Best Q&A Apps to Engage With Your Audience | 5+ Platforms For Free in 2024

Presenting

Ellie Tran 27 June, 2024 11 min read

A presenter's struggle: A flood of questions or a room full of crickets? Let's help you navigate both extremes! Could it be the wrong Q&A tools, irrelevant topics and questions, or poor presentation skills? Let's fix these problems together.

There are so many challenges, for both you and your audience, when it comes to keeping everyone on the same page.

Let's jump right in...

Table of Contents

Overview of The Best Q&A Apps

Best Q&A app for interactive presentation?AhaSlides
Best Q&A app for education?Purpose of an online question and answer tool?
Purpose of online question and answer tool?To gather feedback
What does Q&A mean?Live questions and answers
Overview of Best Q&A Apps - Q&A Platform

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#1 - AhaSlides | The Best Q&A App for Your Events & Workshops

AhaSlides' tips to set up a live Q&A in a minute - Online Question and Answer Tool

AhaSlides is one of the best free Q&A platforms which equips presenters with everything they need to facilitate lively events and promote two-way discussion. You can use AhaSlides for small and big events, during work meetings, training, lessons, and webinars...

AhaSlides question and answer app can be easily set up, with lots of cool themes available, flexible customisation and background music.

AhaSlide stands out to be one of the best free audience interaction tools, to empower participants to ask questions, speak up, and participate in the discussion. This is a real game-changer when it comes to keeping track of all questions and conveniently addressing them.

Every step is simple and free, from the sign-up to creating and hosting your Q&A session. Participants can join any presentation to ask questions (even anonymously) simply by using a short link or scanning a QR code with their phones.

Being not only the top Q&A software in the market, with AhaSlides, you can try other exciting features like live and self-paced quizzes, polls, word clouds, and more to energise your crowd! (Psst: they have a super fun AI assistant to help you generate interactive quizzes in seconds!)

Meeting with a remote presenter answering questions with a live Q&A on AhaSlides
Best Q&A apps

Here are 6 reasons why AhaSlides is one of the best Q&A apps...

Question moderation

Approve or dismiss questions before showing them on the presenter's screen.

Profanity filter

Hide inappropriate words in questions submitted by your audience.

Question upvote

Let participants upvote others' questions. Find the most liked questions in the top questions category.

Send anytime

Approve or dismiss questions before showing them on the presenter's screen.

Embed audio

Add audio to a slide to have background music on your device and participants' phones.

Ask anonymously

Participants can send their questions when they don't want to reveal their names.

Other Free Features

  • Full background customisation
  • Customisable heading and description
  • Mark questions as answered
  • Sort questions how you want
  • Clear responses
  • Presenter notes
  • Export questions for later

Cons of AhaSlides

Lack of some display options - AhaSlides displays everything in a fixed layout, with the only customisable option being the alignment of the heading. Users can also pin questions, but there's no way to zoom in on a particular question or make it full-screen.

Pricing

Free✅ 
Monthly plans✅ 
Annual plansFrom $7.95/month
Edu plansFrom $2.95

Overall

Q&A featuresFree plan valuePaid plan valueEase of useOverall
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️18/20

#2 - Slido

Slido is a great Q&A and polling platform for meetings, virtual seminars and training sessions. It sparks conversations between presenters and their audience and lets them express their opinions.

Slido makes online presentations more engaging, fun and exciting by providing many interactive tools. Features including polling, Q&A and quizzes make it easy for users to have a virtual conversation with their audiences.

This platform offers an easy way to collect questions, prioritise discussion topics and host all-hands meetings or any other format of Q&A. Slido is user-friendly; it only takes a few simple steps for both presenters and participants to set up and use. A small lack of visualisation options follows its simplicity, but everything it has in store for the users is pretty enough for online interaction.

A screenshot of a question asked on Slido, one of the best Q&A apps

Here are 6 reasons why Slido is one of the best Q&A apps...

Fullscreen highlights

Show highlighted questions in fullscreen.

Search bar

Search questions by keywords to save time.

Archive

Archive answered questions to clear the screen and see them afterwards.

Question editing

Allow presenters to edit questions in the admin panel before showing them on their screens.

Question upvoting

Let participants upvote others' questions. The most liked ones are in the popular category.

Question review

(Paid plan) Review, approve or dismiss questions before presenting them on the screen.

Other Free Features

  • 40 default themes
  • Anonymous questions
  • Mark questions as answered
  • Sort questions how you want
  • Data export

Cons of Slido

  • Lack of visual flexibility - Slido only provides background customisation for paid plans. There are no heading, description and layout customisations and Slido display no more than 6 questions on the screen.
  • Lack of some useful features - There are no presenter notes on Q&A slides, and profanity filter to block unwanted words and no chat for participants to leave messages.

Pricing

Free✅ 
Up to 100 participants
Unlimited Q&A
Monthly plans
Annual plansFrom $17/month
Edu plansFrom $7

Overall

Q&A featuresFree plan valuePaid plan valueEase of useOverall
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️16/20

#3 - Mentimeter

Mentimeter is an audience platform to use in a presentation, speech or lesson. It's easy to use, vividly designed and often used to add interactive activities with notable features like Q&A, polling and surveys. The platform enables users to have more fun and practical sessions with their audiences and create better connections.

Its live Q and A feature works in real-time, making it easy to collect questions, interact with participants and gain insights afterwards. The audience can join with their smartphones to connect to the presentation, ask questions, play quizzes or join other brainstorming activities.

Educational institutes widely use Mentimeter and it also offers many plans, features and tools for enterprises to use in their meetings, virtual seminars or training sessions. Despite a slight lack of display flexibility, Mentimeter is still a go-to for many professionals, trainers and employers.

A presenter and audience screen during a Q&A session using Mentimeter

Here are 6 reasons why Mentimeter is one of the best Q&A apps...

Send whenever

Allow participants to ask questions during and after the event.

Question moderation

Approve or dismiss questions before showing them on the presenter's screen.

Stop questions

Presenters may stop questions during the Q&A sessions.

2-screen preview

Preview the presenter's and participants' screens at the same time.

Profanity filter

Hide inappropriate words in questions submitted by participants.

Advanced layouts

Customise Q&A slide layouts to how you like.

Other Free Features

  • Heading & meta description customisation
  • Allow audience to see each other's questions
  • Show results on all slides
  • Sort questions how you want
  • Add slide images
  • Presenter notes
  • Audience comments

Cons of Mentimeter

Lack of display options - There are only 2 question categories on the presenter's screen - questions and answers, but confusingly, 2 different categories on participants' screens - top questions and recent. Presenters can only display 1 question at a time on their screens, and they can't pin, highlight or zoom in on the questions.

Pricing

Free✅ 
Unlimited participants
Up to 2 questions
Monthly plans
Annual plansFrom $11.99/month
Edu plansFrom $8.99

Overall

Q&A featuresFree plan valuePaid plan valueEase of useOverall
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️15/20

#4 - Vevox

Vevox is considered one of the most dynamic anonymous questions websites. It's a highly rated polling and Q&A platform with multiple features and integrations to bridge the gap between presenters and their audiences.

This helpful tool helps users collect data and get instant feedback and engagement. It's quick and easy to use, suitable for businesses and educational institutions. Besides audience Q&A, Vevox offers many exciting features such as surveys, quizzes and word clouds.

Vevox integrates with many other apps, bringing more convenience to its users. Its simple, elegant design could be another plus point for Vevox in the eyes of trainers, professionals or employers when considering which platform to use.

Compared to other platforms, the features Vevox provides are not that varied, although the live polling and Q&A features are still in development. Many of its Q&A features aren't available on the free plan, but of course, there are some basic, necessary ones to use. In virtual meetings, participants can join and send questions easily with their phones by using an ID or scanning the QR code, just like many other platforms.

A list of questions on a Q&A slide on Vevox, one of the best Q&A apps
Best Q&A apps

Here are 6 reasons why Vevox is one of the best Q&A apps...

Message board

Let participants send live messages to each other during the presentation.

Theme customisation

Presenters can customise themes even in presenter view. Users with free plans can only choose themes from the library.

Question upvoting

Let participants upvote others' questions. The most liked questions are in the most liked category.

Slide customisation

(Paid plan) Presenters can customise the background, heading & description.

Question sorting

Questions are in 2 categories - most liked and most recent.

Question moderation

(Paid plan) Approve or dismiss questions before showing them on the presenter's screen.

Cons of Vevox

  • Lack of features - No presenter notes or participant view mode to test the session before presenting. Also, a lot of features are missing from the free plan.
  • Lack of display options - There are only 2 question categories and presenters can't pin, highlight or zoom in on the questions.

Pricing

Free✅ 
Up to 500 participants
Unlimited Q&A
Monthly plans
Annual plansFrom $11.95/month
Edu plansFrom $7.75/month

Overall

Q&A FeaturesFree Plan ValuePaid Plan ValueEase of UseOverall
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️14/20

#5 - Pigeonhole Live

Launched in 2010, Pigeonhole Live fosters interaction between presenters and participants in online meetings. It's not only one of the best Q&A apps but also an audience interaction tool using live Q&A, polls, chat, surveys and more to enable excellent communication.

Pigeonhole Live's features can facilitate many different session formats with specific demands. It opens conversations in conferences, town halls, workshops, webinars, and businesses of all sizes.

Something unique about Pigeonhole Live is that it doesn't work in the classic presentation format like the 4 platforms above. You work in 'sessions', that can be turned off and on by the event hosts. In an event, there can be admin and other moderators with different roles to better manage the Q&A sessions.

A list of questions from an audience using Pigeonhole Live
Best Q&A apps

Here are 6 reasons why Pigeonhole Live is one of the best Q&A apps...

Send in advance

Allow participants to send questions before the Q&A even starts.

Project questions

Display the questions that presenters are addressing on the screens.

Question upvoting

(Paid) Let participants upvote others' questions. The most liked questions are in the top-voted category.

Slide customisation

(Paid plan) Customise the background, heading and description of the Q&A slide.

Question sorting

Questions are in 2 categories - most liked and most recent.

Question moderation

(Paid plan) Approve or dismiss questions before showing them on the presenter's screen.

Other Free Features

  • Data export
  • Allow anonymous questions
  • Archive questions
  • Announcements
  • Customise the agenda display on the audience web app
  • Preview mode

Cons of Pigeonhole Live

  • Not too user-friendly - Although the website is simple, there are too many steps and modes, which is quite hard to figure out for first-time users.
  • Lack of layout customisation.

Pricing

Free✅ 
Up to 500 participants
1 Q&A session
Monthly plans
Annual plansFrom $8/month
Edu plans
Best Q&A apps

Overall

Q&A featuresFree plan valuePaid plan valueEase of useOverall
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️12/20
Best Q&A apps

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add a Q&A section to my presentation?

Login to your AhaSlides account and open the desired presentation. Add a new slide, head to the "Collect opinions - Q&A" section and select "Q&A" from the options. Type your question and fine-tune the Q&A setting to your liking. If you want participants to give questions at any time during your presentation, tick the option to show the Q&A slide on all slides.

What is the free Q&A app for big events?

AhaSlides is a free interactive presentation software for hosting live Q&A sessions in events, meetings, classrooms, and many more.

How do audience members ask questions?

During your presentation, audience members can ask questions using the mobile or web app. Their questions will be queued for you to answer during the Q&A session.

How long are questions and answers stored?

All questions and answers added during a live presentation will be automatically saved with that presentation. You can review and edit them any time after the presentation as well.