Whos.amung.us invented the live online-now badge that every forum and blog carried, and the free version still works. What it hasn't had is maintenance: the widget is an image-era embed with the branding and look of its original decade, the free tier is impression-capped, and the service has gone quiet for long stretches. Ours is the same idea rebuilt as styleable HTML with no cap.
The original "X people online" badge — now largely frozen in time. Everything below is checked against whos.amung.us itself — but pricing and limits move, so confirm anything that matters on their own page before deciding.
| FeedPulse | Whos.amung.us | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever, no impression cap, no Pro tier to unlock. | Free tier is impression-limited; the paid tier (Pro) is what lifts the cap and removes the branding |
| Signup | None — same frictionless start, no cap at the end of it. | No account needed to grab the free code, which is genuinely frictionless |
| What you get | Live online-now count, rendered as HTML you control. | A live "people online" badge plus a basic real-time visitor map and page list |
| Required link back | No required backlink. Keep the credit or drop it. | The free badge links back to whos.amung.us and carries their branding |
| Cookies & privacy | No cookies, no IP stored, no public stats page unless you publish one. | Third-party tracking by design, with a public-facing stats page per widget |
| Customisation | Your fonts, colours and size — it's your markup, inline on your page. | A handful of preset badge styles; the markup is theirs, so your CSS doesn't reach it |
| Where the data lives | Aggregate concurrent-visitor counts in your dashboard. | On their side, behind a widget key — with no export and no guarantee of continuity |
| Removing it | Delete the snippet. Nothing left behind. | Remove the embed; the counter and its history go with the service |
Credit where it's due: Whos.amung.us got the concept right fifteen years before anyone else cared, and its code-only, no-signup install is still the fastest on the web. If you want that specific retro badge — the look people remember from forum footers — nothing else looks like it.
Pick Whos.amung.us for the nostalgic badge. Pick FeedPulse when you want a live online-now count that matches your design, carries no backlink, has no impression cap, and isn't resting on a service that may not be maintained.
Pick Whos.amung.us for the nostalgic badge. Pick FeedPulse when you want a live online-now count that matches your design, carries no backlink, has no impression cap, and isn't resting on a service that may not be maintained. Credit where it's due: Whos.amung.us got the concept right fifteen years before anyone else cared, and its code-only, no-signup install is still the fastest on the web. If you want that specific retro badge — the look people remember from forum footers — nothing else looks like it.
Yes. The FeedPulse online-now counter has no impression cap, no paid tier and no required backlink, and it renders as HTML you can style instead of a fixed badge image. You also get the rest of the set — live traffic feed, flag counter, hit counter, heatmap — from the same snippet pattern, which Whos.amung.us never offered.
Nothing, at any traffic level. There is no paid tier to upgrade to, no session cap and no card on file — the whole product is free, including every other widget and all the SEO tools.