Chatwoot is an open source alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. Open-source omnichannel customer support: live chat, email, WhatsApp, and social in one inbox. Alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. Self-host or Cloud. NOASSERTION licensed, 35.7k GitHub stars, hosted version available, self-host with Docker, and last released 2026-07-27.
Open-source omnichannel customer support: live chat, email, WhatsApp, and social in one inbox. Alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. Self-host or Cloud.
How to start todayIn the product
Should you switch?
Teams that want to consolidate customer conversations across live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and SMS into one inbox, as an open-source alternative to Intercom or Zendesk, with Docker self-hosting or a managed Chatwoot Cloud plan.
You need a zero-config setup or a free tier with no limits; self-hosting Chatwoot requires running Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, and a Rails app server, and the free hosted Hacker plan caps you at 2 agents and 500 conversations per month with 30-day data retention.
The license is open-core, not pure MIT: code under the enterprise/ directory uses a separate proprietary license while the rest is MIT. Self-hosting involves a Rails/Postgres/Redis/Sidekiq stack with multiple moving parts. Facebook and Instagram channel integrations can break due to Meta API review cycles, and the mobile app and browser notifications have been reported as inconsistent.
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Community proof
"We switched from Front to Chatwoot 3 months ago, self hosted on our infrastructure.There are some rough edges, and integrating Facebook and Instagram channels are a bit of work but it's globally working very well. And we save quite a buck every month in our scenario managing 5 brands and 4 channels per brand. Main issues are: mobile app can be improved and browser notifications are inconsistent. Wishlist: a desktop app."
"We actually used chatwoot for support a while back, and have a customer who uses both Laudspeaker and chatwoot in production!"
Maintenance health
Can you do it today?
docker compose up -dGitHub
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