Comments – GraphComment | AI-Moderated Comment System

Hosted comments, without the usual price to pay

Native WordPress comments are where discussions run aground: no live replies, no threading that scales, endless spam. And yet comments are worth fighting for — measured across the GraphComment platform, every commenter draws 21 readers who follow the discussion. That’s audience and engagement you already own, no ad budget required.

Hosted comment platforms promise to fix the comment section — but usually at a hidden price: your readers get tracked and served ads, your comments end up locked in someone else’s silo, and your page speed pays for it.

GraphComment 5.0 is built to fix the comment section without that price. Here is the deal, point by point — and every claim below is verifiable.

1. Spam never reaches your site.
Spam bots don’t fill comment forms — they hammer WordPress’s native comment endpoint directly, which is why the flood continues even when comments look closed. With GraphComment active, that endpoint is shut and every comment goes through a moderated pipeline instead: smart filtering, insult detection, trusted-member auto-approval — and AI Moderation Assist, included free for your first 100 AI analyses each month. The AI reads the article before judging the comment, so it catches what keyword filters can’t, then suggests a decision with its reasoning — you stay in control. In production, fewer than 1% of its verdicts get overturned by a human moderator.

2. Actually free — and your readers are not the product.
No ads next to your content, ever. No ad-tracking of your readers. The free plan is not a trial: it includes 1M data loads a month — far beyond a typical blog’s traffic — with guest commenting, media embedding, moderation tools and real-time discussions included. And because of point 3, there is no hostage scenario the day you outgrow it.

3. Your comments live in YOUR database — reviewers keep pointing this out.
GraphComment continuously synchronizes every comment back into your WordPress database, author identity included — on a schedule, and instantly with the new webhook push. Deactivate the plugin tomorrow and your discussions are still there, in wp_comments, served natively. No export request, no ransom, no dead links. That’s why trying it is risk-free.

4. Your readers comment without creating an account.
Guest commenting is on by default, social login is one tap, and your registered users can flow through SSO (Premium). Forcing readers to create yet another account is what empties a comment section — GraphComment never does.

5. Near-native performance — measured by independent tests, not just by us.
An independent performance comparison found GraphComment adds as few HTTP requests as WordPress native comments. Our own Lighthouse benchmarks agree: the widget lazy-loads only when readers scroll to it, with the same LCP and zero main-thread blocking as a page with no comment plugin at all. Your Core Web Vitals don’t know it’s there.

6. Make it yours — without paid add-ons.
Your logo, your fonts, fine-grained themes with a beautiful dark mode, hundreds of settings — free. Even the philosophy of your discussion space is yours: Bubble Flow threading that keeps 300-comment debates readable, classic chronological, or flat — switch freely. Elsewhere, image uploads, captchas or comment search come as paid add-ons; here they’re included.

And the rest is there too: real-time commenting with instant reply notifications, inline images and videos, one-file import (WordPress WXR or Disqus XML, processed in the background), indexable comments with structured data for your SEO, a widget in 21 languages with a back-office in 10 and a fully rebuilt RTL layout, and a two-click connection with a setup wizard that ends on your next action. Hosting in Europe, under GDPR, with you as the data controller.

Leaving Disqus? Do it before it costs you your community.

A fact worth knowing: Disqus’s own comment export contains no commenter email addresses — not even for the forum owner. The longer you stay, the more of your community’s identity stays behind when you leave. GraphComment is the opposite trade: your commenters live in your WordPress database from day one.

Migration is one file: export from Disqus (custom XML) or WordPress (WXR), upload it in the plugin, and large archives are processed in the background. No ads, EU hosting, GDPR — and your community stays yours.

What’s new in GraphComment 5.0

• Structural spam shield — WordPress’s native comment endpoint is closed while GraphComment is active: spam bots hit a wall instead of your moderation queue.
• AI Moderation Assist, now with a free tier — the AI reads the article, flags risky comments and suggests a decision; free for your first 100 AI analyses each month.
• Connection in two clicks — a simple popup links your site to GraphComment. No more OAuth forms; new users can create their GraphComment site without leaving wp-admin.
• Gutenberg block — place the comment area anywhere with the GraphComment block, on block themes and classic themes alike.
• Shortcode & developer filters — [graphcomment] plus graphcomment_init_args / graphcomment_should_apply filters for full control from your theme (see For Developers).
• WooCommerce support — enable GraphComment on product pages when you want it.
• Instant backup sync — a secure webhook wakes the synchronization the moment a new comment arrives, instead of waiting for the next cron run.
• Diagnostic page — one click runs 8 health checks (connectivity, cron, sync freshness…) and produces a copy-paste report for support.
• Import by file — WXR and Disqus XML upload for large archives, with background processing.
• Domain migration (Premium) — move your site to a new domain without losing a single thread; 10,000 threads migrated in seconds.
• 21 languages & rebuilt RTL — plugin admin translated in 21 languages, moderation back-office in 10, with a proper right-to-left layout for Arabic, Persian and Hebrew.
• Free customization — logo, fonts, fine-grained themes with dark mode, and free choice of discussion layout (Bubble Flow, chronological or flat).
• Hardened security — site credentials encrypted at rest, signed API calls, and a modernized PHP 8-ready codebase with automated tests.

Everything in the free plan:

• Real-time discussions — Bubble Flow threading, chronological or flat, your choice
• Custom logo, fonts, fine-grained themes with dark mode, hundreds of settings
• Guest commenting, social login, automatic registration
• Media embedding, text formatting, badges, community profiles
• Smart moderation, insult filtering, banning tools, multi-moderators
• AI Moderation Assist for your first 100 AI analyses each month — the AI suggests, you decide
• One-file import (WordPress WXR, Disqus XML) — and continuous sync back to your database
• SEO-friendly indexable comments, structured data, analytics
• Sliding sidebar panel, counter & Top widgets
• Widget translated in 21 languages, spam protection

When your community grows — Premium:

• Domain migration — move your site to a new domain without losing a thread (10,000 threads migrated in seconds)
• Higher AI Moderation Assist volume — 2,000 AI analyses/month on Starter, 10,000 on Pro (extensions available)
• Fully automated AI moderation (Enterprise)
• SSO connection with your WordPress user base
• Editorialize & pin best discussions
• Live PUSH discussions mode
• Keyword alerts
• Restricted right to comment
• Custom sender & ban emails
• PUSH notification center

The Basic plan is free up to 1M data loads per month. Paid plans start at $29/month (Starter, 1.5M data loads — or $25/month billed annually); Pro is $59/month (5M data loads — or $51/month billed annually). See the full pricing and feature list.

Support

• Search our Knowledge Base for solutions to common troubleshooting questions
• Check out our support community, Discuss GraphComment, to see if your question has been answered
• Talk to our Support team at [email protected]
• Help translate GraphComment into your language on translate.wordpress.org

For Developers

GraphComment 5.0 exposes a shortcode and two filters so you can place the widget outside the native comments area and adjust its behaviour from your theme or a small companion plugin, without editing the plugin. Full developer documentation ships with the plugin in HOOKS.md.

Only one comment space is rendered per page (first render wins): a second [graphcomment], or a shortcode on a page that already shows the native comments, renders nothing.

Shortcode [graphcomment]

Place the comment widget anywhere in your content:

[graphcomment]
[graphcomment uid="my-custom-thread" readonly="true"]

• uid (optional): custom thread identifier, defaults to the post ID. Use it to share one discussion across several URLs.
• readonly (optional): readonly="true" forces read-only mode for this instance; otherwise the global setting applies.

The shortcode obeys the same display conditions as the native integration (bots in SEO mode, plugin activation range, WooCommerce product exclusion).

Filter graphcomment_init_args

Adjust the widget parameters (a nested array) before the script is generated. It covers every rendering path (native template, block theme, Gutenberg block, shortcode):

add_filter('graphcomment_init_args', function ($args, $post) {
    $args['behaviour']['uid'] = 'my-custom-thread';
    return $args;
}, 10, 2);

Filter graphcomment_should_apply

Enable or disable the widget from code — for example, re-enable WooCommerce product pages (excluded by default):

add_filter('graphcomment_should_apply', function ($should, $post) {
    if ($post && get_post_type($post) === 'product') return true;
    return $should;
}, 10, 2);