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Chatwoot

Open-source customer engagement platform

As of 30 August 2026, Chatwoot has a free plan and paid plans start at $19/month. Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement platform that provides live chat, email support, and social media channels in one place with full data ownership. Softwr lists it under Customer Support. Chatwoot is made by Chatwoot Inc, launched in 2017, available on Web, Self-hosted.

Overview

What Chatwoot does

Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement platform that provides live chat, email support, and social media channels in one place with full data ownership.

What people use it for

  • Self-hosted support
  • Privacy-first chat
  • Multi-channel support

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Chatwoot.

  • Free plan limited to 2 agents and 500 conversations per month
  • Self-hosted option requires managing infrastructure, updates, and external messaging costs
  • Smaller ecosystem and community compared to Zendesk or Intercom
  • AI features require credit consumption and additional configuration

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Chatwoot

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

  • Chatwoot logo
    Chatwoot
    vs
    Appwrite logo
    Appwrite

    Appwrite: Open-source backend platform that offers self-hosting capabilities similar to Chatwoot's model

  • Chatwoot logo
    Chatwoot
    vs
    n8n logo
    n8n

    n8n: Open-source workflow automation platform offering self-hosted omnichannel capabilities

  • Chatwoot logo
    Chatwoot
    vs
    Plane logo
    Plane

    Plane: Open-source project management and collaboration tool with self-hosting option

Pricing

What Chatwoot costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Hacker

Free

  • 2 agents
  • 500 conversations per month
  • 1 live chat channel

Startups

$19 /mo

  • Unlimited agents
  • Unlimited conversations

Capabilities

Features

  • Live chat

  • Email inbox

  • Social channels

  • Knowledge base

  • Chatbots

  • Reports

  • Slack

    Integration with Slack

  • WhatsApp

    Integration with WhatsApp

  • Telegram

    Integration with Telegram

  • Line

    Integration with Line

  • Facebook

    Integration with Facebook

  • GDPR

    GDPR security feature

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does Chatwoot offer a self-hosted option?

Yes. Chatwoot provides both cloud-hosted and self-hosted versions. Self-hosting is free with the open-source version, though you handle infrastructure, maintenance, and external messaging costs.

Source
What communication channels does Chatwoot support?

Chatwoot supports email, live chat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media channels consolidated into a single inbox.

Source
Is there a free plan for Chatwoot?

Yes. Chatwoot offers a free Hacker plan supporting up to 2 agents, 500 conversations per month, and one live chat channel.

Source
What AI features does Chatwoot include?

Chatwoot includes Captain AI agent for automated responses, Copilot for smart reply suggestions, and live translation features.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Chatwoot

Company
Chatwoot Inc
Based in
Bangalore, India
Founders
Sojan Jose, Pranav Raj S, Nithin David Thomas

Timeline

Chatwoot over time

  1. Funding2021-01-01

    Chatwoot participates in Y Combinator Winter 2021 batch

    Source
  2. Funding2017-01-01

    Chatwoot participates in Y Combinator batch

    Source
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Keep looking

Where to go from Chatwoot

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Chatwoot, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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