The Pros and Cons of Disqus vs. Native WordPress Comments

When you do a meaningful comment on any blog, people will click over to your site if they like what you are saying. People who read your content and comments on your blog-posts will have an impression of your site so it possible that they will read future posts. When people engage with you on a piece of quality content, even if it’s for marketing or sales, comments will expand your network, especially if you respond to their comments and build that important relationship. Therefore, Comments build a community of followers around your brand. Number and quality of comments can be considered to measure the success of a blog. Also, comments are an important part of a blog because it brings traffic to a blog.

There are many comment systems available, WordPress and Disqus are two of the biggest so I’ll be discussing the pros and cons of both here.

Native WordPress Comment System

WordPress core has a built-in commenting system so you don’t need a plugin to accept comments on your blog. Its free and comes with preconfigured basic functionality. Comments are enabled by default inside WordPress, so users can share their thoughts on your content. The settings for comments on your blog can be found under the Settings –>Discussion tab inside of the WordPress admin panel.

Pros of the WordPress Comment System

1. It has a very simple and easy to use layout.
2. It’s Responsive – mobile friendly.
3. Very fast to load due to native integration as all the comments will be saved in the WordPress database.
4. The WordPress comments can be moderated. You can decide if users must provide a name and email address or if users must be registered and logged in before commenting. By encouraging users to comment with their email address and URL, they will get a backlink which can help in increasing traffic to their blog.
5. You can also enable administrator approval before a comment is approved on the post.
6. New features can be added into the system by using various plugins such as Akismet which is a widely used spam filtering plugin. Also, many other plugins let you enhance the native WordPress comment system. Plugins are available for social media integration, security, comment rating, comment subscription and more.
7. Comments on the native WordPress system are also indexed by search engines.

Cons of the WordPress Comment System

1. Very easy to get a ton of spammy and poor-quality comments. Despite using adaptive plugins like Akismet, sometimes spam still gets through.
2. By default, all WordPress comments require approval to post. So, you need to constantly keep a check on your blog’s comment stream in order to approve the good ones and delete the bad ones.
3. Social media integration is not provided, you need to use various other plugins to add extra features to your blog, but this eventually increases the page load time.
4. Being little messy and unprofessional on some blogs, comment section doesn’t look aesthetically appealing.

Disqus Comment System

Disqus is an easy to install WordPress plugin which replaces the existing WordPress comment system and can be used by site owners to increase their reader engagement, grow audience and traffic, and monetize content.

Pros of the Disqus Comment System.

1. Looks and feels more professional with its good and easy to use UI.
2. It’s Responsive – mobile friendly.
3. Along with WordPress, it’s compatible with many other web platforms such as Drupal, Blogger, and Tumblr.
4. It’s Smart at detecting and curbing spam with its own evolving spam detection, which not only helps in preventing spam from being posted, it also removes the spammer accounts.
5. With the Disqus Moderation Panel you can search, sort, filter and manage your comments along with tools like user blocking, comment flagging etc.
6. It has built-in Instant activity notifications, email notifications, and digests which pull readers and commenters back in into your blog.
7. By default, it integrates social media engagement into your blog.
8. It has built-in features such as share, hide comments, vote and make comments featured.
9. It has its own advanced analytics for comments in your dashboard. We can see what kind of engagement they’ve got on our posts. (Only available with their Pro plan).
10. Comments are backed up to your WordPress database.
11. It also provides a related articles widget at bottom of comments with which users to explore more of your content or other similar content from the web.
12. It provides the facility to upload and share images in comments.
13. Last but not the least, it’s Free!!! (More features are available with their premium plans)

Cons of Disqus Comment System.

1. Installation of an extra plugin. It has to be kept up to date because it can become a security issue if you don’t update the plugin.
2. Occasionally slows page loading due to external access. Some comments are stored in WordPress database and some of that data comes from the external servers.
3. Users have to register with Disqus to comment. This might frustrate and discourage some users. You can register with social accounts such as Twitter, Facebook or Google+ or a WordPress account as well.
4. It is difficult to customize the design to match your own site design. There are very few options available to change the appearance of Disqus.
5. Their own native advertising is done on your site.
6. When using Disqus on your site, you’re allowing the selling of every user’s data who’ve commented on your content.

Conclusion

It’s a big decision to move from native WordPress comments to Disqus because of the possibility that your audience is happy with the existing system. You might want to get their opinions before shifting to the new comment system. Yes, there are some Cons of Disqus, however, many well-known blogs and news owners are switching to Disqus. Also, It’s a complete package and the best possible alternate solution to the native WordPress comments. Disqus can be given a try due to its various advantages, you can also shift back to the native WordPress comment system if you can’t get used to it. You won’t lose any comments on your site if you deactivate or uninstall Disqus as all the comments can be synced back to the WordPress.