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10+ Best Question & Answer Plugins for WordPress

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QA forums WordPress Plugins

Online forums are web bulletin boards where users ask questions or share their feedback anonymously. The forums assist in building credibility for online brands and businesses, as forum users recognize the business’s efforts to reach out to the audience.

Moreover, the success of question and answer style forums Quora, StackOverflow, and Yahoo! Answers have garnered tons of imitations and interestingly WordPress has its fair share of possibilities.

Therefore, adding a forum to your website can not only help you improve your brand’s visibility but also boost your sales and build a healthy relationship. So, if you are planning to add a forum on your WordPress website, here are some of the best plugins that can prove to be extremely helpful.

1. bbPress

bbPress plugin

bbPress is the standard forum solution for WordPress that is developed by Automattic. The plugin seamlessly integrates and is extremely easy to use making it one of the best WordPress forum plugins around. The plugin allows you to manage everything about your forum within your WordPress Dashboard. Powered with various widgets, implementing forum becomes a lot easier. BbPress allows you to import forum posts from various other forum tools.

Impressive features of bbPress

  • Simple step by step installation walks you through your options
  • Supports multisite forums
  • Comes fully integrated with one central account
  • Easy to step up, use and moderate
  • Allows registered users to make edits, flag spam, make stickies and delete posts

2. WP-Answers WordPress Q&A Plugin

WP-Answers WordPress Q&A Plugin

The WP Answers Plugin makes it easy for you to create a questions and answers type of forum where people can sign up for a membership and answer questions to gain points or use their points to ask questions. It works very similar to the Yahoo answers website and in fact it can automatically pull content from yahoo answers (questions and answers) and add them to your site, so you can get content up automatically without having to do any work.

But WP Answers is not just a plugin. It also comes with 6 highly optimized WordPress themes for creating a Q&A site and enhanced with advertisement spots that are proven to maximize click-through rates and profits through programs like Google Adsense. Click on the preview or download button above to read more about this plugin and see a sample site in action.

Other WP Answers Features

  • Transforms WordPress into a Q&A type site
  • Point system encourages members to answer questions
  • Members get their own profile pages
  • Can automatically pull and post content from yahoo answers
  • Full advertisement management to help you make money from your site
  • Includes 6 themes in different colors
  • Tutorials and support available

3. WPForo

wpForo Forum

WPForo is basically considered as the ultimate WordPress social network plugin but has everything to power your forum of any niche. The plugin allows your users to connect and interact in various different ways.

The core WPForo plugin is absolutely free but to get access to all the extensions of this plugin you would have to purchase them. And in addition to their WordPress.org page, WPForo comes with support via their own forum.

Impressive features of WP Symposium

  • Lets you create unlimited forums
  • Lets you choose from a wide range of layouts
  • Offers a number of customization options
  • Comes with helpful support

4. CM Answers

CM Answers Plugin

Developed by Cminds, CM Answers is an ideal choice for those who are looking for a more question and answer style of forum. The plugin allows you to auto-create Q&A list pages and show settings depending on most user votes, most views, and most responses. CM Answers also comes in a premium version with additional features such as front-end text editor, access control, categories, comment support, multiple attachments, shortcodes, advanced authorship permissions and so much more.

Impressive features of CM Answers

  • Equipped with Advance user access controls
  • Allows users to add tags to categories
  • Enables drag and drop attachments
  • Comes with user-friendly dashboard
  • Supports multiple file uploads
  • Comes integrated with BuddyPress

5. AnsPress

AnsPress – Question and answer

AnsPress is a profound and easy to use WordPress plugin that allows you to add question and answer section just like quora.com and stackoverflow.com. Equipped with a range of customization options, the plugin allows you to change the look and feel of your forum. AnsPress also boasts of one of the best interfaces among all the plugins tested.

The design is simple and clean with the amazing use of the color scheme for distinguishing between answers, comments, and questions.
Comments can also be integrated with both questions and answers.

Impressive features of AnsPress

  • Integrated with Ajax based form submission
  • Comes with a Theme system
  • Has moderate and Flag posts
  • Allows voting on question and answer
  • Equipped with Advance user access controls
  • Offers Email notifications to admins about posts
  • Allow users to add questions to their favorite

6. Helpie FAQs

Helpie FAQ

Helpie FAQs is a free plugin that is extremely lightweight and optimized for speed with an assortment of options at the disposal of the user. The plugin also offers an add-on that enables you to add questions on various different places of your website and share Q&A section.

The plugin comes with easy options and an intuitive interface for all facets of the plugin. So whether you’re a beginner or a WordPress pro, adding a question and answer section to your site should be a breeze with Helpie.

Impressive features of Helpie

  • Unlimited FAQs
  • Easy to add and update items
  • Accordion or list display option
  • Responsive design
  • Sortable FAQs
  • Helpful support

7. DW Question & Answer (Premium)

DW Question & Answer

Looking to add a dedicated Q&A section to your website, à la Quora? Well, with DW Question & Answer Pro, now you can! You can use the plugin to create a forum-style section for your visitors to interact, or community-driven FAQ sections.

Visitors are free to ask their question on your site’s front-end by filling out the straightforward question form. This question form can be placed on a dedicated page or in any widget space, plus visitors can add basic styling to their questions using HTML.

To help visitors hone in on useful questions, DW supports built-in sort, search, and filter functionalities. The question listing page also displays the number of views, comments, and ratings that each question has generated, helping visitors to identify the most active discussions.

DW also boasts lots of important features that benefit the site owner. This includes front-end question management, compatibility with any WordPress theme, and powerful anti-spam measures.

8. Sabai Discuss (Premium)

Sabai Discuss

The Sabai Discuss Forum System employs a number of options to help you create a user-friendly and feature-rich forum. The plugin boasts of various powerful features to build a modest yet professional looking helpdesk/forum with ease. Webmasters can easily manage all forums, topics and replies from the WordPress admin area.

From user profile creation to spam moderation, Sabai Discuss is packed with all the standard forum features. In addition, since the plugin is translation-ready, it can easily be incorporated into websites in any language.

Impressive features of Sabai Discuss

  • Equipped with standard WordPress image Uploader to allow users to upload images into their topics and replies
  • Creating threads and replies are extremely easy with an integrated WordPress text editor
  • Integrated with 5 custom shortcodes to add forum sections
  • 9 included forum widgets
  • As many as 10 custom email notification templates
  • Highly customizable and allows you to change the style of the plugin pages to make them look exactly like your website

9. Question Answer

Question Answer

The Question answer plugin is a free plugin on the WordPress repository which will allow you to create your Question and Answer website. The theme already includes schema.org support, front-end submission via a shortcode, account page via a shortcode, it’s translation ready and will work with your existing theme (or any other theme). This plugin has a pretty nice layout/design by default, answers can be thumbed up or down, questions can be marked as “solved” and as a site user you can even subscribe and favorite questions. It’s very robust and complete question and answer plugin for WordPress, definitely work checking out!

10. Simple:Press

Simple:Press

Simple:Press is widely touted as one of the most powerful and popular WordPress plugins that seamlessly integrates into the WordPress website. It can easily be adapted for adjusted for use on large as well as small forums. The plugin makes use of templates and themes to allow easy customization. Being extremely lightweight, Simple:Press reduces the load on the server while executing.

The plugin conveniently integrates with various other well-recognized services for extra conveniences such as TinyMCE, WP SEO, AIOSEO, Gravatars, SiteMaps, MyCred, ShareThis, Slack, and BuddyPress.

Though the plugin doesn’t have a great overall rating on WordPress.org, it looks like people are unhappy with the premium version. Stick with the simple, free forum and you should be good!

Impressive features of Simple:Press

  • Allows all-inclusive search options
  • Offers Forum Stats including online list
  • Integrated with Custom icons for forums and groups
  • All-inclusive selection of RSS feed
  • Provide hidden ‘spoilers’ in posts
  • Render Optional WP shortcodes supports
  • Offers Email notification to admins of all the posts
  • Custom smileys including uploads

11. BuddyPress

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is yet another popular forum WordPress plugin that boasts of clean and secure code. The plugin is feature-rich and makes it convenient to integrate a range of social network features into a WordPress powered website.

BuddyPress allows your users to easily create profiles and user groups and monitors other users activity streams. Thanks to the Groups feature, you can render your users the ability to build micro-communities. Plus there are tons of free BuddyPress plugin extensions you can use to add extra functionality.

Impressive features of BuddyPress

  • Allows private conversations and make connections conveniently
  • Completely social media friendly
  • Lets you build a community of any niche including sports team, school, and company
  • 100% fully responsive design layout

Wrapping Up

There you have it 10+ of the best question and answer forum plugins for WordPress. We hope you’ve found a plugin that will work great for your needs. Let us know which plugin you’d recommend or if we missed an awesome one on our list. Just leave a comment below!

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23 Comments

  1. Neeraj Gupta

    @Wordsuccor Provide Great service.they helped me lot to get my website done. They installed the wpexplorer theme so fast and did my website in 2 days.

    • Kyla

      That’s awesome that you have one of our themes! And that you’ve used WordSuccor 🙂 We’re happy that you’re so happy!

  2. Ben Powell

    Well this is a very very informative blog post if you use WordPress that is for sure and as well if your not a WordPress user and on line thinking about it this will surely help you out. It is a little long but worth the read.

  3. Noah Britton

    I love these top 10 lists. A client just requested a forum over the phone and I quickly found your blog post. Now just need to match up her feature request with the right plugin. Thank you!

  4. Jason Daszkewicz

    Thanks everyone for the valuable comments. I’m glad, my article is helpful for you all.

  5. Emma

    The information given about WordPress plugin is great. The plugin BuddyPress is great to use. The new plugin i got to know is MiwoVoice Keep posting these blogs to enhance knowledge.

  6. rajesh kumar

    Also check this Q&A website questionsignal.com . No Registration Required. Can upload Images, Videos and Links.

    • AJ Clarke

      This is a nice looking site. However, our blog post is recommending Question and Answer plugins specifically for WordPress that people can use to create their own Q&A site. If you have used any Q&A plugins and have recommendations that would be awesome, just let us know!

  7. PickPlugins

    Thanks for awesome list of question answers plugin,
    Recently we published “Question Answer” at wordpress.org

    • AJ Clarke

      It looks like a very nice plugin, thanks for sharing. I’ll add it to the list as well 😉

      • PickPlugins

        WOW, Great thanks @AJ Clarke

        really appreciate your help and great thanks to added to your list.

        Regards

  8. Jim Young

    We’ve used Anspress now for about a year. Their main developer did some custom stuff for us for the plugin. While there’s a lot of power and customization in Anspress, it is unstable and conflicts with other plugins. Sometimes it works, and others it does not. And figuring out what is wrong is becoming too much effort for the benefits of having this plugin installed.

    On our site, we either get a “page not found” whenever you click on a question, or you can’t answer a question anonymously. Support is slow, and they hate it when you complain about their software. I do not recommend this plugin. If you do happen to give it a try, be careful if you run a site with lots of plugins.

    • Kyla

      Thanks so much for sharing! Hopefully this will help other users.

  9. Paul

    Great list of plugins there Jason, will be passing the article on to a client. Thanks for making the list and sharing.

  10. Ruksar Shaikh

    you can’t answer a question anonymously. Support is slow, and they hate it when you complain about their software.
    On our site, we either get a “page not found” whenever you click on a question

    • Kyla

      Actually you can ask and answer questions anonymously with WordPress – it just depends on the forum or Q&A plugin being used. For example, with bbPress under Settings > Forums you can enable the “Anonymous posting” feature which allows any guest to create topics/replies without an account.

      As for the second half of your comment, that’s no good that your Q&As aren’t working on your site. But I have no idea what plugin you’re using or who’s support is slow. Typically if you reach-out to the plugin author they’re happy to help. Just remember that if it’s a free plugin they are likely providing support as they are able, so be patient. With premium plugins or a premium support license for a free plugin you might be able to receive help faster (though you should still be patient to an extent – many devs are a team of 1-2, so managing support and updates takes time).

  11. teymoor

    Is there a difference between “forum” plugins and “Q&A” plugins? Interested to note the similarities and differences between this list and this one from last year

    • Kyla

      They are very similar – and we’ll likely be absorbing one post into the other 🙂

  12. Sourav Pan

    thanks for this plugin list.

  13. Codeaxia Digital Solutions

    thank you for giving me the Q&A WordPress plugin lists …

  14. Andrew Baker

    DW Question & Answer Pro hasn’t been updated in 2 years or tested with the last three major releases, so I suspect it’s no longer supported. Shame, because it looked like the ideal tool for one of my client’s sites!

  15. Alan Charky

    Jason, I am really sorry to say that your list is incomplete, seems like you missed one of (if not) the best Q&A plugins out there beyond the shadow of a doubt. I am talking about Discy, absolutely love it, so much I built my site using it: I think it is by far the best Q&A plugin IMHO. Here’s Discy’s landing page:

    • Kyla

      Oh Discy does look like a great option but it appears to be a theme – but I’ll make a note to consider it for our knowledgebase themes list!

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