Open source by industry / Customer support & helpdesk
Chatwoot
A customer support inbox that brings website live chat, email and social messaging into one place, with a built-in help center.
Does it fit your team?
- Consider it if
- You want website live chat, email and social messaging in one inbox, and someone on your team can run a Linux server; the core is MIT and the Community edition is free.
- Look elsewhere if
- You need roles and permissions, SLAs, single sign-on or your own branding for free: none of these are in the Community edition, and the paid tiers are $19 or $99 per agent a month.
- Can you use it commercially?
- Yes, for the core
MIT. Commercial use, modification and closed-source use are all allowed; keep the copyright notice. The exception is the code under the enterprise/ directory of the repository, which has its own Enterprise license: production use requires a paid subscription for the right number of seats. See the caveat below.
- Is it still maintained?
- Active
Last push on 2026-10-13. The repository is not archived.
- How hard is it to deploy?
- Easy
There is an official install script, documented for Ubuntu 24.04: download it and run one install command. If you want a domain, point its A record at the server first and the script sets up Nginx and a Let’s Encrypt certificate. Docker Compose also works: download the official .env and compose templates, change the Postgres and Redis passwords, prepare the database and start. You bring your own SMTP server for notification emails.
- What does it cost?
- Free Community edition; paid features are per agent
The Community edition is free. The docs list a minimum of 2 cores, 4 GB of RAM and a 20 GB SSD, and recommend 4 or more cores, 8 GB or more and 50 GB or more for production, plus PostgreSQL 12 or later and Redis 6 or later. For paid features on your own server, the prices in October 2026 are $19 per agent a month for Premium Support and $99 per agent a month for Enterprise. If you would rather not self-host, the official cloud has a free plan for up to 2 agents and paid plans at $19, $39 and $99 per agent a month.
- What to watch out for
- Roles, SLAs and custom branding are not in the Community edition
The self-hosted pricing page lists what the Community edition leaves out: Captain AI, voice calls, custom branding, agent capacity, roles and permissions, SSO / SAML and SLA policies. The first five come with Premium Support; SSO and SLAs need Enterprise. The code for these sits in the enterprise/ directory of the repository under the Enterprise license. To run only the MIT-licensed part, the docs say to switch to the Docker image tags ending in -ce.
Last checked: .
Your industry is not here?
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