About
IntenseDebate is a comment system for blogs and websites that adds threaded replies, reply-by-email, email notifications, commenter profiles, moderation and blacklisting controls, social sign-in, and guest commenting. It integrates with WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, and other platforms, and includes a WordPress plugin that syncs comments between IntenseDebate and WordPress.
The service is aimed at sites that want to manage discussion outside the default platform comment system. Its WordPress plugin supports two-way comment sync, admin panel integration, search engine indexing of comments, trackbacks, profile sync, and post-setting synchronization.
- Threaded comment replies
- Reply-by-email moderation
- Email comment notifications
- Commenter profiles and reputation points
- Moderation by keyword, email, and IP
- Facebook and Twitter commenting
- WordPress two-way comment sync
- Plugin-based comment import
Free Tier Value
This free tier appears to be a full-featured, perpetual offering with no published usage cap or time limit, so its practical value is modest but real rather than tied to a paid upgrade threshold. Since there is no visible paid plan or price on the page to anchor a higher comparison, a conservative buyer-side estimate is about $3/month for the capability on offer, with no credit card requirement mentioned.
What's included in the free tier
- Comment threading for replying directly within discussions.
- Reply-by-email for responding and moderating comments via email.
- Email notifications for comment replies and subscriptions.
- Commenter profiles with universal profiles across IntenseDebate sites.
- Moderation and blacklisting by keywords, links, email, and IP address.
- Reputation points and comment voting for IntenseDebate accounts.
- Plugins API for adding custom comment enhancements.
- Widgets for comment stats, recent comments, popular posts, and top users.
- Twitter integration for simultaneous tweet posting with comments.
- Facebook Connect for commenting with a Facebook account.
- RSS reader integration for reading and posting comments from supported RSS readers.
- FriendFeed comment retrieval to republish FriendFeed comments on your blog.
- HTML formatting support for allowed comment tags.
- Gravatar support with automatic Gravatar import on signup.
See IntenseDebate pricing for current limits.