagement in our blog. I prefer to use commentluv in my blogs. discuss has it’s own advantage bu have certain drawbacks also. You have discussed everything.
Hey Kumar, Great comparison and I think Commentluv is better than Disqus as it offers some better option as compare to disqus and it also attracts readers to comment on our blog. I am using free commentluv and I am ok with its service. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
I found your post while investigating whether or not to use CommentLuv on our travel site. From my perspective I thought it was a good plugin to use, but it’s nice to have it confirmed by your article, and by the number of positive comments left.
Thank you.
thank you for the information you have provided to us, I saw this includes a great article, may still exist in providing a good article for us all, greetings from me
By shifting from disqus platform to commentluv you have taken the right decision because it results huge increase in the traffic of your blog. Thanks for it.
I have to agree with you when you say that Disqus sends very little traffic to your website!