What it does
Coral is Vox Media's commenting platform for publishers. It combines reader conversations with moderation, journalist identities and subscriber access. The Apache-licensed software can be self-hosted without a software fee, or publishers can request a managed-hosting quote; administration requires a local account.
Coral connects an article with its reader community. Moderators can feature a response, inspect a commenter's history or apply a temporary timeout. Journalists have recognizable identities, readers can mute others, and subscriber or donor logins can support badges and paid-commenting access.
In Admin > Configure > Moderation, enable pre-moderation to hold comments until staff approve them. The Pending queue contains held comments. Reported comments can still be visible, so that queue needs a different response. Recent History can hold comments from people whose rejection rate exceeds a chosen threshold and look-back period. Banned words cause rejection; suspect words trigger review without necessarily hiding the comment.
The installation wizard creates the administrator account. Configure your mail server under Admin > Configure > Email before inviting users; the Invite button depends on those settings.
Managed hosting is priced by quote and can include CMS or single sign-on integration, migration, training and strategy. The Apache-2.0 repository also allows continuing self-hosted use. Running it yourself involves deploying the service with MongoDB and Redis and maintaining its integration with your site.
Strengths
- Article-level moderation and commenter histories support newsroom review
- Publisher logins can identify subscribers and control paid-commenting access
Watch out for
- Self-hosting requires operating the application and its database services
Best for
- Newsrooms building an on-site commenting community around articles and subscriptions
Sources
- Copyright 2025 Vox Media, Inc (Oct 26, 2026)
- Coral Product Tour (Oct 27, 2026)
- Coral Pricing (Oct 27, 2026)
- Coral Admin Settings (Oct 27, 2026)
- Getting Started with Coral (Oct 27, 2026)
- Coral Source Repository (Oct 27, 2026)
- Coral Apache-2.0 Licence (Oct 27, 2026)