I'm looking for comment service options. Here's what I have looked at so far:
Disqus: Free version displays ads. That's okay, but I want to see if there are other options.
Livefyre: I tried looking at this one, but it sent me to Adobe and I didn't know what they were offering so I gave up.
Facebook: I don't really like working with Facebook's platform and APIs.
Would you recommend building my own? The reason I'm looking for a service is because I'm not really keen on having to take care of possible security and spam issues. I have made similar things in the past and it's just not fun when people try to abuse it.
Are there other options?
I'll be lazy and just point to tutorials: How you can build your own free, serverless comment box.
It uses Netlify Lambda Functions as backend and Contentful as storage. It should be very flexible.
I started my own blog recently and I'm using a lib that stores comments as GitHub issues and displays them on the blog page: gitalk. My blog is about programming so this fits OK.
I'd just use a service like Disqus or Google+ comments if you're a smaller website. It's easier with spam control and server use.
You can try creating your own service (serverless, API, or otherwise). Smashing Magazine runs on a JAMstack (Javascript app for the client on a CDN, APIs for everything else) and they're able to use a custom system for comments. People comment, it gets stored in a DB somewhere, and their static site gets rebuilt. Obviously if you're not static, you can just grab dynamically from the API.
I'm a fan of Discourse - it's self-hosted and open source, which is a big plus for me. ;)
github.com/discourse/discourse
If you're looking for a hosted solution, take a look at IntenseDebate.
Jason Knight
The less code you use, the less there is to break
Disqus displays ads? :p
I run an adblock as a matter of course, so I never actually noticed though of course it must... I literally just never see them even though I use it on my sites.
I'd go with disqus, ads or no just because anyone it actually bothers probably never sees them in the first place. I like its easy config and easy use, even if their scripting is MORE than a bit heavy for my tastes.
The choice of only two styles -- light and dark -- is also a bit of a wonk.
But still, I haven't had any problems with it.
I just wish there was one that was easy to integrate into existing sites that also had scripting off graceful degradation.