Hello! Founder of Hyvor Talk, a Disqus alternative, here.
Basically, I started Hyvor Talk because Disqus doesn't seem to fit my blog. Why?
Disqus isn't a commenting system. It is a data-sharing company, which collects data through its comments system. When Zeta Global (an ad-tech company) acquired Disqus in 2017, they started showing ads on websites to monetize the free plan. This is a privacy concern for all of the visitors of your website. On the one hand, they collect the data and sell it to other companies like Twitter (See data.disqus.com). On the other hand, they allow other third parties like Viglink to collect data from your website.
There are some articles about Disqus's privacy concerns.
Most of the Disqus's users are using their free plan. However, they pay a lot of money by allowing Disqus to track the users (like Whatsapp is to Facebook). And, there's no note about whether they turn off tracking when you upgrade to their paid plans.
Hyvor Talk is built to avoid this privacy concern. So, how do we monetize it? Simple: We use subscriptions.
Most paid customers of ours are companies who are integrating Single Sign-on on their websites (Check out FusionAuth blog, click Login and you'll be redirected to their login - not Hyvor login) and news sites.
Hyvor Talk is free up to 1 website and 40,000 monthly page views, which means that most individual bloggers don't need to worry about paying for the comments system. We do not track users or place ads even in the free plan.
Single-Sign-On is expensive Business $35 PER MONTH, otherwise $5 PER MONTH is as cheap as the smallest DigitalOcean Droplet (where you can host anything, anyway).
Yes, $35 can be expensive for some. But, our target for the business plan is companies. They are willing to pay more than $35 for the functionalities we provide.
By the way, do you have a website you hope to set up SSO?
Truthfully, I don't really know whether I should have commenters' credential. Should it remain anonymous, or should it be identifiable? Safety (of both client and server) should be the first concern.
Currently, I use Remark42 (with SPA tweak), to make it possible to both anonymous and SSO with Google. It is self-hosted, so it does have costs. An upside is, I can use it with as many websites as I want in one database.
Indeed, an upside of using a paid service, is you get supported.
Truthfully, I don't really know whether I have about commenters' credential. Should it remain anonymous, or should it be identifiable? Safety (of both client and server) should be the first concern.
Usually, logins/SSO for comments are used by websites that already have an authentication system. For example, take X company that provides a service for 1000 users. To allow those users to comment on their blog, they will need to ask them to signup for Disqus, Hyvor Talk, or whatever commenting platform. If they set up SSO, they can allow those users to use their accounts on their main platform. (Users love it - so do companies)
Self-hosting or using a hosted solution is completely personal preference :)
This looks great. I've been looking to replace Disqus on my blog for some time already. But the only not-self-hosted alternative I found was Muut, which I did not like a lot. Perhaps I'll just move to Hyvor Talk then.
Hello! Founder of Hyvor Talk, a Disqus alternative, here.
Basically, I started Hyvor Talk because Disqus doesn't seem to fit my blog. Why?
Disqus isn't a commenting system. It is a data-sharing company, which collects data through its comments system. When Zeta Global (an ad-tech company) acquired Disqus in 2017, they started showing ads on websites to monetize the free plan. This is a privacy concern for all of the visitors of your website. On the one hand, they collect the data and sell it to other companies like Twitter (See data.disqus.com). On the other hand, they allow other third parties like Viglink to collect data from your website.
There are some articles about Disqus's privacy concerns.
Most of the Disqus's users are using their free plan. However, they pay a lot of money by allowing Disqus to track the users (like Whatsapp is to Facebook). And, there's no note about whether they turn off tracking when you upgrade to their paid plans.
Hyvor Talk is built to avoid this privacy concern. So, how do we monetize it? Simple: We use subscriptions.
Most paid customers of ours are companies who are integrating Single Sign-on on their websites (Check out FusionAuth blog, click Login and you'll be redirected to their login - not Hyvor login) and news sites.
Hyvor Talk is free up to 1 website and 40,000 monthly page views, which means that most individual bloggers don't need to worry about paying for the comments system. We do not track users or place ads even in the free plan.
For React, there's hyvor-talk-react
✌
Single-Sign-On is expensive
Business $35 PER MONTH
, otherwise$5 PER MONTH
is as cheap as the smallest DigitalOcean Droplet (where you can host anything, anyway).Do I have to care who commented to me?
Hello Pacharapol,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, $35 can be expensive for some. But, our target for the business plan is companies. They are willing to pay more than $35 for the functionalities we provide.
By the way, do you have a website you hope to set up SSO?
Truthfully, I don't really know whether I should have commenters' credential. Should it remain anonymous, or should it be identifiable? Safety (of both client and server) should be the first concern.
Currently, I use Remark42 (with SPA tweak), to make it possible to both anonymous and SSO with Google. It is self-hosted, so it does have costs. An upside is, I can use it with as many websites as I want in one database.
Indeed, an upside of using a paid service, is you get supported.
Usually, logins/SSO for comments are used by websites that already have an authentication system. For example, take X company that provides a service for 1000 users. To allow those users to comment on their blog, they will need to ask them to signup for Disqus, Hyvor Talk, or whatever commenting platform. If they set up SSO, they can allow those users to use their accounts on their main platform. (Users love it - so do companies)
Self-hosting or using a hosted solution is completely personal preference :)
What do you think of requiring email, and possibly generating Gravatar?
Actually, Gravatar has its own problem -- dev.to/gajus/stack-overflow-is-lea...
My personal opinion is, requiring login will prevent bots from spamming your website.
Hyvor users can set their profile picture. For guest commenters, there's a bunch of avatars to select.
You see Gravatar everywhere on the web, because of WordPress. However, I don't think we'll use it because
And, we don't want to require emails. It's completely up to the owner of the website (can be changed in the console).
That is amazing! Thank you for sharing your product here. Will test this out today. 🙂
Awesome 🔥
This looks great. I've been looking to replace Disqus on my blog for some time already. But the only not-self-hosted alternative I found was Muut, which I did not like a lot. Perhaps I'll just move to Hyvor Talk then.
Sure, you can also import the comments from Disqus to Hyvor Talk in a few clicks :)