What do you do when you have a question and you’re not sure about the answer? You could check with a family member, friend, colleague, or someone you think may know the solution. However, they may not have the full picture of what you really need.
Well, Pew Research found that 96 percent of people make big decisions through their own research, which includes asking others or checking print media. However, only 25 percent ask family or friends, while eight percent check print media.
A whopping 46 percent of people go online to do their research through the internet – Google, social media, online reviews, apps, podcasts, and online forums.
Quora is just one of the most popular platforms that helps you with your questions. The question and answer site has a huge community of people willing to help out in any and every question you might think of.
Quora is huge, and users can even create social networks on it, follow topics of interest to them, and get to vote on answers with the most accurate information possible.
There are several alternatives to Quora. Some of the more popular ones include Answers.com, Blurtit, Stack Overflow and others. However the best Quora alternative is Just Answer where your questions are answered directly by experts in respective fields.
Why explore alternatives to Quora?
The main downside of using Quora is that anyone can answer your question, regardless of their expertise and their answers may be of questionable accuracy.
For the most part, the answers might be based on personal opinions rather than experience or qualified knowledge. There are many other sites where you can ask a random question and get a response, especially if you have a specific question and online results are vague leaving you with more questions than answers.
In addition, the site is social-like so it’s open to abuse by provocateurs and bots.
In this article, we’ve listed 15 of the best Quora alternatives to help you find the knowledge you seek. Take a look.
Best Quora Alternatives
1. Stack Overflow
Have you ever had questions of a technical nature or around tech issues and not sure where to get valid and quality answers to them?
Stack Overflow was built just for that, and users like you. Unlike Quora, which takes on a more generalist nature by having questions to all topics answered by just about anyone with an opinion and experts alike, Stack Overflow is built with programmers in mind.
The huge online community helps programmers learn from other experts in the field, share their knowledge, and advance their careers.
It’s a knowledge sharing and collaboration management platform where small, agile, or large teams and dispersed teams in enterprises can ask questions and get answers from peers or others more qualified than themselves.
You never have to struggle to find quality technical information again. The go-to platform for programmers values openness and transparency, and even offers a solution for teams of up to 50 users, for free – anytime.
The public platform serves more than 100 million people monthly, and since 2008, it’s been used by people who code – developers and technologists – in their work and life. This question and answer site is ideal for pro and enthusiast programmers and they’re allowed to upvote or downvote just as with Quora, or edit questions and answers like a wiki.
Users can earn badges or reputation points for getting upvotes on questions or answers to those questions, and badges for their valued contributions. They can also unlock new privileges and comment on others’ posts.
A job section is included to help programmers find new opportunities, while employers get tools to brand their businesses, advertise job openings, and find qualified, suitable job candidates who are open to being contacted.
2. Answers.com
Answers.com is a unique platform for exchanging internet-based knowledge. Formerly WikiAnswers, the platform combines community-driven answers on different topics, and informative articles written by qualified experts compared to Quora – which is mixed with experts and non-experts.
Answers.com helps people of all ages learn, study, and connect in a welcoming and safe online forum or community. You can add images to your question to make it stand out and get responses quicker than others.
Anyone who responds to your question gets confidence votes displayed that reflect how many times others acknowledged that their response helped them. Someone with a high confidence vote count gives you the assurance that they know what they’re talking about.
You can ask many things on the platform based on the community guidelines, and you can find other people’s questions and answers and interact with them too.
The crowdsourced platform offers wiki-style community answers to any question and it’s easy to use – just type a question and press Go. If it’s been asked before on the site, it will open the question’s page directly or if not, you can submit it and assign a category so others can quickly pick it up.
You don’t need an account to ask or answer a community question like you would on Quora, but it’s recommended for a personalized experience.
3. Just Answer
Quora has a voting system built around confidence votes, but it’s not always guaranteed that the answers are qualified and from real experts.
Just Answer gives you responses from experts – lawyers, tech experts, doctors, mechanics, or home repair workers. You can write out your full story and include every little detail to back up the question. An expert is always at hand to assess your situation and give you the advice they recommend.
The website takes a specialized and professional field approach that allows only verified and licensed experts to give their answers to your questions.
To navigate the platform, pick a specialist type and submit your question. Every nine seconds, a new question is answered and experts tend to respond within minutes of you posting your question.
You may have to pay the required amount if you’re 100 percent satisfied with the answer. This compensation method is based on an honor system so you get to choose whether the expert’s response is good enough to justify getting paid for it.
4. Blurtit
Blurtit is another good Quora alternative. The social question and answer community may not be as popular, but it’s easy to use and provides answers to questions spanning everything from health, education, science, and technology among others.
Once you sign up, like you do on Quora, you can ask a question, comment on others’ answers, and/or browse through questions in various categories.
The site has a clean design and the topic categories are easy to locate compared to Quora, which is huge and can be confusing for new users.
On Blurtit, you can ask any question and explore different topics based on your interests and get opinions from different people all over the world on selected areas of knowledge.
Since 2006, Blurtit has been revolutionizing the way people get answers online. Whether it’s a burning issue or you have lots of knowledgeable answers to share, you can do that on this platform. You get free, 24/7 access to information and millions of friends who are knowledgeable in different fields.
You can also make friends with other users and share facts, ideas, and opinions so it’s not just about getting or giving answers.
5. Fluther
Fluther is a question and answer website whose name is picked from a group of jellyfish. The platform has four main categories: general, meta, just for you, and social.
Instead of getting vague answers from any platform, Fluther ensures you get them from a real person. Once you ask Fluther, they direct your questions to people who they know can help you with valid answers. Quora doesn’t do this for you, instead, it allows you to tag the person you want to respond to, but there’s no guarantee they’ll reply to your questions.
There are two sections on the homepage: general and social.
The general section has strict guidelines and focuses on giving you the answers you need while the social section has relaxed guidelines meaning people can express opinions and flex their humorous side.
When asking a question, Fluther considers the kind of responses that you’d benefit from the most. Fluther’s motto is “tap the collective ”, so you can refer questions to others who may have answers as you would on Quora.
6. Ask.fm
Ask.fm is a question and answer site but it takes a different approach: it’s more social and connects you with friends on existing platforms so you can ask them questions – mostly anonymously.
The platform applies a casual and fun style so you can get to know people better, but you can still use it to find answers to more serious issues. However, it’s more socially skewed compared to Quora, which is more generalized around different topics.
You can add photos to your questions to make them more compelling, including videos and GIFs. You also get safety and privacy options that help protect you if you’re a younger user from cyberbullying seeing as it’s popular among teenagers.
7. Snippets
Created by Conjecture Corporation, Snippets is a question and answer website built with the goal to allow you to create and share useful and straightforward content.
You can ask short questions in 20 or fewer words, and those who decide to answer you will limit their responses to 50 words (or less).
Unlike Quora, where people can write long responses, Snippets prefers shorter answers because they want to keep things simple and encourage users to get to the point.
When somebody responds to a question you posted, you will get an email notification of their action. Users can also upvote answers just as they do on Quora, and this pushes them up to the top. However, you can also hover the cursor over other users’ names and view a summary of their activity on Snippets in a popup bubble.
The voting system filters for quality answers, and you can always know a user’s activity and reputation. It’s also easy to browse and read through questions and answers quickly.
8. Reddit
Reddit is the front page of the internet. It’s an online community and forum, but a place where people get responses to their burning questions no matter the topic.
The popular community and message board is split up into subreddits, which are threads on different niche topics. These topics can range from smartphones to operating systems, parenting, politics, and any other topic you could imagine.
Most members in these subreddits are happy to respond to relevant questions you post in the right ask-me-anything subreddit. You can search through the platform to find subreddits based on the topic you want or your area of interest and passion.
You’ll need an account to use Reddit, after which you can post your question. Other users can leave their responses and you can comment directly in the same thread to respond to them.
Unlike Quora, Reddit breaks down questions into specific categories and has an endless number of responders who offer their feedback and thoughts based on fact, opinion, or experience.
However, it may look and seem a bit complex to use, but once you get the hang of it, it’s an addictive place to hang out with other Redditors and enjoy an array of content.
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9. Ask.com
Ask.com is an established website that was there since 1996 as Ask Jeeves, after which it was acquired and renamed to its current name. However, it still maintains its original purpose – giving people a chance to ask questions and easily get responses.
You can enter your question in the search bar and get instant results. The site works like a search engine and gives you various articles and resources to get an answer from.
That’s different from Quora, where you can get quick responses from other users, though they’re not necessarily experts, and on a mix of different topics.
Ask.com is meant to help you get clarity on your query in simple language. The search engine approach to giving you answers helps the site’s over 100 million users worldwide to find what they need in terms of answers to their queries.
It’s easy to navigate and comes with mobile apps for Android and iOS.
10. The AnswerBank
The AnswerBank lives up to its name by offering just that – answers to your questions. The UK-based website offers an experience like what you’d find on the former Yahoo! Answers, and you’ll need to register as a member before asking questions.
There are several categories from travel and news, to crosswords and gaming just like Quora offers. But, The AnswerBank has a unique ChatterBank feature akin to old-school chat rooms, where you can discuss with people more about life and other things.
The site has moderators who monitor the questions and comments posted to remove any that are negative or that violate the community or site rules and guidelines.
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11. wikiHow
wikiHow is another go-to question and answer website that gives you lots of how-to content to help you figure out the issue at hand. The website started in 2006, about the same time as Yahoo! Answers but earlier than Quora, which was launched in 2009.
wikiHow allows you to search through questions other users have asked before, read how-to articles that will help you, or ask your own questions.
If you ask a question, you’ll find a list of available content that also provides you with answers. For instance, you can ask how to pressure-wash a car and wikiHow will provide a list of results pages with the top-ranked responses labeled and vetted with different markers.
For instance, you can find markers like Quality Tested or Expert Co-Authored, which Quora doesn’t do, though it tends to show a blurb of the respondent’s profile.
You will notice ads at the top of the results generated based on your question, but that’s normal just like what you find after running a search on Google.
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12. Ask Me Help Desk
Ask Me Help Desk is a growing question and answer platform with over one million members and counting. The platform’s users regularly go there to ask questions and get answers.
To participate, you need to register to become a member, after which you can browse through questions, ask your own questions, or answer some questions asked by other users. And you can conduct searches for questions to see if they’ve already been answered before.
Unlike Quora, Ask Me Help Desk makes it easier for you to search for questions and answers by organizing those questions into categories and subcategories. It doesn’t take a social-like format like Quora, so it’s not as open to bots and provocateurs.
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13. Experts Exchange
From its name, you can already tell the difference between this platform and Quora – it mainly features experts.
Expert Exchange helps you find answers to any tech question from experts themselves. The community features lots of experts who handle tech-based questions, which are more than 3.9 million so you’re assured of finding what you need.
You can find answers from everything including computer programs, DevOps, databases, and more but to get this niche level, you’ll have to pay. That just means you get quality answers compared to Quora’s, which aren’t necessarily handled by experts.
14. Answerbag
This question and answer platform helps you find answers to a wide range of questions in different categories. You’ll need to register just as on Quora to ask questions and browse through the areas of interest to you or read questions and answers posted by other users.
It’s an old site that lets you get your answer, ask funny questions related to memes, GIFs, and more, or career and relationship questions.
15. Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange is another fast-growing Quora alternative with answers to questions posted on diverse topics from gaming and photography to cooking and software programming.
Unlike Quora, which has a wide and general approach to getting you answers to your burning questions, Stack Exchange touts itself as an expert knowledge exchange where researchers and programmers can discuss.
Plus, photographers can share knowledge with other like-minded experts about how to get their work done better.
The online network has a reputation system that lets it self-moderate and prefers that questions quickly move from asked to answered and thereafter closed.
Once you get an answer, there’s no need for further responses compared to Quora which allows further responses long after you received the answer you want. Stack Exchange keeps things brief and to the point.
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Wrapping Up
Whether you have a query or want to start a discussion thread, question and answer sites offer you the platform to ask whatever is bothering you and get responses for it.
The advantage is that it’s much faster than searching through books and other platforms for information because you can always ask more and get even more answers from a wider community.
Quora has its limitations, but you’re not stuck because these 15 Quora alternatives can do the same if not more to help you get everything you need. Plus, you get bonuses like showing your skills, making friends, and exchanging knowledge with experts.
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