Hyvor Talk

Hyvor Talk is a hosted commenting system positioned on privacy and simplicity, with no advertising on any tier. Installation is a three step process of registering the site, pasting a code snippet and customising the appearance, and pricing is published by monthly page load credits with tiers covering single sites through to fifty websites.

Charging on every tier rather than offering an advertising funded free plan is the entire positioning, and it is a coherent one. A comment section exists to build a relationship with readers, and filling it with a third party advertising network works against that. Paying a small monthly fee to keep the page clean is a straightforward trade for a publisher who cares about the reading experience.

Pricing by page loads rather than by comments matches the actual cost of running the service, since the embed loads on every page view whether anyone comments or not. It also means a site with heavy traffic and little discussion pays for traffic it is not converting.

The three step installation is worth taking at face value. Adding comments to a site is genuinely awkward, and the products that win in this category are usually the ones that work in an afternoon rather than the ones with the longest feature list.