Chatwoot

Help desk

Chatwoot combines live chat, email support, and other support channels. Compare the channels your team needs with the burden of running them.

Who it may suit

Customer conversations across channels for support teams.

Replaces

  • Intercom
  • Zendesk
  • Salesforce Service Cloud
Official positioning or migration source

"An alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud etc." (repo description)

Checked: 2026-11-01

Strengths for small teams

  • Shared inbox with private notes and @mentions Source

    Checked: 2026-11-01

  • Canned responses and auto-assignment by agent availability Source

    Checked: 2026-11-01

  • Business hours and auto-responders Source

    Checked: 2026-11-01

  • Multi-lingual support Source

    Checked: 2026-11-01

Section checked: 2026-11-01

License

MIT (Expat) core; enterprise/ directory under separate commercial license

Open-core: code outside enterprise/ is MIT.

License source

Checked: 2026-11-01

Self-hosting effort

Moderate

Checked: 2026-09-24

The production guide uses Docker Compose but requires configuring Rails, PostgreSQL, and Redis, then putting a reverse proxy such as Nginx in front. Updates require image changes and database preparation, while production backups and server security remain operator responsibilities.

Documentation-based estimate; not hands-on tested. Official self-hosting effort evidence

Pricing

Cloud has a free Hacker tier and paid plans from $19 per agent/month; self-hosted plans are separate.

Checked: 2026-09-24

Managed cloud

Available

Checked: 2026-09-24

Self-hosted: Available

Sections checked: see dates beside each section.

Repository activity

Stars: 38,690

Last push: 2026-10-31

Fetched 2026-11-01 · checked 2026-11-01

Repository metadata source

Self-hosting documentation

Official self-hosting instructions
Official website

Sources