HWOR Score:
[4/5]
STUDYPOOL REVIEW - IS IT THE BEST FOR 2020?
Our Verdict:
When I was growing up, if you had a question about a homework assignment, you hoped your parents knew the answer. If not, you had to wait until the next day and hope to catch the teacher before class so that you could hurry up and write it down. People in school now have a variety of options and can get answers quickly. Plus, you can choose to set your question and personal information to private, so it’s not going to end up on the internet for everyone to see.
Detailed Expert Review
When Google fails you, where do you turn next?
Studypool has worked very hard to become one of the best homework helpers on the web and has positioned itself to be a leader in the homework-helping craze. While Google is still one of the most-used search engines in the world, it can be hard to pass through all the fluff out there to find the answer you seek.
If you’re a student with a tight schedule, it can be impossible to browse through thousands of results in the hopes of finding that one answer. Now, you don’t have to.
I’ve reviewed a variety of homework-helping sites, so I have high standards for the website with which I choose to work. I am convinced that this is one of the best ones on the web so far, and it might be the best option in the world.
Studypool Features
While you have to sign up for Studypool, it is easy to do and free (at this point). Plus, you are going to have access to some amazing features, including:
- The ability to stay private (no one knows who or where you are)
- Many categories and subjects
- Book guides and a “notebank”
- The ability to customize your budget for a particular question
- Ask multiple questions at once
- Full control
- Quality tutors who are there to help you with your specific need
- Easy to Use
I am going to talk about each of these features in detail, as well as talk about the website and how it all works.
How Studypool Works
This online platform connects students throughout the world with quality tutors who can help them with academic questions. When you use this tool, you gain access to hundreds of tutors, no matter what time it is.
The first step is to sign up on the website. This is free to do. You enter basic information, such as your screen name, password, and the school you attend. Then, you ask your academic question. It needs to be within the categories and subjects available, but there are many options.
As you can see from above, you can choose from the categories listed, but there is also a subject list below.
You can set a time limit, which is how long the tutor has to answer your question. This is after they have bid on it, and you accept the bid. During this time, you can also set your price range.
Now, you just have to wait for verified tutors to bid on your question. These people want to help you. However, it can take time for the bidding to happen.
Here, you can see that the company asks you to wait up to 20 minutes before you start getting bids. I waited about half an hour before receiving one. Since I was writing this review, I kept refreshing the page to see how long it took. At the very bottom, it shows you how many views the question has received. This means tutors have clicked on the question to see if they are capable of answering it. They may choose not to answer for various reasons, such as:
- There isn’t enough time to explain it fully
- The price is too low
- They don’t feel qualified to answer the question
Once you’ve received bids, you can choose one based on other reviews, their profiles, and other statistics. Studypool also auto-matches you to a tutor based on what the moderators think of who could provide the right answer.
You do have the option of selecting other tutors, but Studypool warns against this.
You can see above the warning about using non-recommended tutors. While quality is going to vary between tutors, the preferred matches are those that Studypool believes to be the best for you. The disclaimer even mentions that there are strict guidelines it uses to recommend tutors to you. Still, it is your choice, and you are free to use any tutor who has bid on your question.
The tutor starts helping you immediately. Remember, they have a specific time frame in which to answer your question to your satisfaction. Therefore, they are going to start right away. There is a messenger feature that allows you to talk to the tutor. This is there if you need to explain something or if they want to ask for clarification.
Staying Private
If you were to hire a tutor to come to your dormitory, home, or school, it is going to be a private affair between the two of you. The same applies to Studypool. It gives you the choice to make the question and answer 100 percent private. Therefore, your question is hidden from web browsers and cannot be indexed. No one but you and the tutor can see it.
Of course, there is a disclaimer on the website that the company’s best ability is used to hide private questions from web browsers. On rare occasions, some private questions could get indexed and must be removed manually by the administrators. You can email the company if you find your private question on the internet.
Categories/Subjects
There are a variety of categories and subjects so that you can ask almost any question you may have. Topics can include things like Physics, Medicine, History, and others. However, there are also options for Computer Science, WordPress, Pinterest, and Geometry.
The above list is not the full one; this is just for the writing tab. You’ve also got other tabs available, such as Programming, Science, Mathematics, Business, and Humanities. The only caveat here is that it could take some time to decide which category and subject you should choose.
Book Guide
The Book Guide is quite impressive and has hundreds of popular books included. Here, you can choose the text that you are required to read for class.
You can search by the first letter in the title, the full title, or scroll through all of the books available.
When you find your book, it provides an overview of it, as well as a run-down of the characters, themes, and context. You can also get a summary of each chapter.
In a sense, it is a synopsis of the book, meaning that you can get the basic ideas and principles without having to actually read the whole thing. Therefore, if you accidentally forgot to read it, and the book report is due within the next few days, you can get the information you need to complete your assignment.
Notebank
Anything that you could possibly want to find is in the Notebank. This is the hub of all questions, documents, and study guides available. The Featured Documents section includes materials that have been uploaded by students. They may have done this to help you out or to store their document in case they lose it. Redundancy is always helpful where computers are involved.
You also have access to public Q&As. Studypool users who do not mark their question as private can find them here. This also means that you, as a Studypool user, can search questions and read the answers. If you have an urgent question to ask, it might be helpful to look here first to see if it’s been answered. That way, you can save a bit of money and not have to wait for bids.
Study guides are also available. They are all based on books and include all the information you may ever need to know. In a sense, the Study Guides and Book Guide are the same. However, you can access it from various locations on the website.
Budget and Customization
Once you have asked your question, it is time to decide how much you are willing to pay to have it answered. I used an easy question, just to test out the site. Everything is explained to you on the page. For example, you are asked to provide a quick summary of the question. If it is from a specific textbook, you can include that information. Since mine was not (because I am not in school), I chose to leave it simple. Of course, the more detail you provide, the more interest that is created for the question.
In the next section, you can write as much as you want, but you must have a question with at least 80 characters. Again, my question wasn’t very detailed, but it did take over 250 characters to ask. Remember, the question can be as long as you need it to be.
You can also see that there is a place where you can upload a file from your computer. That way, you can provide more information for the question without having to type it all into the question box. For my simple question, I did not have to do this. However, the drag-and-drop feature is quite easy to use, and it is just as easy to click on the ‘upload file’ link and select the document or file you want.
Since mine was a simple question, it didn’t take up a lot of space. However, some people’s questions span multiple pages.
The question above spanned six screenshots, so I didn’t include them all. This was for a quiz from a book and included 23 questions. From the first screenshot shown above, you can see that the person asking the question was willing to pay $20 to have it answered sufficiently.
I got all of these screenshots from the Study Guides section of the website. Anyone who signs up for the homework-helping site can access these questions. You can also view the answer. From the information below, you can see that it is blocked out. You can see the tutor who answered and the school they attend.
To view the answer for a particular question in the Study Guide section, you have to pay the same fee that the student paid to receive the answer initially. In this example, it was $20.
Clearly, I did not need the Week 6 Quiz from HMGT 300, so I did not complete the transaction. Still, if you have a question and you think it might already have been answered at some point, this is a helpful feature to have.
We are going to talk more about payment options and plans available later.
Ask Multiple Questions
Many people, myself included, initially think that they ask one question, wait for it to be bid on and answered, and then ask another question. However, you are free to ask as many questions as you want. The caveat here is that, if you ask multiple questions, you have a bit more work to ensure that you stay on top of things and know when they are bid upon and answered. Still, this isn’t a challenge, as the system sends you a message whenever someone has bid on your question or has responded in the question chat area.
You can see that my tutor, JGomezMPA, replied to the question. You also notice where the recommendation was made for me to use this tutor.
The question I originally posted is still available after 16 hours. This means that you can go back to any previously asked question and reread the information. That’s helpful if you ask more than one question at a time.
I did not choose to ask another question simultaneously. However, it is an option and can be very helpful if you have:
- Questions about multiple subjects at once
- Questions about the same topic but different categories
- Similar questions about the same subject but want them answered by different tutors
Full Control for You
With Studypool, you are in full control of the situation. You ask your questions on your time and are not limited by how many you can ask per day or per account. Plus, it is possible to set a time frame for when the question must be answered. If you’re in a bind and only have a few hours before your class, you can request that the question is answered before then. Be aware that you may want to pay more to ensure that you get an answer in the allotted time.
I did not choose to make my question urgent or private. You can see above that you have the option to do this before posting the question. If you decide to make it urgent or private later, you can go back to this part. Keep in mind, however, that there is an additional fee to do so.
It is important to understand that the amount you pay is automatically withdrawn from the credit or debit card you use. However, you always have the right to request a refund if you are unsatisfied with the answer you are provided.
Of course, we are going to talk more about the pricing and extra fees later. You can go directly to it by scrolling down to the Studypool Pricing section.
Easy to Use
The whole process of signing up, asking a question, and getting an answer is quite simple. Most people using the site have used various websites for many years (or decades), so they are tech-savvy. Still, if you aren’t very familiar with technology, it is straightforward, and you shouldn’t have an issue.
Studypool makes it easy to use the platform. Just follow the directions and read everything carefully. Plus, if you happen to make a mistake, you can always go back to the previous step.
These helpful buttons at the bottom of the page are always there, allowing you to move forward or go back. Do not hit the back button of your browser because this could cause the website to lose the information. If that happens, you must reenter your question and price points.
Studypool Pricing
The pricing is quite straightforward, with a few caveats. When you post your question and are satisfied with it, you go to the pricing section.
The platform features 200,000 tutors, and you can choose the quality of the answer based on the price you want to pay. When you offer a higher pay, you get a higher-quality tutor. The budget calculator helps you decide how much to charge.
Here, you can see the four pricing plans. If you want a high-school-based answer, it costs $15 an hour. Those who desire a college-level response can expect to pay $20. Master’s and Ph.D. answers are going to cost you $25 to $30. Remember, this is per hour.
I chose the high school level at $15, but then I also used the estimation section to determine how long it could take to answer the question. Clearly, my simple grammar question didn’t take three hours to solve. It only took about 10 minutes.
You can see that Studypool recommended that I charge $3.00 for my question at the high school level, which is what I chose.
I then went through each option (College, Masters, and Ph.D.) to see the different price recommendations.
The College-level recommended I pay $4.00 for my question that should take 10 minutes to ask.
Master’s Level
Ph.D. level
You can see that the Masters and Ph.D. levels were the same prices. The algorithm is based on hour increments, and the price difference between the two higher levels isn’t a full $10.
Since I was in a hurry to have the question answered, so I could write this review, I ended up going back to the payment section to offer more money.
At this point, I chose to offer $5.00. The second time around, Studypool recommended that I charge $5.00, but I could enter any number I wanted. I stuck with that recommendation.
However, my tutor only charged me the original $3.00 because he had accepted the job while I was changing the price. That was good for me because it saved me a couple of bucks!
Automatch is an option here, and it doesn’t cost extra. In fact, it’s automatically set up to be turned on, and I left it that way. I figured Studypool knew its tutors better than I did.
You can also choose to spend a little extra to have your question be private or marked as urgent.
I did not choose to do this for my simple question, but if you do, it is going to cost $3.45 more for each feature. The urgent option can be helpful if you are in a rush because you get recommendations faster and much more exposure. Still, this price is added to the overall amount you pay.
You can see below that I received 37 total views of my question and got two recommended tutors with wildly different pricing.
Of course, both tutors were highly recommended, but I chose JGomezMPA for many reasons. These include:
- Being a Studypool partner
- Shorter time frame to answer the question
- Lower price
The platform also offers non-recommended tutors, all of whom you can select.
It’s important to read the warning about non-recommended tutors and be careful when selecting them. You can see that most people requested more money than I had originally offered. All but one could deliver in the time frame of three hours that I selected. I chose to work with a recommended tutor because I was trying out the site for the review, and I wanted to get a better idea of why this person was recommended.
Once you have selected the tutor you want to work with, you come to this screen:
Studypool reminds you once more to ensure that you have the right budget, and your question is thorough. You get one more chance to decide for sure if you want to work with a particular tutor, and then you can confirm.
Once that happens, you go to the Billing section.
You can choose between a variety of credit cards, including the Diner’s Club and JCB. You can also choose to pay using PayPal (which was my preferred method of payment.)
Through PayPal, you are required to allow Studypool to automatically withdraw payments from the account. I was not altogether happy about this. Still, this is a one-time deal for me because I am not in school and don’t have such homework questions. Therefore, I chose to complete the transaction using my PayPal account.
One of the issues I had was that the payment was immediately taken out when the website claims that you must be satisfied with the answer before payment is rendered. Once you pay and the tutor starts working, you receive this message:
You can request a refund if you aren’t happy with the question and have 72 hours to do so. Still, it is a little confusing when you ask your first question and pay for your response.
When I received my push notification on my phone that I had spent money from my PayPal account, I immediately checked it. I agreed to pay $3.00, but $3.45 was deducted from the account. This indicates to me that Studypool takes a percentage of the price you offer. While this was not a concern for me, it is a little upsetting that the company doesn’t make this information known before you make a payment. It was not going to affect my decision to pay, but it’s nice to be fully transparent when offering a service.
Once the question is answered to your satisfaction, you click on the ‘review and complete’ button (shown above). That takes you here:
I gave the tutor five stars for his in-depth answer and left a little comment. I figured I could be nice and take my time because I was reviewing the site.
This tip area confused me, and I ended up giving the tutor a $1.00 tip when I didn’t mean to do so. You must actually click on the 0% button, as it is not already selected for you. Still, I’m not going to get too upset about it because I was reviewing the site, and the gentleman was very polite and thorough with his answer. However, those who have extensive questions should be aware that the tip is optional, but you must select a button, or you are automatically going to be charged $1.00.
![Tip area [optional]](https://homeworkonline.review/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/35.png)
After you complete the tip part of the transaction, you can go back to the question. You see above that the question is complete, and the payment/tip cleared. Of course, I already knew that because my PayPal account is set up to provide me with the information immediately through my smartphone. Still, it is nice that Studypool tells you that.
Studypool Customer Support
While it is unlikely that you are going to have a problem with the site, customer support is available through chat.
The little square with the smiley face in the lower right-hand corner is your gateway to getting the help you require.
Clicking on it opens up a messenger-style chatbox. You can see I have a few conversations. The first is from Studypool itself, and the other is from “Trevor,” one of the team members.
When you click the ‘start a new conversation’ button, you get matched with team members who are online right now. Response times can be live, but it can take up to five minutes to get an answer.
You can also email the company for help, but the information is somewhat hidden. You can find it by going to the ‘how it works’ section at the top of the screen. I had no issues or complaints, so I did not choose to contact the team.
Referrals Available
It’s also possible to refer your friends to the site. When you do this, you can earn $10 in credits toward future questions. You can also use your balance to unlock Notebanks. When you refer someone, you get $10 in credit, and so do they. Of course, you must use the special sharing link, and they have to put in their special code.
It only takes a few minutes to share the code (and there are helpful buttons below the link to make it even faster). Plus, you can help your friends get answers to their tough questions while earning a reward for doing so!
Is Studypool the Best Homework Helping Platform out There?
After testing a few other homework-helping products, I can say that Studypool is one of the best options out there. It is easy to navigate the website, you can ask as many questions as you want, and you’re free to choose the tutor that meets your budget and needs. While there were a few minor issues, such as the payment blip, these are common with other sites, as well.
I was impressed by how easy it was. Though it did take a bit longer to get a tutor, it was less than an hour, and I felt that was reasonable. If you’re not in college or high school, this site may not be the best for you. It’s geared toward students, and I am not one. Still, I asked a pertinent question that had always confused me in my writing adventures, and now I have the answer I sought.
Studypool Frequently Asked Questions
It is free to join the website and free to post your question. However, when a tutor offers to answer it, you must pay to get the answer.
It is a web-based tool, so you access it via a website. Nothing is downloaded to your computer or phone. There is no app available, but you can utilize the site from a smartphone or tablet.
Bottom Line
Studypool is one of the best homework-helping websites I have ever used. You have many options for pricing and get to choose the tutor with which you work. Plus, it is reasonably priced and offers ways to earn rewards (in terms of referrals). I highly recommend this website to any student who frequently has questions about assignments.
Once you have selected the tutor you want to work with, you come to this screen: