ConsultDesk - Paid Consultation Platform

Sell your expertise by subscription. Clients ask in private threads — you answer on your schedule.

ConsultDesk runs your own paid consultation service: clients subscribe monthly or yearly through Stripe and ask questions in private threads; you and your experts reply within a business-day target you advertise. It is deliberately asynchronous — no live chat, no websockets — so client expectations always match reality, and it runs on ordinary shared hosting. Self-hosted: no platform fees, and the only external service is your own Stripe account.

Built for coaches, consultants, lawyers, doctors, trainers, advisors — anyone whose answers are worth a subscription.

Features

Recurring revenue built in

• Stripe subscriptions with hosted Checkout and the Stripe customer portal — your own keys, card data never touches your server
• Works with or without webhooks: subscriptions activate on the checkout return page, and a daily sync command reconciles cancellations and failed payments straight from the Stripe API — the shared-hosting reality mode
• Plans allow N new consultations per billing period (or unlimited); follow-up questions inside a thread are always free
• Clients whose subscription ended keep read access to their history, but must renew before posting new follow-ups

A real workspace for answering

• Queue tabs — Awaiting reply / My queue / Unassigned / All — with one-click Take and Assign
• Reply-due tracking in business days against your working-day and holiday settings; overdue threads highlighted
• Saved replies inserted into the editor with one click — the core of an efficient operation once questions start repeating
• Internal notes between staff inside a thread, invisible to clients — ideal for handovers and second opinions
• Multiple experts with strict scoping: each expert sees only their own and unassigned consultations

Client experience that sells subscriptions

• Clean portal: plan and remaining allowance at a glance, unread indicators, email notifications with per-client opt-out
• Attachments (images/PDF) stored outside the web root, streamed only to signed-in, authorized users; photo EXIF/GPS metadata stripped on upload
• Registration your way: open, admin approval, or invite codes — email verification, rate limiting and honeypot protection in every mode
• Editable landing page: colors, fonts, every headline and button, section order, FAQ, social links — pricing pulls live from your plans, so it never goes stale

Trust & compliance foundations

• Audit log: who viewed, replied to, or downloaded what — and when
• Terms & Privacy consent at registration, logged with a timestamp
• Data-retention policy for closed accounts: delete now, keep N days, or anonymize — enforced by a daily command
• Configurable urgent-case notice shown on every consultation page

Requirements

• PHP 8.3+ — the browser installer checks your server for you
• MySQL / MariaDB or SQLite — runs on ordinary shared hosting
• One cron line recommended, for Stripe subscription sync and data-retention housekeeping
• Your own Stripe account for subscriptions (the only external service required)

Instructions

Made for easy self-hosting

• Browser installer with server checks — no code or .env editing, ever
• 10 editable email templates with placeholders; SMTP configured in the admin
• No websockets, no queue workers, no Node on the server — assets ship pre-built
• English UI; all front-end strings go through Laravel's translation layer, so adding a language is a single JSON file

What you get

• Full Laravel source code (unencrypted) with browser-based web installer
• HTML documentation with screenshots, installation guide and FAQ
• Demo content: three plans, categories, saved replies, an invite code and sample consultations in every status, with admin / expert / client accounts