A couple quesitons

1. Can you limit the amount of questions a specific user can ask?
2. Are there any ecommerce plugins that could easily be integrated with this script? I want to charge users for asking questions and I don't know the best way to do it

You could also use the Wishlist Member plugin to create payment-controlled access to any given form. The only downside is that it relies on time-based access to the form (e.g., 24 hour access) rather than per-post-submission access. Note that there's currently a plugin conflict between these two plugins; to get the kind of thing I've just mentioned working you have to use the sequential upgrade feature.

PHPurchase is the closest I've found to what you're after (and I've looked and looked and looked). The main problem I see with it is that form submissions are generated before payment. If the user decides not to pay, and you're using Gravity Forms as a front-end posting mechanism, then the posts will go live without payment. You could regulate this by setting the form's submission status to "Draft", but that would require a manual release of all submitted posts/questions that are in fact paid for. Not so flash.

I can't wait for the GF crew to release what Carl mentions above. Many people would love to have that feature. In the meantime, the only other options I see are having a developer code this up for you or using a specific WordPress theme that has pay-per-post or a deposit system built into it. There are a few of those around, but the real downside (too much of a downside for me) is that they don't integrate with GF.

All the best
Richard

I would like to offer a service to answer questions that users submit along with photographs. Can gravity forms work to create user-submitted forms which can include a threaded discussion viewable only by me (the admin) and the user? I really just need some very lightweight helpdesk or ticket system...but prefer to keep it within Wordpress admin panel rather than bolt on yet another solution.

Thanks