Articles / Tool guide · 11 of 11
Chatwoot: Set Up One Support Inbox for Every Customer Channel
Give a small business one private inbox for website chat, email, WhatsApp and social messages — set up once on open-source software, then looked after by you for a monthly fee.
Small businesses answer customers in five places at once — website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook. Messages get missed, two people reply to the same customer, and nobody sees the whole conversation. Chatwoot puts all of it in one inbox the business controls.
What Chatwoot is
Chatwoot is an open-source customer support platform — the open alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. With 38,220 GitHub stars, its core is MIT Expat licensed (the enterprise/ directory is commercial), and it can be self-hosted with Docker for free.
- Omnichannel inbox: live chat on the website, email, Facebook, Instagram, X, WhatsApp, Telegram, Line and SMS, all in one shared inbox.
- Captain, the AI agent: answers common questions automatically and helps agents with reply suggestions and summaries.
- Help center portal: publish FAQs and help articles so customers find answers themselves.
- Team collaboration: private notes, labels, canned responses, auto-assignment and business hours.
- Reports and contacts: live view, conversation, agent and CSAT reports, contact profiles, plus integrations such as Slack and Shopify.
The service: one support inbox, set up and managed
You self-host Chatwoot, put the widget on the client’s website, connect email, social and WhatsApp, build the help center and canned responses, set up assignment rules, train the staff, and keep it backed up for a monthly fee.
Why not just install it themselves? Connecting WhatsApp and social channels means platform verification and app settings, and someone has to design the routing so messages land with the right person — that design, and being on call when it breaks, is what they pay for.
Who buys it: online stores, clinics and local service businesses juggling messages across apps, and teams paying rising per-agent helpdesk bills.
Pricing and costs
A sensible package: $799 one-time setup (hosting, widget, channel connections, help center and training) plus $129 a month to manage it. Those are this guide’s suggested prices, not Chatwoot’s.
| Clients | Monthly recurring | Your hours a month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $129 | ~3 |
| 10 | $1,290 | ~18 |
Your costs: self-hosted Chatwoot core is $0 under MIT; the real cost is the server it runs on. If a client would rather pay Chatwoot itself, its Cloud plans run Hacker at $0 (up to 2 agents, 500 conversations a month), Startups at $19, Business at $39 and Enterprise at $99 per agent per month — paid plans include Captain AI credits (300, 500 and 800), extra credits $20 per 1,000.
How to find clients
- Find the scattered inboxes: any business with no live chat, or reviews complaining about slow replies, has the problem — offer one inbox, done for them.
- Audit a prospect’s per-agent bill: add up a year of Intercom or Zendesk seats, then show the same channels privately for a flat fee.
- Demo with their channels: put the widget on a test page, send an email and a WhatsApp message, and show both landing in one inbox.
Getting started
- Install Chatwoot with its deployment guides and run your own business enquiries through it first.
- Practise the full job — widget, channel connections, help center, assignment rules, backup and restore — before a client depends on it.
- Set up one friendly business at a discount, write down your checklist, and make it the standard package.
Watch-outs
- Licence is split: the core is MIT, but the enterprise/ directory is under a commercial licence — don’t promise enterprise features as part of the free self-hosted package.
- Customer messages are personal data: access controls, tested backups and careful agent permissions are the service, not extras.
- WhatsApp and social channels have platform rules: connect them properly, and only message customers who opted in.
- An AI agent answering customers is a trust decision: start Captain on common questions with human review, and widen it only once answers are proven.
Sources
- Chatwoot on GitHub (38,220 stars; core MIT Expat, enterprise/ directory commercial), checked October 25, 2026
- Chatwoot pricing (Hacker $0, Startups $19, Business $39 and Enterprise $99 per agent per month; extra Captain AI credits $20 per 1,000), checked October 25, 2026
- Chatwoot help center and documentation, checked October 25, 2026