FastComments

Description

At a glance, FastComments gives you:

  • Live commenting and moderating.
  • Ad-free experience, no data harvesting.
  • Fight Spam – We use automated spam detection. Also, unverified comments can be configured to be automatically removed.
  • Ability to moderate content, including with multiple moderators.
  • Configurable notifications for you and your users.
  • Ability to import from other providers. Automatic image/avatar migration.
  • A comment UI that fetches comments and renders in milliseconds to prevent disengagement.
  • Very Fast Time-To-Engage: No complex sign up process for your users.
  • Secure Password-less Account Management (email-based login links).
  • Threads & Voting (replies to replies) along with reply notifications for engagement.
  • An unobtrusive UI – no modals or behavior that distracts from your content.
  • Users get notified when someone replies, and you get notified of new comments to moderate. We also aggregate emails, so if you receive a hundred notifications in an hour we’ll just send one summary email.
  • Image support Commenters can attach images to their posts.
  • Localization The client-side widget is fully localized in English, French, and Spanish using browser locale detection.
  • Full-Text Search through all of your comments.
  • SSO Give your users a seamless commenting experience with our secure and easy single-sign-on system.
  • Anonymous commenting (unverified comments auto removed after three days)
  • Ability to export your data at any time.
  • JavaScript Not Required to view or leave comments.

Speed up your WordPress installation with FastComments, by letting us render your comment threads instead of your WordPress servers!

Screenshots

  • An example comment thread
  • The admin area

Installation

Installing FastComments is easy. There are two main steps – installing the WordPress plugin and then connecting it with FastComments.

  1. Go to “Plugins” > “Add Plugin”
  2. Search for “FastComments”
  3. Click “Install Now”
  4. Activate the Plugin
  5. Click FastComments in the left admin panel.
  6. Follow the steps to set up and connect your WordPress installation to our servers. Don’t worry, it’s just a couple clicks.

You can expect the sync to take several minutes if you have tens of thousands of comments or more.

FastComments has performance as a top priority and is designed to ensure it does not put significant load on your site during setup. We use WordPress’s default indexes to perform the sync, and even for large
sites the load should be very little and is designed to be spread out as much as possible.

FAQ

What does it cost to use FastComments?

FastComments has different tiers available. Whether you’re an individual creator or a larger businesses, there’s a tier for you.
See our pricing page here: https://fastcomments.com/traffic-pricing

What is FastComments Faster Than?

FastComments aims to be the fastest commenting system for you and your users. User experience and performance are very high
on the list of priorities for us.

Will I lose any comments when I switch to FastComments?

Fear not, your comments will not disappear! Your site will experience zero loss of data even during the transition as we won’t enable FastComments until the sync is done.

Can I switch back to default WordPress comments?

By default, FastComments keeps your WordPress installation in sync with our servers. We send very small updates, at most once a minute if needed, for any new comments.

Simply cancel your account and deactivate the plugin to switch back, but we don’t think you’ll want to!

Can I customize how FastComments looks?

You sure can! After installing click the Customize button in the FastComments admin area to configure how your comment threads should look and function, as well as adding your own CSS if desired.

Reviews

mai 25, 2022
I just created this account just to talk about how awesome Fastcomment is. I’ve been using fastcomment for a while, things have changed quite a bit, in a positive direction, of course. It seems to have most of the cool features, like Rank, Message Inbox, Online/Offline status, Gif image, Moderator, good spam system, very powerful theme customization (surely no commenting system has this, at least for now, 2022)… It can be said that Fastcomment has most of the features of other commenting systems. I think, currently Fastcomment is not only Fast. which it is: Fastcomment = Very Fast + All the BEST FEATURES
august 11, 2021
I can’t say enough good things about Fast Comments. When I signed up for their free trial, I was not prepared for how much I would love their service. Their name doesn’t do them justice. I use their widgets to load comments via Ajax on custom post types (among other places) and it really is FAST. I bought the year-long package immediately when my trial ended–there was no going back to the basic Wordpress comments. Their price packages are incredibly reasonable for the services they offer. More than that, though, their support is amazing. I submitted a question about additional functionality I was looking for, and Devon spent a good portion of the day chatting with me back and forth to get exact specifics and to offer suggestions to accomplish what I needed–and not just generic “here’s a documentation article to get you started” suggestions, either. He took the time to really understand what I wanted to do and offer alternatives, as well as making a note of the functionality they could later build into their plugin. I’ve interacted with their support team twice now (both for functionality questions, not problems) and they are just as fast as the comment service they support. I haven’t had a single issue and it makes my site (which is user heavy) SO much faster not having to wait for Wordpress’s default comment functionality…which I can sync to if I want, also! I really can’t recommend them enough, they have a great product and a great team and I plan to use them for my site’s comments indefinitely. Don’t bog down your site with resource-intensive Wordpress comments…get Fast Comments to streamline all that for you. I promise you won’t regret it. CJ
november 28, 2020
I’ve tried every system there is and watched page speed suffer every time. FastComments is insanely small and fast — shedding 300kb and 5 dependencies from the last plugin I was using. Run a GTMetrix before and after replacing your current comment system with FastComments and you’ll see. Reading the plugin’s author’s blog posts revealed he has put a lot of effort into the nuts and bolts under the hood for speed and stability. The comments are live and the moderation is easy. It looks great out of the box, but with a few CSS tweaks in the plugin dashboard, it looks even better. At <$5/mo for a million views for the paid-tier plan, it is underpriced for what it is, which is a blazing fast comment system that lives discretely within a theme. Easy migration/import/export for existing comments got it up and running in a few minutes.
Read all 2 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“FastComments” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “FastComments” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

3.16.0

  • Improved compatibility with some other plugins like LearnDash LMS.
  • Adds some flexibility around SSO Setup.

3.15.0

  • Support for the Streaming Chat widget. You can change widgets under Advanced Settings.

3.14.0

  • Support for newer block-based themes.

3.13.0

  • Comment section now respects post password protection requirements (it will not show).

3.12.7

  • WordPress 6.0.4

3.12.6

  • Compatibility improvements for some themes that might move the FastComments javascript around on the page.

3.12.5

  • Performance improvements for the initial sync.

3.12.4

  • Fixing Malformed SSO message shown when SSO is enabled and nobody is logged in. The “login to comment” option is now shown as expected.

3.12.3

  • Decreasing time to wait in some cases after setup complete.

3.12.2

  • Bugfixes on initial sync after changing data location.

3.12.1

  • Improved support for keeping your data in the EU.

3.12.0

  • Support for keeping your data in the EU.

3.11.1

  • WordPress 6

3.11.0

  • Option to opt out of initial sync during setup.
  • Ability to perform full sync manually at any time.
  • Sync improvements (no longer misses first comment in database…).

3.10.5

  • Improvements to the chunk splitting algorithm for initial setup. No longer gets stuck on sites with very large number of large comments.

3.10.4

  • Support for syncing all of your Comment data from FastComments back to WordPress has been added.

3.10.3

  • Comment count accuracy has been improved.

3.10.2

  • Friendly setup note.

3.10.1

  • JavaScript is no longer required to leave or view comments.

3.9.10

  • When using SSO, Admins and Moderators now have the appropriate tags shown on with comments. Additionally, configuration has been added for the FastComments log level.

3.9.9

  • Sync now supports sites more comments for a more reliable migration. They do not have to fit in memory during sync.

3.9.8

  • Improved support for re-running the sync multiple times without creating duplicate data.

3.9.7

  • Dynamically adjust request size on initial sync to ensure all comments are migrated while still keeping the initial sync fast.

3.9.6

  • Improved accuracy on initial sync with parent/child comments.

3.9.5

  • Improved comment date accuracy on reverse sync + switching to WordPress built in mechanisms for HTTP requests.

3.9.4

  • Support for custom integrations to pass custom values for “comment thread ids” while retaining the WordPress Post and User IDs on sync.

3.9.3

  • Stability improvements and sync-related bugfixes.

3.9.2

  • Stability improvements and sync-related bugfixes. Initial setup made more intuitive in some areas.

3.9.1

  • Initial sync has been sped up and some bugs fixed.

3.9

  • Sync of comments from WordPress to FastComments when there are many comments improved.

3.8

  • Improvements for when upgrading from 2.1.

3.7

  • Improvements for when upgrading from 2.1.

3.6

  • Tested with WordPress 5.8.

3.5

  • When upgrading from 2.1, ensure user goes through setup process properly, but allow comments to still load.

3.4

  • Improves the process of upgrading from 2.1.

3.3

  • Fixes an issue causing some sites to not load.

3.2

  • Sync related improvements (don’t try to sync when no token set).

3.1

  • Improvements to how the plugin syncs with the FastComments backend. Improved support for our customers with strict firewalls and DDOS protection.

2.1

  • Latest version of FastComments. A completely new look!

1.9

  • WordPress 5.7

1.8

  • Support for async-javascript like plugins.

1.7

  • Updated branding.

1.6

  • Enabling reply notifications for SSO users.

1.5

  • Improved compatibility with other plugins

1.4

  • Support (Diagnostic) Improvements

1.3

  • Sync Improvements
    • Deletes from the FastComments moderation page put WordPress comments in the trash.
  • Tested with latest WP Version (5.5)

1.2

  • Sync Improvements

1.1

  • SSO Support!
  • Admin area bug fixes/improvements
  • Sync fixes

1.0

  • Initial release! Full, fast syncing support with good user experience. Hello world!