chatwoot
by chatwoot
Chatwoot is a self-hosted customer support desk that brings website live chat, email and social messaging into one shared inbox. It is for small teams who want to answer customers and publish help articles without paying for a hosted support service.
- Stars
- 38.5k
- Licence
- MIT
- Runs on
- A small server
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- Ruby
- Age
- 2632 days
What you can do with it
- Add a live chat widget to your website and reply from a shared inbox
- Handle email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram and SMS messages in one place
- Publish a help centre with articles and FAQs to cut repeat questions
Could replace
- Intercom
- Zendesk
- Salesforce Service Cloud
Our suggestion based on what it does, not a feature-by-feature comparison.
Make money with it
A freelancer could set up and manage Chatwoot installations, channel connections and help centres for small businesses as a paid service.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Replace a paid helpdesk subscription with a self-hosted support inbox and keep customer data in-house
- Offer faster customer replies across several channels with a small team, using canned responses and automation
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use, change and sell (MIT-style terms in the licence file). Some folders may carry other terms.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Deploy with Docker, Kubernetes or a one-click Heroku or DigitalOcean option, then set environment variables for the features you want.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Licence is reported as unclear by GitHub, though the README says MIT
- Some channels and features need extra configuration or third-party accounts
- The Captain AI agent may depend on paid AI services or Chatwoot's hosted offering
Who's talking about it
Checked 28 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
