Blogger vs. IntenseDebate vs. Disqus: What commenting platform do you use?

  

Who do you use for your commenting platform on your blog? Do you like them? Do you have issues?

How about as a follower who leaves comments on blogs...Do you have a preference of one commenting platform over another?

I started off with just using Blogger. It is super easy for followers to use, but it doesn't let me contact them (unless they leave that info) and they don't see my replies unless they come back and check each post they left a comment on. Who has time to do that??? This frustrates me to no end since I want to be able to communicate with followers and sometimes I actually needed to contact someone and couldn't find a way to do so. I also really hate the whole captcha thing. I don't like having to do it when I leave a comment either, but you can get a ton of spam if you don't.

In April of last year I switched to Disqus. Let me just tell you, I LOVED using them! Using that platform was so easy for me and it was great how well I could keep track of comments. I also loved that it took care of spam for me. There was no captcha. Yay! I could also contact who I needed to and find their blogs super easily. There was one BIG drawback though. Internet Explorer users couldn't use Disqus unless they changed their settings and then sometimes they couldn't see it at all. Obviously this defeats the purpose of using a commenting platform. I just didn't find anything that I really liked better and I didn't really want to go back to using Blogger's system, so I stuck with them for a while and kept my ears and eyes open for a different commenting system.

Let me just input here...Why is a commenting platform that is simple and easy to use for bloggers and followers alike so difficult to have on Blogger??? I mean the follower doesn't need a ton of options, only a few things, like a field for their name, their website (if they have one) and their email. Wordpress seems to have unlimited options in this regard. Anyway, moving on...

Then in late January of this year I ran across IntenseDebate and had a discussion with a blogger I follow who was going to be switching from Disqus and was thinking about going to IntenseDebate. She had the same issues with Disqus that I had. Such a bummer! I made the switch and was happy that it seemed to work and not cause the same issues Disqus did. That happiness was short lived though. In the first month I started seeing some issues where Intense Debate just wouldn't load at all. I even re-installed it a few times, sometimes deleting old comments, but it still continued to have issues. I did this again last night and then checked my posts this morning that were scheduled. None of them loaded with IntenseDebate. Ugh!

I decided that IntenseDebate just wasn't going to work for me. The bummer is that I'll lose a lot of comments when I switch, but switching now is better than later, right? I decided I'd go check out Disqus again to see if anything had changed and guess what? Lo and behold Disqus now has some coding you can change so that IE users shouldn't have any issues. *happy dance* I already loved using them before and I seriously am so happy that they fixed the issue (hopefully it really is fixed).

So, this morning I switched back to Disqus. Phew! The nice thing with Disqus is that even if I switch to Wordpress or a self-hosted site later, Disqus can just come with me. The journey to find a commenting platform that I liked and worked for everyone was kind of exhausting and frustrating. I have missed using Disqus and am happy to be using them again! I'm crossing my fingers that I won't have to deal with issues and changing what I use again!

For those of you that have been debating on switching, I hope I gave you some things to think about. If I had realized that IntenseDebate was going to be so touch and go I would have never switched. I hope that I've maybe saved you some frustration. :)

What do you think? Do you have a preference? Is the newer version of Disqus working for you (especially if you use Internet Explorer)?