How fast can we be live?
Answer
About five minutes. Sign in, name your portal, and it is online at yourcompany.myforumcat.com. Nothing to install.
Customer Q&A
Customer questions and answers,
in one public place
A customer types a question. Your team answers it once, in public. The next person with the same question reads the answer instead of writing to you. Live in about five minutes.
This is a public place where your customers ask you a question and get an answer. It is not a survey tool for asking customers questions.
Free for 7 days. No credit card. Live in about five minutes.
5 minfrom sign-up to a live portal
0passwords for your customers
$9one time for a working portal
7 days freeto try it, no card needed
The ask
What happens when a customer asks.
Four steps, and most of them take seconds. A customer Q&A portal earns its place in the first two. That is where repetitive customer questions stop, before they reach your team.
- 1
They search first
Search covers the title and the details of every question, and it needs no account. Most people stop right here, in a few seconds.
- 2
They start typing a title
While they type, the form looks for questions that already match and shows them under the box. The aim is that they open one and never need to post.
- 3
They sign in without a password
A magic link or a 6-digit code by email, or Google sign-in under your own brand. There is nothing to remember next time.
- 4
They post, and your team answers
A title, markdown details, one category, up to 3 tags, up to 10 images. Your reply shows your name and your role, and one reply gets accepted as the solution.
Before it is posted
The duplicate check happens while they type.
The ask form reads the title as it is written and suggests questions that look like it. If one of them is the answer, the customer clicks it and is done.
The ones that do get posted are the ones you have not answered yet. Those are the questions worth your time.
Every question page also carries up to five related questions in the sidebar. A near miss still lands somewhere useful. Each question you answer becomes a page that answers the next person too.
The form
What the ask form takes.
Short on purpose. Every field earns its place, and the limits keep the archive readable a year from now.
| Field | Limit | Why it works this way |
|---|---|---|
| Title | One line | It becomes the page heading and the search result. Short titles read better in Google. |
| Details | Markdown | Code blocks, lists and links, so a technical answer stays readable. |
| Category | Exactly one | One shelf per question, so browsing stays simple. Staff can move it later. |
| Tags | Up to 3, from your list | Your team keeps the tag list. Customers pick from it and cannot invent new ones. |
| Images | Up to 10 per post | People show the bug instead of describing it. Images are resized for you. |
| Private | Staff can mark any question private | For the one-to-one cases. A whole category can be private, so everything posted there starts that way. |
Replies take the same markdown and the same image limit. The reply stream is flat, one level. An "in reply to" marker shows when someone answers a specific person.
Sign-in
No password, for anyone.
Reading and searching need no account at all. Signing in is only for asking, replying and voting.
When someone does sign in, they get a magic link or a 6-digit code by email. You can also turn on Google sign-in with your own Google client. The consent screen then shows your company name, not ours.
No password to pick, no password to reset, and no password of your customers for anyone to lose.
- Magic link by email
- 6-digit code, for people who paste links badly
- Google sign-in under your own brand
The answer
An answer that is obviously official.
A staff reply carries the person and their role, so a customer can tell your answer from a helpful guess. Five roles share the work: owner, admin, agent, finance and member.
When the asker or your team accepts a reply, it pins under the question and the thread turns solved.
There is no widget.
The ask a question form is a hosted page on your portal, at /ask. There is no script tag, no embed, and no in-app help panel.
Teams link to it from the site header, the help center, the app, and the reply templates support already uses. On Pro the whole portal sits on your own domain, so the link never leaves your brand.
That is the honest shape of it. If an embedded widget is what you need, this is not the tool.
Pricing
One flat price. No surprises.
Not per user. Not per question. Grow all you want, your bill stays the same. More traffic is good news, not a bigger bill.
Basic
$9 one-time
Create your portal- Portal on yourcompany.myforumcat.com
- 2 team seats
- 1,000 registered members
- 10,000 questions
- 1 GB (≈2,000 images) of media
- Full SEO and GEO: structured data + sitemap
- Analytics built in
most popular
Pro
$99 per month
Start with ProEverything in Basic, plus
- Your own custom domain
- Unlimited team seats
- 10,000 registered members
- Unlimited questions
- 50 GB (≈100,000 images) of media
- 1,000,000 page views / month
FAQ
Questions people ask before they pick.
Where does the ask form actually live?
Answer
On your portal, as a hosted page. You link to it from your site, your app and your support replies. On Pro it runs on your own domain.
Do our customers need a password?
Answer
No. They sign in with a magic link, a 6-digit email code, or Google. The Google screen shows your company name, not ours.
Do customers need an account to read?
Answer
No. Reading and searching are open to everyone. Signing in is only for asking, replying, and voting, and it is passwordless.
Who can see a private question?
Answer
Only the person who asked it and your team. Whole categories can be private too, so every question posted there starts private.
Can we stop the same question being asked again?
Answer
That is what the search box, the duplicate suggestions and the accepted solution are for. The questions you have already answered stop coming back as new posts.
What does it cost in month twelve?
Answer
The same as month one. $9 one time for a portal on a Forumcat subdomain, or $99 a month for your own domain. The bill never grows with traffic or questions.
Where next
Q&A softwareAll the parts: votes, solutions, categories, search, and the API.Support forumThe same portal for a team that wants a forum without servers.Ticket deflectionWhere a repeat question gets caught before it reaches your team.Customer self serviceThe wider case for letting customers help themselves first.
Give your customers somewhere to ask.
A public question and answer site, on your own address, with the first answer written today.
Create your portalFree for 7 days. No credit card. Live in about five minutes.
