Payload Comments
Staff PickFeaturedVerifiedOpen SourceAPIAnonymous comments and reactions for Payload 3
www.navanem.com/projects/payload-comments-pluginLast updated: June 2026
Self-hosted comments and reactions plugin for Payload CMS 3.x. Let visitors comment anonymously with mood emojis, threaded replies up to three levels deep, and reactions — all stored in your own database, with optional pre-publish moderation.
About
Payload Comments (@navanem/payload-comments) is a self-hosted comments and reactions plugin for Payload CMS 3.x. It adds anonymous commenting and reactions to any Payload collection — blog posts, docs, products, anything — without requiring user accounts, third-party widgets, or external services. Every comment, reply and reaction lives in your own database and stays entirely within your stack.
Visitors can leave comments with a mood emoji, react to existing comments, and reply in threads up to three levels deep. Authors get a familiar Payload collection to moderate everything, with status tracking (pending, approved, spam, trash) and bulk actions. A dedicated Comment Statistics admin view surfaces KPIs by status, per-collection and per-mood breakdowns, reaction counts and daily rates.
Version 0.3.0 introduces Markdown comment bodies (a safe subset: bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, links, lists and blockquotes) and moves the moderation toggle into the admin Settings so it can be changed at runtime without a redeploy. The plugin ships with a ready-made React component, or you can build a fully custom UI on top of its REST API.
Positioning
Payload Comments positions itself as the privacy-first, self-hosted alternative to hosted comment widgets such as Disqus, Hyvor Talk or Commento for teams already running Payload CMS. Instead of embedding a third-party script that ships visitor data off-platform, it keeps the entire comment lifecycle inside your Payload application.
- No accounts required — Visitors comment anonymously; no sign-up, no login, no OAuth.
- Your data, your database — Comments are a native Payload collection, fully owned and queryable.
- Native to Payload 3 — Installs as a first-class plugin, integrates with the admin UI and access control.
- Privacy-conscious by design — Salted IP hashing rather than raw IP storage, no external tracking.
- Open source & MIT-licensed — Free to use, extend and audit.
What You Get
- Anonymous comments and reactions on any enabled Payload 3.x collection
- Threaded replies up to three levels deep, with mood emojis on each comment
- Markdown comment bodies (safe subset: bold, italic, strikethrough, code, links, lists, blockquotes)
- Ready-made React component, or build your own UI via the REST API at
/api/comments-api/* - Moderation collection with status tracking (pending / approved / spam / trash) and bulk actions
- Runtime moderation toggle in admin Settings — no redeploy required
- Comment Statistics view at
/admin/comments-statisticswith KPIs, per-collection and per-mood breakdowns, reaction counts and daily rates - Anti-spam built in: honeypot field, per-IP rate limiting, salted IP hashing, configurable length and link rules
- XSS-safe rendering (no raw HTML), mandatory-approval mode available
- Simple install via
pnpm add @navanem/payload-comments
Core Areas
Comments & engagement
Anonymous, threaded discussions with mood emojis and reactions on any collection
Moderation
Status workflow, bulk actions and a runtime approval toggle, all from the Payload admin
Analytics
Built-in statistics dashboard covering volume, status, mood and reaction trends over time
Security & anti-spam
Honeypot, per-IP rate limiting, salted IP hashing and XSS-safe Markdown rendering
Developer experience
TypeScript-first, drop-in React component plus a documented REST API for custom front-ends
Why It Matters
Comments drive engagement, but most teams pay for it with their visitors' privacy. Hosted widgets inject third-party scripts, track readers across sites and lock conversation data inside someone else's platform. For organisations that care about data ownership and GDPR, that trade-off is increasingly unacceptable.
Payload Comments removes the trade-off. Because it runs inside your own Payload application, the entire comment lifecycle — submission, moderation, storage and analytics — stays on infrastructure you control. There is no external request on the critical path, no visitor data leaving your domain, and no recurring SaaS bill. For Payload teams that want community engagement without the privacy and vendor-lock-in baggage of hosted comment services, it is the natural, self-hosted answer.
Reviews
No reviews yet.
Log in to write a review
Related
Payload Contact
Self-hosted contact form plugin for Payload CMS 3.x. Add a themeable contact form to your site, collect submissions in an admin inbox with status tracking, block spam without CAPTCHA, and get optional email alerts on new messages, all stored in your own database.
Checkmate
Checkmate is an open-source, self-hosted uptime and infrastructure monitoring app by BlueWave Labs. It tracks uptime, response time, SSL, ports, Docker and server hardware, with status pages and alerts to Slack, Discord, Telegram, PagerDuty, email and more.
OpenWA
OpenWA is a free, open-source, self-hosted WhatsApp API gateway for developers. It exposes a REST API and a React dashboard to send and receive messages, manage groups and media, handle webhooks and run multiple WhatsApp sessions, with no vendor lock-in or paywalls.