Do I need a user license to ask questions in Confluence Questions?

[Martin Vobr]

Currently we use an OSQA site as a support forum for our users. Something similar to answers.atlassian.com. We are considering migrating to Confluence Questions. It works like this:

• Questions can be asked by anyone.
• Answers are almost always provided only by our internal support staff.

How many licenses would we need?

1. Only users answering questions would need a license. No license is needed for asking questions. It would be similar to agents/users licensing in JIRA Service Desk.https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/service-desk/pricing
   
   or
   
   
2. A paid license is needed for both asking and answering questions.

Which one is correct?

[Norman Abramovitz · Accepted solution]

Here is the licensing page for CQ.

https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/confluence-questions#serverlicenses-5

Since Confluence Questions a plugin, the license user count must match your Confluence license.

[Martin Vobr]

JIRA Service Desk is also a JIRA plugin, but customers are not required to have JIRA license. Only JIRA service desk agents do. It seems that with this ConfluenceQuestions licensing creation public QA site (similar to answers.atlassian.com) where anyone can join and ask question would be quite expensive. Cost for self-hosted variant with unlimited users looks like $24.000(Confluence) + $12.000 (Confluence Questions). Cost are much lower and perfectly suitable for internal QA sites. Do you plan to offer a more competitive pricing for Q/A sites where unlimited number of users can ask questions?

[Norman Abramovitz]

I am a user like you. The original license 1.x for Service Desk was a matching license for customers and agents unlike the 2.x license. The backlash about the 1.x license was very strong. Atlassian rarely announces their future plans, so I would doubt if you would get an answer about future CQ license types. I do agree with your logic though.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Service Desk is the (recent) exception because it has a special use-case of needing to support "Agents"

[Martin Vobr]

Thanks Norman for your answer. And sorry for not realizing that you are not from Atlassian.

[Sascha Schwegelbauer]

Hm, still no answer if a license is needed for asking questions.