EchoThread 1.0: out of beta

EchoThread is out of beta

Today EchoThread leaves beta and becomes generally available.

That's a quiet sentence for something that took a while to earn. The beta label was a promise that the rough edges were temporary. Dropping it is a different promise: that what you embed on your site is finished, supported, and meant to be relied on. We think it's ready, so the badge is gone.

If you've never seen it: EchoThread is a hosted comment platform for the open web — a modern alternative to Disqus that doesn't run ads, doesn't track your readers, and doesn't sell their data. One script tag gives you threaded replies, emoji reactions, image attachments, Open Graph link previews, and a real moderation dashboard, in about 37 KB gzipped.

Built for the era of AI comment spam

The reason EchoThread exists is simple: comment spam isn't what it used to be.

It used to be broken English and obvious link stuffing — the kind keyword filters and Akismet were built to catch. In 2026 it's fluent, on-topic, and posts faster than any human can moderate. The old defenses leak.

So EchoThread screens every comment the moment it lands with a first-party machine-learning classifier. That's what makes the headline feature possible: you can let readers comment without an account — no sign-up wall, no friction — and still keep threads clean, because every guest comment is scored before it goes live. High-confidence spam is filtered automatically; borderline cases land in your queue. If you'd rather, you can require Google or GitHub sign-in instead. It's your call, per site.

A free tier that stays free

The Hobby tier is free for your first site. Forever. Not a trial, not "free during beta" — a permanent free plan with 10,000 page views and 1,000 comments a month, no credit card required. It covers the long tail of personal blogs comfortably.

When you outgrow it, paid plans start at $5/month (Starter), $19/month (Pro), and $79/month (Business), billed through Stripe with soft limits and a warning email before anything is enforced. No per-seat fees, no engagement surcharges, no annual lock-in.

A promise to everyone who showed up early

If you signed up during the beta, thank you — you took a bet on an unfinished product, and that matters.

Here's the deal we're keeping: early adopters keep the Hobby tier free for life on every site they had at launch, even if Hobby limits change later. No rug-pulls. That's not a marketing line we can quietly walk back; it's a flag on your account, captured at launch.

What's next

Going GA doesn't mean we're done — it means the foundation is solid enough to build on in the open. The roadmap continues toward the things that make a comment platform feel like it belongs to the open web instead of the engagement economy: better moderation tooling, deeper platform integrations, and continued investment in catching AI-generated spam without making real readers prove they're human.

If you've been waiting for EchoThread to come out of beta before putting it on a site you care about — this is your sign. Create your account and add comments in under a minute.

Got an idea or a bug? Email hi@echothread.io. We read everything.