Gabden 1.0 is here

What Gabden is

Gabden adds comments and community to any website with one script tag. You paste a small embed, and a discussion thread appears keyed to the page's canonical URL. That is the whole idea: readers talk under the content they are reading, and the conversation stays attached to the page rather than living in a separate silo.

We built it to be privacy-first. No tracking cookies, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking. The analytics we show are anonymous and aggregate. You own your data and can export it as JSON or CSV. Reaching 1.0 means the core is stable enough that we are comfortable calling it done for daily use, not that we are finished adding to it.

What shipped in 1.0

The release covers the parts most sites need to run comments well.

• One embed that works across WordPress, Ghost, Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Next.js, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Framer, Notion, Docusaurus, static sites, and custom HTML.
• Threaded replies and reactions (like and heart) so conversations can branch and readers can respond without typing.
• Reader identity options: post anonymously, comment as a guest with a name and email and no account, or sign in with Google or GitHub. Readers can keep a hosted profile.
• Moderation modes: pre-moderate everything, auto-approve, auto-approve returning verified people, or moderate only anonymous users. A blocked-word filter and a spam and pending queue back it up.
• Per-page rules to turn comments off on chosen URLs.
• Per-tenant public community pages, so a site's discussions have a home beyond individual articles.
• Light and dark themes with presets, so the widget matches your site.
• Team roles with per-module permissions, so you can hand moderation to someone without handing over everything.
• A WordPress integration for sites that want a tighter fit than the raw embed.
• Import from Disqus, native WordPress, and other systems, mapped to each page's URL, so switching does not mean losing your history.

How it installs

You add two lines and copy your site's Gabden subdomain from the dashboard.

<div id='gabden-conversations'></div>
<script async src='https://YOUR-SITE.gabden.com/conversations.js'
  data-page='canonical'
  data-theme='auto'></script>

The script is about 10KB and loads asynchronously, so it does not hold up your page. There is nothing to host and no database to run on your side.

What it costs

Gabden is free forever up to 100,000 widget views per month per website. On the free tier a small "Powered by Gabden" mark shows under the thread. Plus is 5 dollars per month per website: unlimited views and the mark removed. Billing is per website, and you can cancel anytime. Full details are on the pricing page.

Who it is for

Gabden is aimed at people who run their own site and want a real discussion under their content without taking on a data-handling burden. That includes bloggers, docs teams, small publishers, course creators, and shop owners who want questions under product pages. It works whether your site is built on a big CMS or is a handful of static HTML files, because the embed is the same everywhere and the thread follows the page URL rather than the platform.

It is also for people leaving a comment tool they no longer trust. If you are on something that shows ads in the widget or tracks your readers across sites, the import path is meant to make moving off it straightforward rather than a project you keep postponing.

Where it goes next

1.0 is a foundation, not a finish line. We want to keep the embed small, keep the privacy promises intact, and add the moderation and community tools that site owners ask for. We would rather ship a smaller number of things that hold up than a long list that does not. If you have run comments before and been let down by weight, tracking, or price, that is the gap we are trying to close.

You can read more about the reasoning behind the product in why we built Gabden, or just create an account and paste the embed on a page to see how it feels.