Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is Experts Exchange?

Experts Exchange (EE) is a question-and-answer community primarily made up of tech professionals of all ages. Our members are IT managers, software developers (backend, frontend, and full stack), system administrators, support specialists, database admins, security specialists, and many more.

How does it work?

People come to EE to get answers to their IT questions. EE is made up of two distinct groups of people: regular members and Expert members. Anyone is allowed to ask or answer questions, but typically, regular members are on EE to ask questions, and the Experts are there to answer them.

Experts earn points if their comments are marked as “solutions” by the Asker - incentivizing them to personalize their answers so they work specifically for the person who is having the problem.

Does Experts Exchange let AI companies train on member data?

Not willingly, no. All of our indexed content has code meant to block content scrapers from known AI companies.

Why is Experts Exchange Anti-AI?

To be clear, we don’t think that Artificial Intelligence necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is incredibly useful for a wide variety of tasks and can certainly be used to enhance the lives of billions of people. However, it is our mission to preserve the sanctity of human conversation. In a world where we grow ever more isolated from other humans, our community values the importance of interacting directly with another human to help solve a problem.

How is Experts Exchange different from other forums?

On the surface, EE may seem like a private version of Stack Overflow. However, our goal is help people get personalized solutions to their problems. Conversely, Stack Overflow’s goal is to create a library of solutions to common tech problems.

This results in the all too familiar “duplicate question” reply commonly seen on SO. However, because EE is more focused on the individual, there is no pressure to ask a unique question. If you’re struggling with a problem that others have had before, the only consequence will be that you might receive an answer more quickly.

Do I have to pay to sign up? Is payment info required?

Nope! Experts Exchange is completely free for new members for the first 90 days. All you need to sign up is an email and password. No credit card or payment information is required. During your first 90 days, you’ll have complete access to the entire platform. After 90 days, you will have the option to continue your access by paying the $8/month membership fee.

Why charge a membership fee after 90 days?

We believe there is no such thing as a free lunch. For years, our policy has been to openly disclose our business model to people, as opposed to other platforms that generate revenue through shadow tactics such as selling member data to advertisers and AI companies.

What do I get during the first 90 days?

During your first 90 days, you’ll have complete access to the entire platform. There are no sneaky view limiters or paywalled features. Our goal is for new members to get the full EE experience. You’ll be able to participate like any other member, which means asking as many questions as you like and commenting whenever you please.