The Best Free WordPress FAQ Plugins on the Market Today

The Best Free WordPress FAQ Plugins on the Market Today


Here’s a frequently asked question for you: What’s a good Frequently Asked Questions plugin? 

If your site is like most sites, then your visitors come to you with questions. Having a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your site can save both you and your visitors a lot of time.

The advantage for the visitor is obvious. But the advantage to the website owner is just a great.

The Convenience of FAQ Plugins

Answering frequently asked questions on your site saves you time, obviously, but using an FAQ plugin also gives you convenience.

An FAQ plugin lets you easily add questions and answers to your WordPress system and then insert them where you like. With most plugins, you can easily group questions into different sections to make it even easier for your visitors. Most plugins also offer the ability to easily change the order of questions. In addition, most plugins will let you hide the answers to the questions to make for easy scanning.

Compare all that above to manually making up an FAQ page on your own with simple HTML.

Below we’ve collected the best free FAQ WordPress plugins we could find. A few of the plugins are somewhat similar, but they are each different enough to warrant their inclusion here. There were a number of plugins we found that didn’t seem to warrant inclusion here because the functions they offered were already covered by other plugins that did more.

That said, we certainly may have missed a few good ones along the way. And so if you know of any worth mentioning, let us know in the comments.

 

1. Q & A FAQ and Knowledge Base

The Q & A FAQ and Knowledge Base plugin was one of the better plugins we found, and it has a lot of nice features to it. Here are some of the main ones:

  • Allows you to create categories for questions
  • Allows you to easily rearrange questions
  • Allows you to insert the FAQs in any page with a shortcode
  • Allows  you to insert a category or an individual question with shortcodes
  • Control number of FAQs returned
  • Control how FAQs are displayed – collapsed, expanded, accordion, animation
  • Enable Excerpts
  • FAQ section is searchable
  • Allows you to insert any media/anything into an answer

To re-highlight the last point above, because you are using the regular WordPress editor when making the questions, you can make the answer to any section as complex as any WordPress post – easily including images, videos, and anything else you could include in a post. A number of the plugins below allow you to do this. So that function isn’t unique to this plugin. But we’ll point it out here so that when it’s mentioned again later, you’ll have a better understanding of what it means.

The Plugin in Action

You have multiple options with this plugin, but here’s a look at one of the settings (collapsed questions). With this style, the questions are displayed without the answers visible, and then when you click on an question, the answer appears.

 

As mentioned, you can group question into categories, which is very convenient if you have more than a few questions.

(This image is from the plugin’s page on wordpress.org.)

 

Here’s a look at the basic settings for the plugin. You make your questions and answers independent of any page, and then insert them where you like with a shortcode.

 

And here’s a look at how you would reorder your questions if you needed to.

 

 

2. FAQ Manager

The FAQ Manager plugin is very similar to the Q & A FAQ and Knowledge Base plugin above. You have the ability to insert whatever you like in answers as you are using the WordPress editor for creation. You can create categories for the questions and easily rearrange the questions. You can call in sections or individual questions with shortcodes.

Here’s a quick look at the output.

 

How the Two Plugins Differ

Because these two plugins are similar, we’ll go over a few of their differences.

What the FAQ Manager CAN Do that the Q&A Plugin Doesn’t

  • Can create a long list of questions at the top of a page that link to answers further down the page
  • Can choose your headline size for the FAQ title
  • Can include FAQs in your RSS feed
  • Can apply “noindex” header tag to FAQs
  • Can apply “nofollow” header tag to FAQs
  • Can apply “noarchive” header tag to FAQs
  • Includes Random Questions widget
  • Includes Recent Questions widget
  • Includes FAQ search widget
  • Includes FAQ Taxonomiesm widget
  • Includes FAQ Cloud Widget

 

Here’s a look at the settings page.

 

What the FAQ Manager DOESN’T Do that the Q&A Plugin Does

  • No search associated with this plugin
  • No excerpt capabilities
  • This plugin makes it a little more difficult to create sections on a large FAQ page – you need to call in each section with a shortcode and make your own headings (as opposed to having it done for you automatically)

 

 

3. FAQs Manager

The FAQs Manager plugin (not to be confused with the FAQ Manager plugin above – “s” vs. no “s”) offers a number of interesting features including the ability to add an “Ask a Question” section after your FAQ section, as well as the ability to style how the questions appear.

FREE EBOOK
Your step-by-step roadmap to a profitable web dev business. From landing more clients to scaling like crazy.

By downloading this ebook I consent to occasionally receive emails from WPMU DEV.
We keep your email 100% private and do not spam.

FREE EBOOK
Plan, build, and launch your next WP site without a hitch. Our checklist makes the process easy and repeatable.

By downloading this ebook I consent to occasionally receive emails from WPMU DEV.
We keep your email 100% private and do not spam.

Here’s a look at an FAQ section with the default settings in place.

You will notice that the questions and answers are stacked on top of each other without any spacing. Also, as the editor for the questions isn’t a WYSIWYG editor, I had to insert HTML elements into the last question in order to get each age group to appear on a separate line.

All of the problems above can be easily fixed with a little HTML knowledge. But as many people don’t have HTML knowledge, it could pose a problem for some.

If you have some knowledge of HTML and even CSS, and you WANT to control the look of your FAQ section, then this plugin may be for you. It makes it easy to do that. Straight out of the box, however, not necessarily all things will look as clean and smooth as you might like.

Design Options

As the power of this plugin seems to be in the design control it offers to the knowledgeable, let’s take a look at some of those settings.

One nice feature of this plugin is that it gives you easy access to the template for the FAQ section. You can control what gets displayed and the order it gets displayed in.

Here’s a partial look at the template available through the settings page.

In addition to easy access to the template, you’re also given easy access to the CSS for the HTML (as well as a custom JavaScript section).

Here’s a partial look at those sections on the settings page so you can get a taste of the control it offers.

So, as mentioned, this plugin is clearly not for everyone. But if you have HTML and CSS knowledge, and you want control over those aspects, this plugin might be for you. Also, as mentioned, the addition of an “Ask a Question” section via email is a good idea for an FAQ page. It also comes with a search box.

 

 

4. Arconix FAQ

The Arconix FAQ plugin is a relatively simple plugin. Certainly other plugins offer more options. But we include it here because its default display is a little different, and it may be something that some would want on their site.

Here’s a look at the style of questions you get with this plugin.

Like a number of the other plugins, you use the WordPress editor to create your questions, and so it gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can include in your answers. This plugin also works by including a shortcode into a Post or a Page.

 

 

5. FAQ You

The FAQ You plugin is a relatively simple plugin without a lot options, but it does one thing especially that some may find worthwhile. It lets you insert already created FAQs from your visual editor by inserting the proper shortcode for you.

Obviously that may not be such a big deal if you only create one FAQ section. But if you find yourself inserting FAQs (or parts of your FAQs) in numerous places throughout your site over and over again, then this could come in handy.

Here’s a look at the FAQ You button on the visual editor.

 

Here’s a look at how the FAQ section from the inserted code above displays. (Notice there are two sections inserted, and so two sections display. The titles for each section are automatically created.)

 

And here’s a look at the question creation form.

 

6. Apiki WP FAQ

Lastly, we come to the Apiki WP FAQ plugin. Unfortunately, we can’t really recommend this plugin for making a typical FAQ page. When you make an FAQ page with this plugin, and then click on one of the questions, it takes you off to a completely different page in order to show you the answer.

Obviously that’s not ideal.

But we include this plugin here because it does offer a nice widget that you can place in your sidebar. The FAQ Manager plugin above (the second plugin reviewed) also offers widgets, but unfortunately you don’t get a lot of control with them.

Widget Control

With an Apiki widget, however, you can control the number of questions that display, the group that they come from, and the order they display in (ascending or descending). As you can insert multiple widgets into your sidebar and control each by selecting the category, you end up with a fair amount of control.

Here you can see the Apiki widget settings.

 

The one downside to this, again, is that clicking on the question in the sidebar takes you to a page with the answer to that question only. Because your widgets will stay in your sidebar, however, that means your other FAQs will also stay right there in the sidebar. Therefore, in the end, that may still work out all right. Your visitor will still have easy access to all the questions (as long as they’re in the widgets, of course).

Here’s the sidebar with two widgets set up – one for each of my two categories.