Remarkbox

Web and SaaS

hosted comment service

SHOW HN2021

233points
44comments
#177of 2,533 in 2021
Top 7%of 2021 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

7 positive, 12 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 6 critical, out of 26 comments about the project. Thread score -0.06.

Execution: 2 for, 3 againstPricing: 1 for, 1 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstIdea: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Privacy-friendly, no ads or tracking

    From 2 comments
    • This is a really nice piece of software :) It got so easy to build a dynamic, privacy-friendly, kiss website nowadays.
      marsknight on HN
    • Thank you for posting this. The project looks promising. You do you. Godspeed.
      vishnumohandas on HN
  • Data export to JSON and comment archives reassure users

    From 2 comments
    • Thank you for the follow-up. This + your other comment showing that there is an export to JSON option make me feel a lot better. I will set it up this weekend and see how it goes.
      TrishaK on HN
    • > Fallback plan is open sourcing the codebase. I think the main concern for would-be user websites is not the code, but what happens to all of the comments if you shut down.…
      codetrotter on HN

Objections

  • No spam protection

    From 2 comments
    • I really like the idea and the implementation looks nice! But not having any type of spam protection is a deal breaker for me. Even if links are set to nofollow, it's still a big…
      asar on HN
    • This is trivial for most bots to bypass nowadays with headless browsers and such.
      deanclatworthy on HN
  • Sustainability if donations do not cover costs

    From 1 comment
    • How long will you be able to sustain this? I have a fairly small site that has virtually no traffic, so I would love to use this but what happens if you end up with a large…
      TrishaK on HN
  • Comments lost if service shuts down

    From 1 comment
    • But when Remarkbox disappears, so do your comments? Is there no self-hosting version possible?
      rexreed on HN
  • Trust concerns unless open source

    From 1 comment
    • Sorry but I don't trust this product anymore than Disqus when it comes to privacy etc unless it's open source.
      suyash on HN

Requests

  • Akismet or other spam filter integration

    From 1 comment
    • Thanks for the feedback. I'll add Akismet integration to the backlog for people with the same objection. Allowing people to pass an API key to their Namespace shouldn't be too…
      foxhop on HN
  • Self-hosting option

    From 1 comment
    • But when Remarkbox disappears, so do your comments? Is there no self-hosting version possible?
      rexreed on HN
  • Canonical URL support

    From 2 comments
    • Does it auto-identify the page by URL, or can I specify an ID of some sort in the "code snippet" vaguely mentioned? I do have canonical URLs for all pages [1] but some pages have…
      hypertele-Xii on HN
    • Yeah, if you click setup and follow the prompts, the service will give you a snippet of HTML, drop that into your pages and it should work. If you want to see the snippet, view…
      foxhop on HN

Questions

  • How the service will sustain itself

    From 1 comment
    • How long will you be able to sustain this? I have a fairly small site that has virtually no traffic, so I would love to use this but what happens if you end up with a large…
      TrishaK on HN
  • How to pay for the service

    From 1 comment
    • Hi! Sorry if I'm missing something. I do not understand how to pay you? Clicked around the site for a bit and couldn't find some self evident thing I can do to send you any given…
      f-word on HN

Alternatives named

  • Disqus

    From 1 comment
    • Unfortunately I remember Disqus as doing the exact same thing when they came out of the gate. “It’s awesome: you can now have effortless comments on static sites!” It got…
      joshspankit on HN
  • Commento

    From 1 comment
  • Remark42

    From 1 comment
    • I would also recommend to take a look at https://remark42.com if you are looking for adsfree and self hosted comments
      dpfg on HN
  • Utterances

    From 1 comment
    • I've been using utterances (github issue tracker powered comments) on my website. Seems better than Disqus (lighter, less tracking) but it requires a github account.
      clircle on HN
  • Commentbox

    From 1 comment
    • I’m currently using https://commentbox.io for my static sites, I’ll have to try yours out!
      matthewpick on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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