Companies Using Disqus

With 10+ years in web crawling and technographic data analysis, I've examined Disqus's position in the commenting platform market using our detection data, LinkedIn company enrichment, and G2 user reviews. This analysis covers 28,670 actively detected domains and 8,790 enriched company profiles as of our April 2026 crawl. Disqus was founded on October 30, 2007 by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan as a Y Combinator startup (per Wikipedia). Zeta Global acquired the company on December 5, 2017 for an undisclosed amount. In December 2023, Disqus earned Google Certified Publishing Partner status (per blog.disqus.com).

Growth trajectory

Disqus's adoption curve tells a story of three distinct phases. From 2008 to 2017, it grew from a single detected domain to about 5,400 active sites. By May 2011, Disqus claimed 750,000 websites and nearly 500 million monthly unique visitors (per blog.disqus.com/the-numbers-of-disqus). A Lijit study from the same year found Disqus powering 75% of all third-party comment systems. That early dominance was earned through publisher partnerships with outlets like Time Magazine, Wired, IGN, and PCMag.

The second growth phase hit during 2020-2024, where active domains roughly doubled from 10,400 to over 26,000. Content-heavy sites invested in engagement tools during the pandemic. But the third phase is worrying: active domains peaked near 26,200 in December 2024 and dropped to 19,400 by July 2025, a 26% decline in seven months. Total domains (active + inactive) have been falling since 2020, which means new installs can't keep pace with removals.

"Total domain count started falling in 2020, even as active domains kept climbing. That was the early warning. New installs couldn't match the removal rate, and now the active count is following." - Mehmet Suleyman, CEO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales Signal: The shrinking install base creates opportunities for migration service providers and competing platforms. Companies still on Disqus are there by inertia, not recent evaluation. Target publishers with 1M+ monthly pageviews who are likely paying for Disqus Pro ($125/month) and may be open to alternatives with better privacy postures.

Customer profile

Disqus's customer base skews heavily toward micro-businesses. 74.7% of enriched companies have 1-10 employees, and an additional 14.5% have 11-50. Combined, nearly 90% of Disqus's user base consists of organizations with fewer than 50 people. These are personal blogs, independent media outlets, and small tech companies using the free, ad-supported Basic plan.

Age distribution reinforces this picture: 51.4% were founded in the 2010s and 21.2% in the 2000s, meaning over 72% of Disqus companies are digital-native businesses less than 25 years old. Only 11.2% were founded in the 2020s, suggesting Disqus is attracting fewer new-generation websites compared to its prime years.

Enterprise detections exist but tell a different story. NVIDIA's Disqus embed sits on developer blog subdomains, not nvidia.com's main pages. Thales runs it on docs-cybersec.thalesgroup.com, a documentation portal. Per Wappalyzer's current data, high-traffic sites like Downdetector, Pluralsight (app.pluralsight.com), and 9to5Google still actively run Disqus. Raw Story, the subject of Disqus's published case study (about.disqus.com/case-study-raw-story), represents their deepest integration: 250K comments, 1.5M comment views, and 450K comment readers per month through a Disqus for Business subscription.

Sales Signal: The overwhelming micro-business concentration means most Disqus customers are on free plans with minimal switching costs. Target publishers in the 11-50 and 51-200 employee ranges, where comment volume justifies paid plans and where switching decisions involve actual budget holders.

Industry and geographic concentration

IT Services, Software Development, and Technology collectively account for 16.2% of Disqus companies. This tech-heavy skew makes sense: developer blogs adopted Disqus first in 2007-2008, and sites like javascript.info (per Wappalyzer) still rely on it. Publishing verticals round out the core: Book and Periodical Publishing at 2.4%, Online Audio and Video Media at 2.2%, Media Production at 2.0%. No single industry exceeds 6.1%, confirming Disqus as a horizontal tool.

Geographically, the United States accounts for 35.7% of enriched companies, but the spread is wider than most SaaS tools. Brazil at 7.5% ranks higher than the UK at 7.2%, which tracks with Wappalyzer's finding that Portuguese is the second most common language on Disqus sites (14% of sites). India (4.3%), Canada (3.3%), and Australia (3.0%) fill out the Anglophone distribution. Spain (2.1%) is notable given that El Pais, Spain's largest newspaper, runs Disqus on elpais.com (per Wappalyzer).

Sales Signal: Brazil and India represent underserved markets where Disqus has organic traction but competitors have limited presence. utterances, the API-ranked leader in comment systems, targets only English-speaking developer communities. Localized commenting solutions for Portuguese and Hindi content publishers could capture share in these regions.

Migration patterns

Disqus's migration data reveals a clear vulnerability. The dominant outflow is toward wpDiscuz: 235 companies switched from Disqus to wpDiscuz, while only 17 moved the other direction. That's a 14:1 loss ratio. wpDiscuz is a self-hosted WordPress plugin that keeps comments in the site's own database, loads faster (no third-party JavaScript), and avoids the ad injection that comes with Disqus's free plan.

The Vuukle corridor shows a smaller but notable two-way flow: 26 companies came to Disqus from Vuukle, while 45 left for Vuukle. Vuukle positions itself as a privacy-compliant alternative with built-in revenue sharing. Historical migration from Livefyre (78 companies gained) reflects Livefyre's acquisition by Adobe and eventual sunset. The overall picture: 148,010 domains have previously used Disqus but no longer do, a 5:1 ratio of former to current users.

"A 14:1 loss ratio to wpDiscuz is the data point that matters. Publishers don't move commenting systems lightly, and when they do, they're choosing self-hosted control over third-party convenience." - Mehmet Suleyman, CEO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales Signal: Two opportunities here. Companies leaving Disqus for wpDiscuz may need migration assistance and WordPress optimization services. Companies that already left but aren't happy with wpDiscuz's moderation could be targets for newer alternatives like FastComments or Hyvor Talk.

Technology ecosystem

The tech stack data reveals that 39.4% of Disqus customers use Cloudflare Hosting, making it the most common infrastructure choice by far. Cloudflare's free tier appeals to the same small-publisher demographic that uses Disqus's free plan. The analytics stack leans toward legacy tools: Google Analytics Classic (12.1%), Facebook Domain Insights (17%), and Hotjar (10.1%). Microsoft Clarity at 6.5% is the most modern analytics tool in the mix.

The CMS breakdown confirms Disqus's role as a gap-filler. Squarespace (3.6%), WordPress.com (3.4%), and Joomla (2.9%) lead, all platforms where native commenting is absent or limited. Drupal at 2.2% (plus Drupal 7 at 1.0% and Drupal 10 at 0.7%) points to a legacy web ecosystem where Disqus was installed years ago and never removed. Notably, Disqus supports integration with Jekyll, Hugo, Ghost, and other static site generators (per disqus.com), which explains its persistence among developer blogs.

Sales Signal: Sites running Google Analytics Classic and Drupal 7 are overdue for modernization across the board. These are prospects for full-stack web refresh packages. The low adoption of modern analytics (Clarity, Snowplow) confirms these are under-resourced sites where Disqus persists by default.

G2 review signals

With only 23 G2 reviews, Disqus's review footprint is thin compared to broader SaaS categories. Users consistently praise ease of use for basic commenting and social login integration. The upvoting system and spam filtering get positive mentions. On the negative side, reviewers cite limited moderation tools on free plans and page load performance issues. The WordPress plugin carries a 2.7-star rating across 219 reviews on WordPress.org, with complaints about ads and slow loading dominating recent feedback.

Our crawl data partially confirms the performance concern. The 26% active domain decline in H1 2025 could reflect publishers removing Disqus to improve page speed. Google's Core Web Vitals emphasis on Interaction to Next Paint (INP) penalizes third-party JavaScript embeds that add blocking resources. Privacy is the other concern: Disqus tracks user activity across all sites where it is embedded, per their own privacy policy (help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717103-disqus-privacy-policy).

Sales Signal: The performance angle is the strongest competitive wedge. Publishers who care about Core Web Vitals and SEO are the most likely Disqus churners. Pitch lightweight alternatives by leading with INP improvement data.

Key takeaways

1. Declining platform: Disqus peaked at 26,200 active domains in late 2024 and lost 26% by mid-2025. Total domain count has been falling since 2020.

2. Micro-business core: 74.7% of companies have 1-10 employees. Enterprise detections (NVIDIA, Thales, Pluralsight) are departmental, not company-wide.

3. Horizontal adoption: No industry exceeds 6.1%, but tech/IT and publishing verticals show natural affinity.

4. Migration vulnerability: 14:1 loss ratio to wpDiscuz signals a structural shift toward self-hosted commenting. 148K domains previously used Disqus but no longer do.

5. Legacy stack indicator: High overlap with Drupal 7, Google Analytics Classic, and AngularJS suggests many installs are on aging websites.

6. Pricing pressure: Free plan includes ads; paid plans start at $18/month (Plus) and $125/month (Pro), per disqus.com/pricing. Competitors like utterances are completely free.

Sales applications

Outreach template: "Hi [Name], I noticed [company] is still running Disqus on [subdomain]. Our data shows 235 companies switched from Disqus to self-hosted commenting in the past 3 years, mostly for performance and privacy reasons. I'd love to share how [alternative] could improve your site's Core Web Vitals scores while keeping your existing comment data. Worth a 15-minute call?"

Targeting strategy: On TechnologyChecker.io, filter for Disqus companies with 11-50 employees in Publishing, Media, or Online Audio/Video industries. These are the publishers most likely on paid Disqus plans and most receptive to alternatives that reduce page load time.

Competitive angle: Target the 235 companies that recently migrated to wpDiscuz. They already decided Disqus wasn't working, but wpDiscuz's moderation tools are weaker. Pitch moderation-first alternatives like Cackle or Hyvor Talk to this segment.

For a deeper look at how commenting platforms fit into the broader web technology market, explore our full dataset of 8,790 enriched Disqus companies and 28,670 total detections at TechnologyChecker.io.