Apache Answer vs HelloBox
Apache Answer
answer.apache.org
HelloBox
hellobox.coSide by side
| Figure | Apache Answer | HelloBox |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Customer Community Software | 9.1 (#1) | 8.9 (#5) |
| Integrations | Official plugins connect services including Google, DingTalk, Slack, WeCom, Redis, Algolia, Elasticsearch, Meilisearch, S3, and Tencent COS. | Listed integrations include automatic posting to Twitter, Slack and Discord, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and chatbot tools such as Intercom, HubSpot and Drift. |
| Support | Support is offered through community discussions, documentation, issues, mailing lists, and Discord, with no guarantee of an instant Discord response. | The pricing page says the free plan includes email support, and the help center directs users to email support for unanswered questions. |
| What it does | Apache Answer is software for running community forums, help centers, or knowledge-management Q&A sites. | HelloBox is a fully hosted forum and community platform positioned as an alternative to Discourse, Circle and Facebook Groups. |
Plans
HelloBox
- FreeFree
- Starter$5 a month
- Growth$10 a month
- Pro$20 a month
- Business$50 a month
- Scale$100 a month
In their own words
Apache Answer
Apache Answer is a free, open-source Q&A platform for community forums, help centers, and knowledge management. Members can ask and answer questions, comment, vote, and earn reputation and badges. Tags, advanced search filters, and live suggestions help organize discussions and find relevant questions. Administrators can manage admin, moderator, and user roles, add users in bulk, and inspect edits in revision history. Themes and layouts can be customized, and plugins can add capabilities such as Google or generic OAuth2 login, Slack notifications, Redis caching, Algolia or Elasticsearch search, and S3 storage. Deployment options include Docker Compose, Docker, binaries, and aaPanel. The project lists binaries for Darwin ARM64, Linux AMD64 and ARM64, and Windows AMD64, and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Documentation describes controls for registration, login methods, allowed email domains, and member access to content. Apache Answer is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0. Its security guarantee covers official repository plugins only, not third-party plugins.
HelloBox
HelloBox is a hosted forum and community platform for publishing and discussion, positioned as an alternative to Discourse, Circle, and Facebook Groups. It handles hosting, scaling, backups, and SSL; communities can be public or private, with admin approval for new members. Members can sign in with Twitter, Google, GitHub, LinkedIn, or email, and email sign-ups are verified. The editor offers rich-text, inline, and Markdown modes, plus image, code, map, and tweet blocks, drafts, and optional post approval. Its writing assistant can continue or rewrite drafts, summarize threads, or create a draft from a prompt. HelloBox can post automatically to Twitter, Slack, and Discord, connect with analytics, search, and chatbot tools, and send newsletters featuring popular posts. Customers can import subscriber lists, link existing newsletters, run ads and keep 100% of the revenue, use a custom domain, and export data anytime. The free plan allows 50 members and 10K views per month with limited features. Paid plans start at $5 a month; Starter includes 100 members and 50K monthly views.