ChatwootOpen-source omnichannel support desk built as a self-hostable alternative to Intercom and Zendesk, with live chat, email, WhatsApp, and a built-in AI agent.
Repo
Chatwoot
Open-source omnichannel support desk built as a self-hostable alternative to Intercom and Zendesk, with live chat, email, WhatsApp, and a built-in AI agent.
The most adopted open-source help desk by a wide margin, MIT at the core so the self-hosted build carries no seat or conversation caps, and it folds live chat, email, and every social channel into one inbox. The catches: it is a hungry Rails, Sidekiq, Postgres, and Redis stack that is real ops work to run and upgrade, and the features enterprises reach for, SSO, audit logs, and custom roles, sit behind the commercial enterprise edition or the paid cloud.
Great for
Teams that want to own their customer conversations and data on their own servers, replacing a per-seat Intercom or Zendesk bill with one flat infrastructure cost across 5 or 500 agents.
The catch
Self-hosting is a genuine Docker, Postgres, and Redis project with a real RAM appetite, email deliverability and channel setup land on you, and SSO, audit logs, and custom roles are commercial.
Bottom line
Alive and shipping daily, backed by a Y Combinator company (Chatwoot Inc), so the bus factor is an organization, not one maintainer. Small teams that want zero ops usually land on the hosted plan from 19 dollars per agent.
Self-hostYes (Docker, Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq)
Managed cloudYes (chatwoot.com, from $19/agent/mo)
LicenseMIT (Expat) core; enterprise/ directory commercial
LanguageRuby (Rails) + Vue.js
Maintained byChatwoot Inc (YC W21, VC-backed company)
Watch out forRAM-hungry stack, SSO and audit logs are paid
Omnichannel shared inboxYes
Website live-chat widgetYes
WhatsApp / Instagram / FB / Telegram channelsWhatsApp needs Business API approval and setup
Help center / knowledge baseYes
AI agent (Captain)Included, but cloud credits are metered and self-host needs your own LLM keys
Automation & auto-assignmentYes
CSAT surveys & reportsYes
SLA managementCloud Business plan and up; configurable on self-host
SSO / SAMLEnterprise edition commercial license or paid Cloud Enterprise
Audit logsEnterprise edition only
Custom roles & granular permissionsEnterprise edition only
REST API & webhooksYes
What it does
- Unifies live chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, SMS, and Line into one shared agent inbox, so every channel lands on a single thread with full customer context
- Drops an embeddable website chat widget onto your site with one script tag, plus pre-chat forms, canned responses, labels, and private notes for internal team discussion
- Ships Captain, a built-in AI agent that learns from your help center and past conversations to draft or auto-answer routine queries
- Publishes a help center portal of articles and FAQs, with SEO-friendly public pages that deflect repeat tickets
- Routes and batches work with automation rules, auto-assignment, teams, business hours, and one-click macros
- Reports on conversations, agents, inboxes, labels, and CSAT, and exposes a full REST API plus webhooks for custom integrations
What it can’t do
- Give you SSO, SAML, audit logs, and custom agent roles on the free build; those live in the commercial enterprise edition or the paid cloud
- Run itself; self-hosting is a real Rails, Sidekiq, Postgres, and Redis deployment you patch, back up, and monitor
- Sip resources; the stack is memory-hungry and a 2 GB box struggles, with 4 GB the practical floor
- Handle email deliverability, WhatsApp Business API approval, and channel credentials for you; that setup and its upkeep stay yours
- Match Intercom or Zendesk on the deepest reporting, SLAs, and mature integrations without extra configuration and paid tiers
Pros & cons
Pros
- MIT-licensed core with no artificial seat or conversation caps when self-hosted, so cost stays flat as the team grows
- Genuinely omnichannel, with 15-plus channels feeding a single, polished agent inbox
- Very active, company-backed project shipping daily, with Docker, Helm, and one-click DigitalOcean and Heroku deploys
- Full data ownership on your own infrastructure, the reason privacy-conscious and regulated teams pick it over hosted Intercom
- Built-in Captain AI, help center, automations, and CSAT cover most of what a growing support team needs out of the box
Cons
- Resource-hungry Rails and Sidekiq stack; users report high RAM use, and small VPS boxes fall over under load
- Upgrades and database migrations are real work, and breaking changes between versions catch self-hosters off guard
- SSO, audit logs, custom roles, and most Captain AI credits are gated behind the commercial edition or the paid cloud
- Email deliverability and WhatsApp API setup are recurring pain points that live entirely on the self-host operator
- Open-issue backlog is large, past 1,300, and some bugs and channel edge cases linger between releases
2 positive3 mixed1 critical
What the community says
I use Chatwoot. It is a large platform and difficult to support honestly. Every update is a half-day effort. We have trouble with assignments and boxes not working right as well. It had chat to ticket and email to ticket, which to my knowledge is the only self-hosted free solution to support both.
ChatWoot sounded nice, but email inbound only and very $$$ if you want SSO.
+1 on Chatwoot, having a real inbox where humans can jump in is the missing piece for WhatsApp bots. For self-hosted, the main gotchas I've seen are keeping it updated (breaking changes), managing media storage (S3/MinIO), and making sure webhooks are queued and retried so outages don't drop messages.
Most paid options start at $50-150/mo before you've even started. There's an open-source platform called Chatwoot that you can self-host for free on your own VPS. WhatsApp, Instagram, email, and SMS all flow into one inbox. Self-hosting means you own the infrastructure but you also own the maintenance.
Chatwoot just works and does everything that a small or startup team would want from an on-site chat support component. Implementation is quick and easy. Compared to other bloated products without transparent pricing it's a no-brainer. We use it daily with one support agent and loving it.
The pricing is too cost effective for us, we pay $19 per month. But mobile notifications are delayed, and connecting WhatsApp at the start is a bit messy and difficult for me.
6 sourcesWhere this page’s facts came from. Open the receipts.
- 1GitHub - chatwoot/chatwoot repo
- 2GitHub API - repo metadata (stars, language, activity)
- 3Chatwoot LICENSE (MIT Expat core + enterprise carve-out)
- 4Chatwoot Enterprise LICENSE (enterprise/ directory)
- 5Chatwoot Cloud pricing (Hacker free, Startups $19, Business $39, Enterprise $99)
- 6Chatwoot self-hosted deployment docs
Watch it work
Real tutorials and reviews from YouTube, not ours.