A Commentary About Blog Comment Systems

A few of you might have noticed that I recently switched blog comment systems – moving to Echo from IntenseDebate. The switch was mostly prompted by my frustration with IntenseDebate’s administrative features, particularly the inability to deal with spam on a volume/bulk basis as opposed to individually or groups of 10 at a time.

Having used Disqus at Twitterrati, I went looking for another comment system to see if there was another good option. After a bit of research, I came across Echo, which appeared to have many of the necessary features. I particularly liked how Echo would display tweets as well as comments – thereby providing coverage of more conversations about my blog posts.

Installing Echo was pretty straightforward, and the comments already within the blog were imported easily and quickly.

After a week or so of it, I’m not completely convinced it’s a long-term solution. The look and feel isn’t as polished as I’d like it to be, and the administrative functions need to be improved in terms of usability and intuitiveness.

Given Disqus and IntenseDebate have free versions, I’m surprised Echo costs $12/year after a 30-day trial period. Not that $12 is a lot of money but the lack of a free version is a detraction.

To be honest, I’d probably have uninstalled Echo already but there doesn’t appear to be an easy to uninstall it, which is completely strange.

Any thoughts on other blog comment systems?