
SlimFAQ – Simple FAQ's for your app or website - dynjo
https://slimfaq.com
======
atopal
One thing that's really disappointing is that more and more sites are hiding
pricing information until you sign-up. That feels like at least a gray if not
a dark pattern. For me that's a terrible first impression. It's a sign that I
have to look out for further deception, even if that's not the intention.

I'm guessing that A/B testing shows this to be more profitable than being
upfront with pricing?

~~~
hartez
I honestly thought you were being ironic at first. The pricing info is in
their FAQ: [https://slimfaq.com/faq](https://slimfaq.com/faq) (specifically at
[https://slimfaq.com/faq/24-getting-started/84-how-much-
does-...](https://slimfaq.com/faq/24-getting-started/84-how-much-does-it-
cost))

~~~
scott_s
Which, ironically, is not obviously located. The link for their FAQ says
"Demo". And it's in the main navigation on the top, instead of somewhere down
the page where their layout is guiding me. Right before "Intercom
Integration", they should really have another section which says "Do you have
more questions? Try our FAQ!"

Instead, all of their navigation is guiding me to the sign-up button as a next
step. It's a product page for creating and maintaining FAQs, and they don't
guide me to their own FAQ - that's not a good sign.

~~~
hsitz
I agree. I did eventually find the pricing info in the demo, but it's not at
all immediately obvious that the 'demo' plays double duty as the site's actual
FAQ page. And why hide pricing info in a FAQ anyway? Pricing should not be
just in a FAQ.

Also, $7/mo seems steep to me, but who knows? To me the FAQ system seems to
involve an excess of clicking/navigating.

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koolba
From my experience the difficult part of a FAQ isn't converting the questions
and answers to rendered HTML, it's writing the content itself.

~~~
dangerlibrary
This is, hands-down, the worst part of being hired to "build a website."

I can absolutely build you a website. I can make it work however you'd like.
I'm a crappy designer, but I can cobble together HTML/CSS into something that
looks reasonably professional via pattern matching on sites you like or just
using bootstrap.

But ultimately, you're gonna need to _have something to say_.

------
PokeTheCiTy
I should miss the point. Why is it top 5 on HN ? Doing a FAQ may be one of the
easiest thing on a website (as koolba said, writing the content is the
difficult part).

Moreover, it is not free after 20 questions ?!

Well, I didn't know Intercom but this might be the only feature which worths
it.

~~~
con
Hey there, @con from SlimFAQ speaking: We've build SlimFAQ out of our own
pain: we wanted a simple, searchable FAQ that can be managed by our support
team for SlimWiki (i.e. it's super simple to use, even for not so tech-savy
people).

Unfortunately we didn't find what we looked for - so we build what we wanted.
And since we are big fans (and customers) of Intercom, we made sure to
integrate it where we saw fit. If you don't know Intercom yet, you should
definitely check it out! (Right after you gave SlimFAQ a try :) )

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lincolnq
Here's my feedback - I'm someone who actually has surprising amounts of pain
maintaining my FAQ so your product is appealing:

\- I want to see screenshots of your mobile presentation of the faq. I also
want to understand that it'll be easy to integrate with my app. (Ideally
native - I don't trust web based interactive elements on mobile)

\- I want FAQ localization somehow.

\- Customize FAQ based on parameters of the user (if they've indicated they
want to use certain "slices" of my app, I either only want to show those
slices, or at least to prioritize them so they show up first)

Neat idea!

~~~
con
Thanks! Great feedback! We plan to add native integration (for iOS) and
localization, soon.

The "slices" feature sounds interesting, we'll investigate. For now we want to
keep it as simple as possible. Thanks! (I'm an engineer on SlimFAQ)

------
gmisra
This looks very useful. For the commenters who think this is a trivial
service, I'd like to know how you handle the _publishing_ step for your
current FAQ pages. Most of our FAQ content comes from the product team, and
much of the rest from other not-very-technical members of our team. Publishing
FAQ updates always impacts our dev team. Being able to just give full control
of the FAQ to our PM is definitely worth the $84/year.

But, DNS mapping is a must have for us - for most of our users, being directed
off-site is mildly confusing, which is a particularly bad UX for someone who
is already in state of incomplete information. DNS mapping also needs to come
with customizable css.

If you had those two features already, we would be considering your product
today.

A couple of other suggestions:

\- Your FAQ itself does not address the question about custom domains, it
probably should.

\- As others have mentioned, not having a clear link to a pricing page creates
the risk of potential customers thinking you are hiding it on purpose.

\- It is a dark pattern to list the price as $7/month if you don't offer a
monthly payment plan. Please either list the minimum transaction (currently
$84), or offer a monthly plan.

\- Is the editor exposed anywhere in the demo? I could not find it (just a
screenshot on the homepage). Our content creators aren't that technical, so
previewing the editor is important. WYSIWYG would be great, but
markdown+preview mode would be just fine.

\- Do you also provide media hosting? Some of your demo questions feature
embedded pictures - and if I don't have to manage the file hosting for those
assets, that's very appealing.

\- What is your cross-platform support? Searching your demo for the terms
"responsive", "mobile", or "tablet" returns zero results.

\- Is there a way for me to follow the evolution of your product, e.g. mailing
list or twitter? The product seems like a good fit for us once DNS mapping is
in place, but not yet, so I would like to keep up-to-date.

~~~
dynjo
Hi, Jan here from SlimFAQ. Custom domains are coming soon (I will add this to
our FAQ). Pricing now on the landing page. We don't expose the editor in the
demo but sign up for a free account and have a play. Media hosting is
included. The resultant FAQs are totally responsive and look great on all
devices (will also add to FAQ). Mailing list is a great suggestion, will get
this set up :-)

Thanks for the really constructive feedback, very much appreciated.

------
kdamken
I'm not sure why you would need this. Even if you don't have a CMS set up,
it's fairly easy to show someone what parts of the HTML they need to copy and
paste if you already have some FAQ's, or just write it up and assign a ticket
to a dev and have them knock it out in a few minutes.

Who's the target market here? Most site owners usually have a tech person they
can reach out to to help them with things like this.

~~~
adam-_-
There's always an opportunity cost to any work and developers often (always?)
underestimate the time taken to do work.

$7 a month is practically free and allows you to offload the task from your
expensive developers to someone better suited.

------
guptaneil
Some product feedback:

It's not clear from the marketing where my faq will go. Your demo points to
slimfaq.com/faq which suggests my url should be mydomain.com/faq but I doubt
you have DNS mapping or self-hosted installs yet.

I searched your faq for the answer to above question and was not able to find
it. Any good faq page should have an "ask your question" button to submit new
questions not already answered.

~~~
con
Thanks @guptaneil - that's some great feedback!

You are correct, we don't have DNS mapping in place, yet - but we plan to add
that in the near future. Your FAQ will currently be hosted at
slimfaq.com/your-company-name - you can change your company name (and path) at
any time.

We are considering a "Ask your question" feature - currently we are using
Intercom for this in our own FAQ. Thanks!

~~~
Zachery
I'd think without the ability to do some sort of subdomain (faq.mydomain.com)
I wouldn't use the product.

~~~
dynjo
Hi, Jan from SlimFAQ here, custom domains are coming soon :-)

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CM30
Oh look, another 'software as a service' platform offering what would have
once been a normal script for a 'per month' payment model. Why even often this
for a monthly fee instead of say, a single one off purchase price with
optional renewals? Is the new trend 'don't host anything yourself any more'?

Honestly, as decent as the pictures look, I think this is the kind of thing
you could do with a free script and a few theme changes, not a service.

~~~
brandon272
I don't think a service like this is targeting hackers who can easily
replicate what this service is providing in an hour or two. Not everyone has
the time/skill/resources/desire to find a free script, modify the logic,
modify the "theme" to something that looks halfway presentable, etc. Some
people will find a service like this entirely worth it – and that's who it's
targeted to.

~~~
CM30
Download a script and download a theme for it? It works pretty well for things
like WordPress and phpBB. And it's not like there aren't a lot of options out
there.

That doesn't seem that complicated, especially not with basic shared hosting
(which a company will likely have if they have any form of web presence
whatsoever).

I also don't like the move towards trying to get 'average' users to walled
gardens and managed solutions, since it usually ends up being about nickle and
diming them.

~~~
brandon272
> Download a script and download a theme for it? It works pretty well for
> things like WordPress and phpBB. And it's not like there aren't a lot of
> options out there.

Are there free, actively managed, themeable FAQ scripts out there that would
compete with this?

> I also don't like the move towards trying to get 'average' users to walled
> gardens and managed solutions, since it usually ends up being about nickle
> and diming them.

I wouldn't use this particular product, but other users in this thread with
genuine FAQ and knowledgebase management needs seem to think this is a
worthwhile product. Not everything works effectively as a one-time-fee
downloadable script. And at the end of the day, consumers have the choice in
what they use. It's not like these folks have the monopoly on FAQ solutions.

------
NetStrikeForce
This is appealing to me too. I was recently surprised to discover that there
was no simple product to maintain a public FAQ and/or knowledge base. I'm
using one of the lowest tiers of Zendesk and I'm not happy, but I don't feel
the appeal to upgrade to another tier either.

My needs:

Template system for a seamless integration with my site's aspect. Custom
domain name support. SSL WYSIWYG or MarkDown editor. Option to add my
analytics (i.e. to include my own JS on my pages), or some analytics offered
by you.

I'll be more than happy to pay for this, if you keep it simple :)

~~~
con
As an engineer on SlimFAQ: That's exactly why we build it!

Custom domain name support is coming, per-FAQ analytics is also in the
pipeline. As for a template system: we've played around with some ideas but
couldn't agree on a simple and nice integration yet - but we are planning to
offer more customisation options to make it easier to fit your site's or
application's style.

We are already providing a nifty WYSIWYG editor - you should give it a try!
Thanks.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
> you should give it a try!

I will :)

Thanks!

------
wise_young_man
This is a really neat service. We've been working in the same area at UserDeck
[1], but focused around an inline embedded widget. It's hard to tell your
integration strategy if it is a subdomain hosting a la Zendesk or if it is
mostly focused on the overlay with Intercom which is really slick too btw.

1: [http://userdeck.com/guides](http://userdeck.com/guides)

------
vinitagr
We also thought about the problem of explaining our product/service, but
instead of a static FAQ page, we decided to use our own "Automated Chat"
product. check it out:
[https://hellotars.com/convBot/demos/tars/](https://hellotars.com/convBot/demos/tars/)

------
miseg
Using HelpScout's support documentation, I've been toying since with just
making a wiki to accompany our company's site.

I love the interconnectedness within a wiki, where its essence is for you to
post a page on a particular topic in as much depth as you need, and link to
related concepts.

------
nivertech

        - Landing pages -aaS
        - Pricing pages -aaS
        - FAQ pages -aaS
        - Status pages -aaS
        - Blog -aaS
        - Forum - aaS
        - Developer docs - aaS
    

anything else?

There was a company providing pricing pages as a service, but I can't find
them now.

~~~
Can_Not
I've seen:

Authentication -aaS Image hosting -aaS Database -aaS

------
baxter001
What's that old joke, FAQs are for when you know you need to tell your users
something but don't know when or how.

------
thkim
I don't see the value in this product that justifies $7/month price. It's such
a shallow effort.

~~~
dsr_
It strikes me as either absurdly high or absurdly low.

Why high? Because $7/month buys you more than one DigitalOcean droplet, which
equates to hosting a static site for you. Drop in a static site generator or
just a single HTML page and you're right up to the same point as you are with
this: all the hard work is generating the questions and writing the answers.
If you aren't a for-profit business, this is way too much money. If you're a
scrounging-for-pennies startup, you already have a website -- don't spend
extra on this.

Why is the price low? Because anyone who is making money off their product or
service can easily afford to hand you $84 a year to make their FAQ pretty and
easy to edit. $7 isn't actually enough to make them take you seriously. Does
it handle user management for a hundred users? Does it integrate with a
single-sign-on system? Can you privilege users to edit certain topics and not
others?

------
poushkar
I also wanted to build such as service, but Zendeks's $1 price for FAQ stopped
me at the time.

------
jordanwallwork
Seems weird that searching 'slim' yields no results. How exact do users have
to be when searching?

------
ygfan
How is this different from ZenDesk?

~~~
con
@con from SlimFAQ here, happy to answer your questions:

We make content creation super simple and include a seamless integration with
Intercom. We are also free (forever) for up to 20 questions. You should give
us a try and see for yourself!

------
alfanick
how is this simplier than email and markdown?

------
ElijahLynn
:sigh:

