Disqus
Disqus, founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, is a blog comment hosting and audience engagement platform that provides publishers with social-integrated commenting, user profiles, moderation, and engagement analytics.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2007
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Disqus does
Disqus is a blog comment hosting and audience engagement platform founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company provides publishers and content sites with embedded commenting infrastructure, social-login integration, user profiles, moderation tools, and engagement analytics, positioned as a community-growth layer for online publishers that prefer not to build and maintain such capabilities in-house. The product targets a horizontal customer base of websites rather than a single vertical.
Disqus has operated as a privately held, venture-backed company. Disclosed funding totals approximately $10.5 million across rounds in 2007 (Y Combinator), 2008 (Felicis, Knight's Bridge Capital Partners, Union Square Ventures), and a $10 million round in May 2011 co-led by North Bridge Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures. Leadership includes co-founder and CTO Jason Yan and President/GM Steven Stein. Current headcount is reported at 11–50 employees.
The available input data does not disclose pricing models, customer logos, segment mix, revenue, geographic footprint beyond the San Francisco headquarters, certifications, partnerships, recent product launches, or active technology stack. The company's public positioning is summarized by the tagline "#1 in audience engagement and community growth." The thinness of the disclosed dataset constrains deeper analysis of go-to-market mechanics, monetization, and competitive positioning.
Disqus firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Disqus
- Website
- https://disqus.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2007
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Disqus, founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, is a blog comment hosting and audience engagement platform that provides publishers with social-integrated commenting, user profiles, moderation, and engagement analytics.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Disqus industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Comment Hosting Software
- NAICS
- Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers (51621), Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers (516210)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Community Safety, Moderation & Trust Tools (UGC moderation, anti-toxicity) (MPAFAIAJ)
Keywords
Where Disqus is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
Disqus business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales
Disqus product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Disqus is a blog comment hosting service that provides a hosted commenting platform for websites. It enables publishers and site owners to embed social commenting features, user profiles, social network integration, and comment analytics on their sites. The platform positions itself as an audience engagement and community growth solution for online publishers.
Product overview
Disqus is an audience engagement and community growth platform. The source data provides only the tagline "#1 in audience engagement and community growth" with no specific product names, modules, or detailed offering descriptions.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Disqus Comment Hosting Platform
Companies that use Disqus
Customer profileIdeal customer profiles1 record
Disqus technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Disqus partnerships and signals
Strategic signalRecent moves3 records
Disqus competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Coral by Vox Media: Open-source commenting and community platform built for news publishers. Directly comparable to Disqus as a third-party-hosted comment system with moderation tools targeted at online publishers and media sites.
- Commento: Lightweight, privacy-focused embeddable commenting system for blogs and publishers. Competes head-to-head with Disqus as a drop-in comment widget with moderation and analytics, targeting independent publishers.
- Hyvor Talk: Hosted commenting platform for websites offering embeddable comments, moderation, and analytics. Direct alternative to Disqus for blogs and content sites, with comparable feature set and pricing model.
- Isso: Self-hosted commenting server designed as a lightweight alternative to Disqus. Comparable in scope (embeddable commenting for static/blog sites) and competes for the same publisher integrations.
- Remarkbox: Hosted commenting service offering embeddable comment widgets with moderation features for blogs and publishers. Directly competes with Disqus in the third-party comment-hosting niche.
Broad incumbents
- Livefyre: Enterprise community engagement platform (acquired by Adobe in 2016) that offered real-time comments, chat, and UGC moderation for major publishers. Comparable to Disqus at the enterprise-publishing end of the same market, with a much larger parent and broader feature portfolio.
- WordPress Comments: Native commenting built into the WordPress CMS, which powers a large share of blogs and publisher sites. A free, always-available alternative that competes with Disqus at the integration point and historically displaced third-party comment widgets at scale.
Emerging players
- Substack Comments: Native commenting layer within the Substack newsletter/blog platform. Represents the trend of platform-native commenting replacing third-party widgets like Disqus, and overlaps on target audience (independent publishers and writers).
- GitHub Discussions: Community-discussion feature within GitHub that competes for technical-publisher comment and community-engagement use cases where Disqus is also deployed. Comparable as a hosted community/conversation surface with moderation tooling.
Others
- ActiveCampaign (Comments / community tools): Broader marketing-automation and customer-engagement platform whose audience-engagement suite overlaps thematically with Disqus's positioning around community growth and publisher analytics, though not a direct comment-widget competitor.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat3 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Disqus social profiles
Digital presenceDisqus financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Disqus leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles2 records
Disqus funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds3 records
Investors5 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Disqus M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Disqus
What does Disqus do?
Disqus is a blog comment hosting service that provides a hosted commenting platform for websites. It enables publishers and site owners to embed social commenting features, user profiles, social network integration, and comment analytics on their sites. The platform positions itself as an audience engagement and community growth solution for online publishers.
Is Disqus a public or private company?
Disqus is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Disqus founded?
Disqus was founded in 2007. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Disqus based?
Disqus is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
Who are Disqus's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Coral by Vox Media, Commento, Hyvor Talk, Isso and Remarkbox. Broad incumbents are Livefyre and WordPress Comments. Emerging players are Substack Comments and GitHub Discussions. ActiveCampaign (Comments / community tools) is listed as an others.
Does Disqus have an API?
No public API is recorded for Disqus.
What industry is Disqus in?
Disqus's product category is Comment Hosting Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is MPAFAIAJ, Community Safety, Moderation & Trust Tools (UGC moderation, anti-toxicity). Its NAICS code is 51621 and its SIC code is 7372.