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Muut – Commenting and Forums Re-Imagined

by Paul · Social

Muut represents a complete re-imagination of what internet discussion forums and commenting should be. It’s a modern, fast, highly scalable discussion …

Try it live opens a temporary test site in your browser, which can take about 20 seconds to load. Plugins that rely on outside services or a full server may not work completely there.

⚠ Stale⚠ Likely abandoned

Health

D 44/100

Stale · Likely abandoned

Active installs

50+

≈51 estimated

Momentum

+107%

downloads vs prior 30d

Biggest opportunity: “commenting”, “comments” and “forum” aren't earning a slot. You list them, but you're not in the first 24 results for those searches. WordPress.org counts only your first five tags, so free the slot for a search you can win.

How scoring works →
44 Health · D
Maintenance 3/100
Rating quality 73/100
Support 70/100

44 health vs 58 average across 1,835 Social plugins

Install conversion

How it's measured →

0.2%

of downloads still active

At least 50 of 32.9K lifetime downloads are still running, below its category: the median Social plugin keeps 0.5%, across 1,276 plugins.

Downloads count every update, not just first installs, so older and more frequently released plugins read lower. Compare against other Social plugins, not across the directory. wp.org reports active installs as the bottom of a band, so the real rate is this or higher.

High removal-risk signals

63/100

Maintenance and integrity signals that tend to precede a WordPress.org removal. Not an official status, a heads-up to act.

  • Long abandoned. No update in 10+ years — the top precursor to removal once a vulnerability is found.
  • Compatibility drift. Tested only up to WordPress 4.8.0, well behind 6.8.

Details

Version
3.0.6
Last updated
11.0y ago
Added
2014-04-11 · 12 yrs old
Requires WP
3.7
Tested up to
4.8.0
Requires PHP
—

Directory ranking optimization

How it's scored →

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

43 / 100

Under-optimized

Most to gain: Update recency

Update recency 0/100

Updated 4017 days ago, past the ~180 days where wp.org starts discounting

WP compatibility 9/100

Tested up to WordPress 4.8.0; the current branch is 6.8

Rating quality 73/100

3.9★ over 19 reviews, smoothed to 4.04★ and held back under 25 reviews

Listing tuning 100/100

5 of 5 tags set · short description in place

To rank higher: Last updated 4017 days ago — ship an update; wp.org decays a listing's search weight after ~180 days.

Get the full rank-higher report →

Daily downloads

Since 5 Oct 2022 · 1,488 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive

+107% vs prior 30d
331 Oct 2026

30-day downloads

Rolling 30-day volume · peak 93 · peaks are release surges

931 Nov 2026

Directory rank

Ranked about #20,100 to #21,200, alongside the other plugins at 50+ installs. Plugins with the same install count swap places between wp.org requests, so this is where most of them sit. Checked monthly, last on 21 Oct 2026.

Rating trend

Star average over time · dips mark rough releases

3.91 Nov 2026

Update activity

Downloads in the last 30 days for every 1,000 active sites.

Not enough installs to measure. This needs at least 100 active sites; below that, a handful of downloads reads as tens of thousands.

Release cadence

No release in a year
from wp.org release tags

How often this plugin actually ships. A steady rhythm is the maintenance signal a single "last updated" date can't show.

0

releases in the last 12 months

9.2y ago

latest release · v3.0.6 · 9 Aug 2017

15

tagged releases on record

Recent releases

3.0.6 · 9 Aug 20173.0.5 · 12 May 20153.0.4 · 11 May 20153.0.3.1 · 10 Jan 20153.0.3 · 22 Dec 20143.0.2.3 · 21 Dec 20143.0.2.2 · 7 Sep 20143.0.2.1 · 12 Aug 20143.0.2 · 2 Aug 20143.0.1 · 2 Jul 20143.0 · 20 May 20142.0.16 · 17 May 20142.0.15 · 22 Apr 20142.0.14 · 16 Apr 2014

What its installed base runs

via wordpress.org

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin · 100% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

v3.0 100%

Estimated active installs

The public count shows “50+”. Our estimate pins where the real number sits.

tracked estimate
50–60 ≈51

Crossed into this band 30 days ago and a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, so the real count is still just over 50.

Install history since 27 May 2015

501 Nov 2026

Reviewer account pattern

from wp.org reviewer profiles

10 of the last 13 four- and five-star reviews came from accounts created within a month of posting the review.

Registering a wp.org account just to leave a review is common and often entirely legitimate. The share here is unusually high for the sample, so it's worth keeping in mind while reading the reviews.

Recent reviews

All reviews on wp.org ↗
  1. ★★★★★ linkomatic
    9.7y ago

    As others have related, I did not notice that I had to SIGN UP for an external service — the Muut “Community” — in order to use this plugin. Okay, well, I went along with the game for a moment. But then AFTER I created an account, I was informed by email that my “14-day trial account” would have all these great PREMIUM features!!! Wow, guess that should make me feel so lucky. It didn’t. I only wanted the most basic features, as the site is for a non-profit org with NO MONEY to spend on bells and whistles. I contacted Muut’s support person and asked them to turn OFF the premium features. Answer: “NO, impossible to turn off the premium features. You’ll have to wait until the trial period expires.” Really??? My response: “okay, please CANCEL my account”. Their reply: “NO, can’t do that”, and I quote, “Here at Muut (emphasis added) we have a core principle of permanence for content and discussion’s sake” It’s impossible for the account to be canceled, EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T VERIFIED THE ACCOUNT YET!. But, hey — and this part is so cool — “you can go into your account and HIDE your IDENTITY”! Voila! Really??? THAT’s the solution???? For all I know the software may work quite well in other respects, but I have zero interest in enabling any vendor who has such a low regard for customers’ perfectly legitimate requests, and builds their software that emprisons the customer in their system. Good luck to those who are undaunted by that. This topic was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by linkomatic.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  2. ★★★★★ Bizstudio
    10.6y ago

    Your install instructions don’t mention that it requires a forum on your site. Wasted my time as I am NOT going to signup on your site.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  3. ★★★★★ Anonymous User 14293447
    10.7y ago

    I’m gonna test this though it says it’s not compatible with latest WP. Will update and review accordingly.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  4. ★★★★★ Carlo Rizzante
    11.2y ago

    I’ve been very curious about Muut as a full JS alternative to Disqus. However, Disqus works like a charm, and Muut simply isn’t working at all. Perhaps Muut is more about forums than comments. But if that’s the case it is plain wrong to promote it as an alternative to Disqus — because it isn’t! For the moment I’ll stay with Disqus. I’ll take a second look at Muut in future if they’ll go further than early alpha.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  5. ★★★★★ steveneynon
    11.3y ago

    This is what I have been searching for! So good on so many levels.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  6. ★★★★★ Xenique
    11.5y ago

    Hi. I signed up for muut. So far it looks very clean and promising. I have a few questions. I have embedded it on my blog that contains many categories and posts. My question is how much will this slow your site down after many members have joined and many topics have been created and many replies have accumulated? Also can this be configured with User Pro or Users Ultra to enable more detailed profiles of the members? Lastly, how do you “clean up the forum”? Do you have an automation tool designed to delete topics and posts that are greater than 1 year old. Many Thanks.

    Read on wp.org ↗
  7. ★★★★★ begliar
    11.5y ago

    This plugin is completely free however you are automatically given a 14 trial to use some of the ‘premium functions’. Here is what you get for free (not premium): Free: Users can login with facebook, or google+ or with muut acct Unlimited traffic Unlimited users Unlimited posts Real embedding Style look & feel Spam protected 28+ languages Search engine optimized No ads Yeah so plenty of funtionality for free -for us broke people lol. I think the premium you get twitter, and mail chimp support so if you have alot of traffic that would be ideal. I got this plugin for the forum because bbpress is aweful in my theme and I just really don’t like it.. especially how it adds a slug at the end of your intended url e.g. yournameofsite.com/forum <—- forum should post here but instead with bbpress it adds slug to it /forum/forumname etc Anyways I dont have this problem with muut forums. I’m sure there’s some work around to the bbpress probably, but I spent over an hour scratching my head lol and muut was simple to install and unique. Okay now I am using just the forum part of this plugin and this is what I can say about that aspect of it: -The forum loads up very fast. -Automatically gets crawled every hour (this is good SEO) -Easily customizable: -Inviting and simple interface. -Easy to set up With a couple clicks you can change the color of different things, round the boxes, add shadows to boxes etc and themes (for premium). And finally.. my biggest impression is that this to me is what disqus would be like if it were a forum; but superior in load time and features. Simple, crawlable by search engines and integrated with other social networks. Thanks!

    Read on wp.org ↗
  8. ★★★★★ gringolette
    11.6y ago

    Muut is the simplest discussion forum I have ever seen. Quick installation, and easy integration. My readers love it!

    Read on wp.org ↗

Behavioral tests

via WP Hive

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 7.2.16 · WP 5.3

✓ Low memory footprint
✓ Low page-speed impact
✓ Runs on latest PHP + WP
✓ No PHP errors
✓ No JS errors
✓ Activates cleanly
✓ No resource errors
✓ No external HTTP errors
✓ Optimized database use
✕ Frequently updated

AI assistants

How it's measured →

Whether ChatGPT and Claude name this plugin when asked the category question, and whether the readme gives them something to quote.

Not measured yet for this plugin’s topics. Its tracked searches are not among the measured topics. See the topics measured so far.

Readme readiness

6 of 8 pass · checked 1 Nov 2026

Can an assistant quote this readme? Eight deterministic checks over the wp.org listing, no model involved.

  • ! Says what it does Short description names no action; say what the plugin does for the site.
  • ✓ Has a FAQ 5 questions in the FAQ.
  • ✓ FAQ asks real questions 3 of 5 read like questions a user would type.
  • ✓ Names who it is for Names its audience or use cases ("built for", "if you want").
  • ! Names what it works with Names no plugin, service or platform it works with.
  • ✓ Headings and lists 4 headings and 4 lists.
  • ✓ Enough to quote 3,096 characters of description.
  • ✓ Tags match the text 3 of 5 tags appear in the text; "realtime", "social" do not.

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

  1. 2026-10-02 40+ → 50+ up after 17 days in tier
  2. 2026-09-15 50+ → 40+ down after 15 days in tier
  3. 2026-08-31 40+ → 50+ up after 24 days in tier
  4. 2026-08-07 50+ → 40+ down after 204 days in tier
  5. 2026-01-15 60+ → 50+ down after 89 days in tier
  6. 2025-10-18 70+ → 60+ down after 1 days in tier
  7. 2025-10-17 60+ → 70+ up after 1 days in tier
  8. 2025-10-16 70+ → 60+ down after 23 days in tier

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

Embed this report card

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Preview card ↗

Muut – Commenting and Forums Re-Imagined: 50+ active installs, 3.9★ (19 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-11-01. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/muut

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