JS-Kit, who run the Echo comments sytem that succeeded Haloscan, has informed me that my license expires on 29th December. I am now considering alternatives to Echo, and would appreciate input from readers. There is presently a Disqus commenting system on this blog, which you can experiment with by clicking the link below the post (see "0 comments and 0 reactions"). It might replace Echo in future, but I will consider other possibilities and I'm open to staying with Echo.

Some background. Initially, Haloscan was a free service. But it allowed you to pay a one-off fee to upgrade to their 'premium' service. Despite some occasional complaints, it was a clean, fast system. Then it was taken over by JS-Kit in 2009, and the new owners demanded an annual payment of $10 to continue the service. The upgrade came with some improvements, and some problems - the latter including people finding their comments disappearing, log-in not working, repeated periods of down-time. Some functionality for admins has also been lost. Still, it's reasonably user-friendly, and the 'promo' version appears to still be available for $12 a year for the time being - after which, it'll be $10 a month. But if there's a functional system that will work as well or better for free, and which will allow us to import all previous comments, then it would only be sensible to test it out and make the move. Your feedback below, please.