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Disqus

Full company profile

uuid0007irb

Namestring
Disqus
Websiteurl
disqus.com
Company typeenum
Private
Founded yearint
2007
Descriptiontext

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.

Short descriptiontext

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.

Operating statusenum
Operating
Ownership categoryenum
Headcount rangeband
11–50
akta.pro rankint
HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
HQ citystring
San Francisco
HQ countrystring
United States
HQ regionstring
North America
Markets served

Serves global market

Keyword5 values
comment hosting service, audience engagement platform, community engagement tools, blog commenting platform, social commenting integration
Industry1 code
1Community Safety, Moderation & Trust Tools (UGC moderation, anti-toxicity)
CodeMPAFAIAJPrimaryYes
NAICS code2 codes
  • Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers51621
  • Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers516210
SIC code1 code
  • Services-Prepackaged Software7372
Product category
Comment Hosting Software
Social media profiles3 records
Cost components5 values
Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales
GTM typeB2B
B2B
Offering typeSoftware
Software
Core offering1 text field

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.

Differentiator
Functional benefit
Problem solved
Product overview1 text field

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.

Product and service1 record
1Disqus Comment Hosting Platform
Recent move3 records

Each record includes

Date, Type, Title, Description, Source

Peers10 records
1Coral by Vox Media
TypeDirect peer
Description

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.

2Commento
TypeDirect peer
Description

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.

3Hyvor Talk
TypeDirect peer
Description

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.

4Isso
TypeDirect peer
Description

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.

5Remarkbox
TypeDirect peer
Description

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.

6Livefyre
TypeBroad incumbent
Description

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.

7WordPress Comments
TypeBroad incumbent
Description

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.

8Substack Comments
TypeEmerging player
Description

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).

9GitHub Discussions
TypeEmerging player
Description

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.

10ActiveCampaign (Comments / community tools)
TypeOthers
Description

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

Each record includes

Headline, Details, Source

Weaknesses4 records

Each record includes

Headline, Details, Source

Competitive moat3 records

Each record includes

Type, Details

Key risks5 records

Each record includes

Headline, Details, Source

Key highlights6 records

Each record includes

Headline, Details, Source

Customer concentration

Classification, Details

Ideal customer profile1 record

Each record includes

Profile, Firmographic size, Sales motion, Sales cycle length, Buying structure, Purchase trigger, Buyer persona, Geography, Industry vertical, Primary use case, Description, Pain points, Evidence proof points, Target buyer

Technology focused
Yes
API detail
Has APIbool
No

Docs URL, Description

AI maturity
App detail

Has app

Core technology
Revenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Number of profiles
Profiles2 records

Each record includes

Name, Designation, Designation category, Overview, Profile commentary, Source

No data
No data
Funding overview

Funding stage, Last funding date, Total funding USD

Funding rounds3 records

Each record includes

Round, Amount USD, Date, Pre money valuation, Total investors, Investors, News

Investors5 records

Each record includes

Name, Type, Date of entry, Rounds participated, Website

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Each record includes

Name, Acquisition type, Announced date, Completed date, Status, Website, News

Investment

Each record includes

Name, Round, Announced date, Lead investor, Website, News

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Disqus

Comment Hosting Softwaredisqus.com

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.

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

  • Comment hosting service
  • Audience engagement platform
  • Community engagement tools
  • Blog commenting platform
  • Social commenting integration

Where Disqus is headquartered

Location

Headquarters

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 offering

Core 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 profile

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Disqus technology and API

Technology

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API
No
API docs
API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Disqus partnerships and signals

Strategic signal

Recent moves3 records

Disqus competitors and assessment

Company assessment

Direct 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 presence

Disqus financial estimates

Financial estimate

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Disqus leadership team

Management profile

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Disqus funding detail

Funding detail

Funding 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 investment

M&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.

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Live signals
PR NewswireDisqus and Akismet Sign a Multi-year Partnership to Fight Spam on the WebDisqus and Akismet have signed a multi-year partnership to enhance spam prevention on online comments. Akismet has been protecting Disqus' network since 2014, handling approximately 5 billion spam actions, and the partnership aims to develop new features and improve service.TechCrunchDisqus facing $3M fine in Norway for tracking users without consentNorway's data protection agency, Datatilsynet, has notified U.S.-based commenting platform Disqus of an intent to fine it €2.5 million for tracking users without consent in violation of GDPR regulations. The investigation revealed that Disqus failed to apply opt-in mechanisms for Norwegian users and unlawfully shared personal data for ad targeting on seven local news websites. The agency also warned publishers using the platform that they remain responsible for ensuring third-party compliance with data privacy laws.TechCrunchZeta Global acquires commenting service DisqusMarketing tech company Zeta Global has acquired Disqus, the online commenting service that powers comment sections on sites like TMZ, The Atlantic, and Entertainment Weekly, for approximately $90 million. The acquisition, Zeta's eleventh since its founding in 2007, was funded in part by the company's recent $140 million Series F round and gives Zeta access to Disqus' large user data set for targeted marketing capabilities. Zeta plans to integrate Disqus' platform with its personalization and messaging tools while continuing to grow Disqus' core business, though the long-term value of the data remains uncertain as online commenting has shifted largely to social media platforms.PR NewswireZeta Global Acquires DisqusZeta Global announced on December 5, 2017 the acquisition of Disqus, a web audience engagement platform serving 4 million websites with 2 billion monthly unique users. The deal combines Disqus's first-party data assets and publisher network with Zeta's AI and machine learning marketing platform to offer personalized real-time marketing at scale on the open web. This marks Zeta's 11th acquisition and second of the year, following its $140 million Series F financing round in April 2017.Business InsiderThis California city has a massive troll problemA Wired report based on Disqus data found 32.7% of comments from Bellflower, California, were toxic over 16 months, compared to 8.1% from Los Angeles. The proportion of hostile comments in Bellflower was 335% higher than the rest of the state.TechCrunchDisqus lays off 11 as it plans a deeper focus on dataDisqus has laid off 11 people, approximately 20 percent of its staff of 55, as it pivots from consumer-facing products to focus on B2B data services for publishers and advertisers. The layoffs span multiple departments from sales to engineering as part of the company's "rebalancing" of priorities. Disqus, founded in 2007 and incubated at Y-Combinator with only $10.5 million raised in total funding, plans to leverage the data from its platform's 2 billion monthly unique users to build new marketing technology and analytics services, with details expected next year.GlobeNewswireTaboola Signs Global Partnership With Disqus, Bringing Native Advertising to Millions of Websites in Over 190 CountriesTaboola announced a global partnership with Disqus to integrate its discovery platform with Disqus's distribution across millions of websites. Disqus's platform covers over 3.5 million publisher sites in 190+ countries, generating more than 15 billion page views monthly. The collaboration aims to bring native advertising to long-tail sites previously unable to leverage Taboola's capabilities.Business InsiderAdvertisers Can Now Target You Based On The Comments You Leave On WebsitesDisqus is launching advertising on its comment platform in the UK and US, partnering with WPP's Xaxis to serve contextual ads on comment threads. The ads will be labeled as sponsored and can target specific audiences or topics, with no personally identifiable user data shared with advertisers.TechCrunchDisqus AudienceSync Allows Users To Share Their Disqus Data With PublishersDisqus is launching AudienceSync, a new feature that allows users to choose to share their Disqus profile information—including names, context, and biographical data—with publishers who request it. The feature is positioned as the complementary counterpart to Disqus Single Sign-On, enabling publishers to integrate Disqus user data into their own registration systems such as email newsletters. Disqus reports that its platform is now installed on 2.5 million sites and reaches more than 1 billion monthly visitors, with over 55 percent of those visitors viewing comments.TechCrunchDisqus Says 10,000 Publishers Have Signed Up For Its ‘Promoted Discovery’ Ad ProgramDisqus has announced that over 10,000 publishers, including Investopedia, Men's Health, Bossip, New York Observer, Smart Mom Style, and VentureBeat, have signed up for its Promoted Discovery advertising program since its rollout. The company is now serving 5 billion ads per month across 1.5 billion pageviews, with initial advertisers including MTV, American Express, Citibank, and Intel. Disqus reports that clickthrough rates have doubled over the past two months, and traffic from its platform outperforms sources like Facebook, Twitter, and Outbrain by 2-3x in engagement metrics, with 94 percent of advertisers committing to continue the program next year.