English
Answer Hosting
Build a question-and-answer community with voting, moderation, and organized knowledge sharing.
No setup fees-
One click deploy -
1 GB RAM Memory needed -
15 GB Disk Space Needed -
From 2 € Price
Official links
Answer’s official links and original website
Answer Website
More
Tech
- Docker image
- apache/answer:latest
- Default port
- 80
How Answer works
Answer organises community knowledge around questions, responses, comments, tags, votes, accepted answers, revisions, and user profiles. Reputation can unlock privileges and encourage useful contributions, while review and moderation workflows help administrators handle edits and reported content. Search and tag pages make resolved discussions easier to find than information buried in a chronological conversation stream.
The standard image stores its application data in the persistent /data directory and requires initial site and administrator setup after deployment. Registration, visibility, reputation thresholds, moderation rules, branding, and community policy must then be configured for the intended audience. A successful Q&A site also needs active moderation and good question guidance; software alone does not create accurate or civil answers.
Key Answer features
Apache Answer supports a plugin system for capabilities such as third-party login, search, caching, and other integrations. Upstream plugin documentation describes building plugins into an application package, so optional community plugins are not assumed to be present in the standard catalogue image. Every added plugin needs its own source, compatibility, security, and upgrade review.
User signup and account recovery depend on email flows in the upstream product. Application email is disabled on the hosted platform, so activation links, password-reset messages, and email notifications cannot be delivered by Answer. Administrators should select an account model that remains usable without those messages and test signup, login, moderation, and recovery before inviting a community.
Answer vs Stack Internal
Answer is a self-hosted Q&A application with voting, reputation, accepted answers, moderation, tags, profiles, and a community plugin system. Stack Internal, formerly Stack Overflow for Teams, is a provider-managed private knowledge product that uses familiar Stack Overflow-style questions and answers while adding enterprise administration, search, integrations, and vendor-operated infrastructure.
Stack Internal may fit organisations that want a commercial managed service, enterprise controls, and vendor-supported integrations without running the platform. Answer is more direct when self-hosting and community-level configuration matter. It requires local moderation, upgrade review, an email-aware account design, and separate work for optional plugins or identity providers.
Who uses Answer
Open-source projects collect installation and troubleshooting answers, product communities document recurring customer questions, and internal teams create a searchable place for technical or operational knowledge. Tags and accepted answers help readers identify the relevant topic and the response most likely to solve a problem, while reputation highlights sustained participation.
Answer is not a substitute for expert verification, legal advice, employee records, or an incident system. Votes can reflect popularity rather than correctness, and outdated accepted answers still need editorial attention. Community owners should define moderation, privacy, retention, attribution, and escalation policies before opening registration.
Self-hosting Answer: requirements and cost
Answer resource use grows with users, questions, answers, revisions, search activity, attachments, votes, notifications, moderation queues, plugins, and concurrent readers. PostgreSQL and MariaDB are Not required in the catalogue template; this package persists the application’s own data directory. A small private knowledge group is light, while a public community with active search and moderation produces steadier load.
On AvaHost, Answer uses Plan 1 at €2. The hosted Answer package includes one-click deployment, a custom domain with automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. Complete the initial administrator and site setup after deployment. Application email is disabled, so signup activation, password resets, and email notifications cannot be delivered. Optional plugins, identity providers, spam controls, content moderation staff, community policy, expert validation, and data migration are not bundled with the standard image.
F.A.Q
Answer starts at €2 on Plan 1. That plan fits a small private or early-stage community with moderate posting and search. User count, questions, answers, revisions, attachments, votes, moderation queues, plugins, and simultaneous readers are the main reasons to review capacity as the knowledge base becomes more active.
Application email is disabled across the hosted service, so Answer cannot deliver signup activation links, password resets, or email notifications. Configure registration and account policy with that limitation in mind, create the administrator during initial setup, and test the complete login and recovery path before inviting users who depend on email-based access.
A custom domain can point to Answer, and automated HTTPS protects browser traffic to the community. Set the final site URL before opening registration, then test login, questions, answers, tags, votes, moderation, uploaded files, and redirects. HTTPS does not provide spam control, expert review, email delivery, or content-moderation staff.
AvaHost applies updates to the standard Answer application image automatically and includes scheduled backups for persistent data. Optional plugins are not bundled by default and upstream may require them to be built into a package. After an update, verify core workflows and separately confirm the compatibility and security of every custom plugin or identity integration.