Including comments on your website isn’t for everyone. There are pros and cons to allowing them — on the one hand, they can become a source of spam, but on the other hand, they can foster engagement with your business by your audience.

If you do decide to enable comments on your website, though, you’ll want to make sure you can easily manage them. You want your comment section to be easily usable, and you also want to be able to handle spam when it comes along.

If you use WordPress, WordPress comment plugins are the best way to do this. Plugins can help you manage comments quickly and smoothly. But which one should you get?

In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the best comment management plugins out there. Keep reading to learn more about each plugin for WordPress comments.

The 8 best WordPress comment plugins for you

There are quite a lot of WordPress plugins out there, and plugins for WordPress comments are no exception. Thankfully, we’ve narrowed down the list to a handful of options, including:

1. Thrive Comments
2. JetPack
3. wpDiscuz
4. Postmatic
5. GraphComment
6. Super Socializer
7. Disqus
8. Akismet

Read on for more info about the best WordPress comment plugins out there!

1. Thrive Comments

Price: $47 per year

The first comment management plugin on our list is Thrive Comments. Thrive offers different themes you can use for your comments section to make it look how you want. A useful feature of Thrive is that people can leave comments using a variety of different social accounts, like Facebook or Google.

Thrive also allows you to enable upvoting and downvoting. That can help keep spammy comments in check since users can downvote them, but it’s still helpful to have someone moderating the comments — which Thrive allows you to do. You can delegate that responsibility to different team members.

2. Jetpack

Price: Free, or $9 per month for premium version

Jetpack isn’t exclusively a plugin for WordPress comments. It does a variety of things, with comment management being just one of its features. It also offers help with site security and page speed optimization, which is helpful if you like the idea of getting all those things in one bundle.

Jetpack’s comment management feature definitely helps foster community on your site — when users comment, they have the option to subscribe to email alerts for responses to their comments. Plus, Jetpack has spam filters in place.

3. wpDiscuz

Price: Free

If site speed is your priority, wpDiscuz could be a good option for you. This plugin has almost no impact on how quickly your site loads, which is convenient since a lot of other plugins can tend to slow your site down a bit.

Something super interesting about wpDiscuz is its inline questions feature. This feature enables you to leave questions for readers scattered throughout the actual body of your articles. Users can post replies to your questions right there below the questions rather than having to scroll down to the regular comments section.

Also, similar to Thrive, wpDiscuz lets users leave comments via other social accounts like Facebook.

4. Postmatic

Price: $20+ per month

Postmatic doesn’t do much in the way of changing the way comments work on your actual site. Instead, it mainly focuses on optimizing the notifications people get about their comments after the fact.

Many sites let users sign up for email alerts about replies to their comments. If you plan to do that, you may want to consider Postmatic. That’s because it revamps the process.

If someone gets a reply to their comment, they’ll still get sent an email. But instead of having to go all the way back to your site to respond, Postmatic makes it so they can just do it right there in the email. That’s far more convenient for everyone involved.

5. GraphComment

Price: Free, or $7+ per month for premium version

GraphComment is a great plugin for optimizing the visual layout of your comments section. It formats it like a forum, allowing users to easily like and reply to other people’s comments. GraphComment’s layout is very clean, making it a great choice if visual format is your priority.

Plus, GraphComment prioritizes relevance. The comments and replies that are most relevant to the topic are promoted to the top, while less relevant ones are demoted — which is great for managing spam, among other things.

6. Super Socializer

Price: Free

Next up is Super Socializer. Super Socializer’s whole thing is social media integration, which probably isn’t too surprising based on the name. That integration has two components. Firstly, users on your website can log in via a social media account like Facebook instead of making a new account just for your site.

Secondly, users can leave comments on your article from their social media accounts. That is, if users encounter your article on Facebook, they can leave a Facebook comment, and that comment will also appear on your website.

7. Disqus

Price: Free, or $12 per month for premium version

One of the best WordPress comment plugins out there is Disqus. Disqus is particularly great because it’s not limited solely to WordPress — it also integrates with other CMS options because it creates its own APIs.

Like many plugins on this list, Disqus lets users leave comments using their social media accounts, though they can also create an account in Disqus itself. It also has built-in spam filters that are exceptionally good at keeping your comments section clean and relevant.

8. Akismet

Price: Free, or $8+ per month

The final comment management plugin on our list is Akismet. Akismet is incredibly simple, as it really only has one feature: It filters spam. Since that’s the one thing it does, it’s incredibly specialized for it.

Akismet learns how to filter spam from all the sites that use it. Every time a site owner marks a comment as spam, Akismet learns from it and applies what it learns to all the websites that use it, including yours. That means it just gets better and better over time.