Scoold
The self-hosted Q&A platform and knowledge base for your team
About Scoold
Scoold is a privacy-first, Stack Overflow-style Q&A platform, forum, and knowledge base made by Erudika. The core is open source under Apache 2.0 and self-hosted, while Scoold Pro adds enterprise SSO, chat integrations, and file uploads for a one-time license fee. Teams that don't want to run servers can use the managed Scoold Cloud subscription.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Core edition is open source (Apache 2.0) with unlimited users at no cost
- Pro license is a one-time fee per instance with no per-seat charges
- Self-hosting keeps all Q&A data on your own infrastructure
- Strong identity support: LDAP, SAML 2.0, SCIM, OAuth 2.0, and 2FA
- Direct import from Stack Overflow for Teams eases migration
- Managed cloud option for teams that don't want to run servers
Cons
- SAML, SCIM, file uploads, and chat integrations require the paid Pro license
- Free edition limits you to 1 admin and 10 spaces
- Cloud hosting needs a separate Para app subscription on top of the server fee
- Pro license includes only 12 months of updates and support
- Small vendor with a niche user base compared with Discourse or Stack Overflow
Key Features
Stack Overflow-style Q&A
Ask and answer questions, upvote and downvote posts, and track every edit as a revision.
Reputation and badges
Reputation points, achievement badges, custom badges, and leaderboards reward people who contribute answers.
Full-text search and similar posts
Every question, answer, and comment is indexed, and new questions show suggestions for similar existing posts.
Enterprise SSO
LDAP and Active Directory in the free edition; SAML 2.0, SCIM 2.0 provisioning, and custom authentication in Scoold Pro.
Spaces
Separate spaces isolate questions and users for different teams, departments, or projects in one instance.
Self-hosted deployment
Runs as a Docker container, JAR, or native executable on your own infrastructure or any cloud provider.
REST API and webhooks
OpenAPI-defined REST API for all CRUD operations, plus HMAC-signed webhooks and Zapier and n8n integrations.
Slack, Teams, and Mattermost integration
Scoold Pro creates questions and answers from chat, sends in-channel notifications, and maps channels to spaces.
Stack Overflow import
Imports data exported from Stack Overflow for Teams to migrate an existing knowledge base.
Theming and white-labeling
Bundled light and dark themes, custom CSS, your own logo, and a custom domain.
Pricing
- Full-featured Q&A platform
- Full-text search
- Social login, OAuth 2.0, LDAP
- Custom user badges
- Unlimited users
- REST API
- Up to 10 spaces and 1 admin
- Everything in Scoold
- SAML 2.0 SSO and SCIM provisioning
- Custom authentication
- @ mentions and file uploads
- Slack, Teams, and Mattermost integrations
- Unlimited spaces and admins
- 12 months of updates and support
- Everything in Scoold Pro
- Full source code access (Git)
- Custom features allowed
- Architecture consulting
- All Scoold Pro features
- For teams under 1,000 members
- Dedicated subdomain with SSL
- Custom domain support
- Requires a Para app (€25/month)
- All Scoold Pro features
- Up to 10K concurrent users
- Dedicated subdomain with SSL
- Custom domain support
- Requires a Para app (€25/month)
Best For
Internal developer Q&A
Engineering teams run a private Stack Overflow-style site for technical questions on their own infrastructure.
Stack Overflow for Teams replacement
Organizations import their Stack Overflow for Teams data and switch to a one-time license instead of per-seat fees.
Team knowledge base
Companies capture institutional knowledge as searchable questions and answers organized into spaces per department.
Customer support portal
Support teams publish self-service answers to reduce ticket volume.
Community forum
Product teams host a branded community Q&A site with reputation and badges to encourage participation.
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