Every European website commenting software tool reviewed
Paris, France
Founded 2019
Annual SaaS licence, price not published
Pilots of 30 to 60 days before a full deployment
Best for: Newsrooms that want comments, structured debates and consultations on one moderation pipeline
Logora sells a conversation layer to media: threaded comments tied to reader accounts, pro and con debates on editorial questions, and consultations that collect and rank ideas. Its site says it works with more than 50 outlets in 12 countries and cites Der Spiegel and Milenio among them.
The operator is Logora SAS, a société par actions simplifiée registered under SIREN 811 763 553, VAT FR07 850 171 695, with its seat in Paris. The legal notice names OVH, 8 rue de la Ville l'Évêque, 75008 Paris, as host of the application and moderation infrastructure, and Bunny.net SRL in Slovenia as host of the logora.com website. The site is governed by French law with French courts.
There is no public price list. Logora describes annual SaaS licensing with no integrated advertising, and pilots of 30 to 60 days before a deployment decision. That suits a newsroom with a procurement process and does not suit a hobby blog.
What Logora does well
- Application and moderation hosted by OVH in Paris, per the legal notice
- Comments, debates and consultations from one vendor
- Hybrid AI and human moderation pipeline
- No integrated advertising, per the vendor
- French SAS with SIREN and VAT number published
Where Logora falls short
- No published price, only annual licensing
- Aimed at newsrooms, a poor fit for a small blog
- Not described as open source
- The marketing website is hosted separately by Bunny.net in Slovenia
Standout feature. It is the only tool here that adds structured pro and con debates and reader consultations to ordinary comments.
Sweden
Standard €4 and Business €12 per active coworker per month (Business minimum €300 a month), Enterprise on request
First month free, no credit card
Best for: Teams that want blog comments and a forum from one open-source product
Talkyard is a community discussion platform that does embedded blog comments, forums, Q&A and idea voting, and it can be installed on your own server or bought as a managed service. Its site describes blog comments that work like Disqus but without ads and tracking.
The company is Debiki AB of Sweden. Its standard SaaS terms are governed by Swedish law with the courts of Stockholm, and the site credits the code to Magnus Lindberg. The software is licensed AGPL, with source on GitHub.
The terms do not name a data centre, and the founder's own forum thread on GDPR lists Google Cloud, Amazon Simple Email Service and Automattic Akismet among the third-party processors of the hosted service. No region is stated on the pages checked.
Pricing is per active coworker rather than per page view: Standard at €4 a month and Business at €12 a month with a €300 monthly minimum and a dedicated managed server, plus Enterprise on request. The first month is free with no card. External members such as readers and customers are unlimited on every plan.
What Talkyard does well
- Open source under AGPL, so you can host it yourself
- Comments, forum, Q&A and idea voting in one product
- Prices in euros are published
- Unlimited external members on every plan
- Swedish company, Swedish law, courts in Stockholm
Where Talkyard falls short
- Managed hosting names no region and lists Google Cloud and Amazon as processors
- Priced per coworker, which suits a team more than a solo blog
- The company page gives no registration number or street address
- The main site redirects to its own forum, so legal pages are harder to find
Standout feature. It is the only product here whose source code you can run on your own server.
Berlin, Germany
Best for: Media sites that want representative opinion polls embedded in articles
Civey is a Berlin survey company whose widget media partners embed in article pages, so readers answer a question in context. It is a polling tool, not a comment system, and it is on this list because the widget is the reader-participation feature that sits beside an article.
The operator is Civey GmbH, Alte Jakobstraße 85/86, 10179 Berlin, HRB 165277 B at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, managed by Janina Mütze and Gerrit Richter. The privacy policy states that the data sits "auf deutschen Servern in professionellen Rechenzentren", and that Civey is the sole controller of survey participation and account data collected through the widget.
The homepage presents market research for enterprises, institutions and media, and shows no price. The widget's own terms and fees are not published on the pages checked, so a publisher has to ask.
What Civey does well
- German servers stated in the privacy policy
- Berlin GmbH with commercial register number and named managers
- Civey is sole controller of data collected through the widget
- Built for embedding in news article pages
Where Civey falls short
- No published price or plan
- Not a comment system, readers cannot write replies
- The privacy policy names no hosting company, only the country
- Widget terms are not visible on the pages checked
Standout feature. It is the only tool here whose privacy policy states German servers and names itself as sole controller of the widget's data.
Linz, Austria
Founded 2015
Best for: Publishers that want polls, quizzes and forms with an Austrian vendor
Pinpoll offers three products to website operators: Pinpoll Tools for polls, quizzes and forms, a data management platform for first-party audience data, and an advertising product. Its site lists IPPEN.MEDIA, ORF and MDR among customers.
The terms identify Pinpoll GmbH, registered at the regional court of Linz under FN 433631 v, with its head office at Hopfengasse 3, 4020 Linz. They are governed by Austrian law with the local court of Linz as venue. The data protection declaration states that personal data is stored on a server of Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, in the European Union. The site also lists a sales office in Cape Town, South Africa.
No price is published on the pages checked, and there is no stated free plan. Terms, a data protection declaration and a processing agreement are published as PDF documents.
What Pinpoll does well
- Austrian GmbH with a Firmenbuch number in its own terms
- Storage in the EU stated in the data protection declaration
- Processing agreement published as a PDF
- Polls, quizzes and forms from one vendor
Where Pinpoll falls short
- Storage provider is Microsoft Corporation, a US company
- No published price or free plan
- Not a comment system, readers cannot write replies
- Legal documents are PDFs only
Standout feature. It is the only tool here that bundles polls, quizzes and forms with its own audience data platform.
Berlin, Germany
Best for: Publishers and brands that want voting tools inside articles
Opinary is a polling and voting tool that publishers place inside articles, with brands buying access to the audiences that answer. Its site says it reaches over 125 million users and lists Der Spiegel and The Times among partners.
The imprint names Affinity Global GmbH, Engeldamm 62-64, 10179 Berlin, HRB 151824 B at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, VAT DE291652961, with Cornelius Frey as managing director. The terms of use are governed by German law. Opinary describes itself as part of the Affinity Ecosystem, and the privacy policy refers to Affinity Global Inc. for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, so the group is not European-owned throughout.
The privacy policy says data may be transferred to the USA and names no hosting provider or region, and no price is published. That makes it the least verifiable entry in this list on hosting, and it is ranked below the tools that name a host for that reason.
What Opinary does well
- Berlin GmbH with commercial register number and VAT ID in its imprint
- Terms governed by German law
- Used by named European publishers
Where Opinary falls short
- No hosting provider or region named
- Privacy policy allows transfers to the USA
- The wider group includes Affinity Global Inc.
- No published price
- Not a comment system, readers cannot write replies
Standout feature. It is the most widely placed polling tool in this list, and the one that says least about where data is stored.
Paris, France
Personal €5 per month (€50 yearly), Premium €12, Business €40, Enterprise on request
14-day free trial, no credit card required
Best for: Blogs and small publishers that want a hosted Disqus replacement with published prices
HYVOR Talk is a hosted comment widget that goes on a page with one script and replaces Disqus or Facebook Comments without an advertising network behind it. It is one of five products from HYVOR, alongside Hyvor Blogs, Hyvor Post, FortGuard and Hyvor Relay, and it is the one the company is best known for.
The operator is HYVOR, 10 Rue de Penthièvre, 75008 Paris, SIREN 914168042, VAT FR52914168042. Its terms are governed by French law with the courts of Paris.
The sub-processor page names Hetzner in Germany as the primary hosting provider, Crisp in France for support, and FortGuard in France for spam protection. It also names Cloudflare in the United States for DNS, CDN, DDoS protection and media storage, Mailgun, Sentry and Stripe in the United States, and AWS in the United States with EU servers for newsletter and notification emails.
Pricing is published in euros: Personal at €5 a month for one website and 2,500 credits, Premium at €12 for up to 10 websites, Business at €40 for up to 50 websites with SSO, branding and webhooks, and Enterprise on request. There is a 14-day trial with no card, and the Personal plan carries a 5% membership fee. The privacy policy itself names no storage location, so the sub-processor page is the source for hosting.
What HYVOR Talk does well
- Registered Paris company with SIREN and VAT number on its own site
- Primary hosting on Hetzner in Germany, per the sub-processor page
- Prices in euros are published, from €5 a month
- 14-day trial with no credit card
- Governed by French law with courts in Paris
Where HYVOR Talk falls short
- Cloudflare in the United States handles CDN and media storage
- Mailgun, Sentry and Stripe in the United States are also sub-processors
- Not described as open source
- The privacy policy names no data location, only the sub-processor page does
Standout feature. It is the only comment system in this list with a published price, a trial, a named German host and a registered company number together.
