How to add a guestbook to your website

What a website guestbook is

A guestbook is a page where visitors leave a short public note to say they stopped by.

Hosted guestbooks do disappear. 123Guestbook's closure notice said "123Guestbook.com will be shutting down after the 1st of July 2024", with guestbooks going read-only on June 1, 2024. Atabook says it was created in 2024 in response to that shutdown.

Use a comment widget as a guestbook

Instead of a guestbook service, make a plain guestbook page and drop a comment widget onto it. Entries then sit inside your own layout, and most widgets let you reply to each note.

• CommentCamp: Free for site owners, forever, with no ads; it's funded by optional member Pro for readers. It launches with a universal embed script for any HTML or CMS-backed site, unlimited comments and replies, custom styling, automated spam filtering and a moderation queue. It's in private early access: join the early-access waitlist for an invite.
• giscus: Free and open source (MIT). Entries live in GitHub Discussions, and every visitor signs in with GitHub to post.

Disclosure: CommentCamp is our product.

Skip Cusdis: its hosted service is offline and its GitHub README says "Cusdis is deprecated now." You can still self-host the GPL-3.0 code, but it has no spam filter and every comment needs manual approval.

Want comments under every post instead of one guestbook page? See how to add a comment section to any website.

The 4 best free guestbook services

All 4 were online and free to start when we checked in October 2026. Kami's Corner Guestbooks (free, open source, AGPLv3) is worth a look too.

Atabook

Atabook hosts your guestbook at yourname.atabook.org, with an editor for colors, fonts and backgrounds. You can reply to messages, and it imports up to 250 messages from a Smart-Guestbook CSV export.

• Price: Free; an optional Supporter plan adds custom CSS, custom domains and up to 5 guestbooks, with no public price.
• Ads: None shown right now; the Supporter plan adds a "No ads guarantee".
• Moderation: Optional review before publishing, a bad-word filter, IP-range blocks and VPN or proxy blocks.
• Setup: Link to your Atabook page or embed it in an iframe.

Smart-Guestbook

Smart-Guestbook holds up to 5,000 messages per guestbook.

• Price: Free with ads; ad-free premium is $14.95/year for personal or non-profit sites and $24.95/year for commercial sites.
• Ads: On the free plan. In its words: "Our business model is to show relevant ads in the guestbook".
• Moderation: Approval before entries appear, a spam and bad-language filter, captchas and IP blocking.
• Setup: Paste an HTML link or an iframe into your page. HTTPS requires premium.

Guestbooks by Meadow

Guestbooks by Meadow is a free, open-source project with its code on Codeberg. Its developer calls it a work in progress that "may be unreliable and prone to breaking from time to time".

• Price: Free: "I don't plan on introducing any paid plans in the foreseeable future". The developer takes tips on Ko-fi.
• Ads: None seen.
• Moderation: Optional approval before entries show, plus a proof-of-work spam check that needs your site on HTTPS.
• Setup: A hosted page, an iframe or a script tag embed.

HTML Comment Box

HTML Comment Box is a comment widget, but it works as a guestbook when you give it a page of its own. Instead of a CAPTCHA, it relies on the fact that "reading HTML Comment Box requires javascript, which most bots don't understand".

• Price: Free tier; paid Starter $5/month, Professional $7/month and Business $25/month.
• Branding: The free widget shows a "Not using Html Comment Box yet?" link back to the service.
• Moderation: Approval, a word filter, flagging and rate limiting.
• Setup: Paste a short HTML and script snippet where entries should appear.

Compare your guestbook options

How to add a guestbook to a Neocities site

Neocities is static hosting and doesn't allow PHP files, so the guestbook has to run on an outside service. Its free plan includes 1 GB of storage, 200 GB of bandwidth, no ads and a yoursite.neocities.org address with SSL; the $5/month Supporter plan adds 50 GB of storage, 3,000 GB of bandwidth, custom domains and up to 30 sites.

1. Create a guestbook on a hosted service such as Atabook, Guestbooks by Meadow or HTML Comment Box.
2. Turn on message approval in its settings.
3. Copy the link or embed code (an iframe or a script tag) it gives you.
4. In the Neocities editor, open or create a page like guestbook.html and paste the code where the guestbook should appear.
5. Link to the new page from your homepage so visitors can find it.

Tip: Neocities serves your site over HTTPS, so embed only https:// guestbook code; browsers block insecure iframes and scripts on secure pages. Free Smart-Guestbook doesn't include HTTPS, so link to it instead of embedding it.

Build your own guestbook with HTML

An HTML form on its own can't save entries for other visitors. You need a small backend that accepts submissions, stores them in a database and sends the approved ones back to your page.

You don't need to rent a server. Cloudflare Workers' free plan allows 100,000 requests a day, and its D1 database has a free tier with 5 GB of storage, plenty for a personal guestbook.

Start from our comment section HTML template for the form, point it at your own endpoint, and build in the spam defenses below before you go live.

Keep your guestbook free of spam

These 4 defenses cover the basics; our guide to comment spam goes deeper:

• Approve before publishing: All 4 services above can hold entries until you approve them, and Atabook adds a custom bad-word filter.
• IP blocking: Ban repeat offenders by IP address; Atabook can also block IP ranges and VPN or proxy traffic.
• Bot checks: Atabook uses Cloudflare Turnstile, Smart-Guestbook uses captchas and Guestbooks by Meadow uses a proof-of-work challenge.
• Honeypot fields: Add a hidden field people never see, and drop any submission that fills it in.