Chatwoot Review
Open-source omnichannel support desk available self-hosted or as a cloud service.
- From:
- $19/agent/mo
- Founded:
- 2017
Chatwoot is an open-source customer support platform. You can run it on your own servers or pay for Chatwoot Cloud, and that choice is why most teams look at it. The hosted product charges per agent, has a free tier and adds an AI agent called Captain that runs on a credit meter. It is strongest on the channels DTC customers use now: WhatsApp, Instagram and chat. The pages we read do not show the thing an ecommerce desk depends on, which is changing the order from inside the conversation.
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Points against
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What it does
- One queue for website live chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, with voice on the higher plans
- Email inboxes connect, and replies stay threaded like a chat
- WhatsApp templates and WhatsApp calling; Instagram story replies and mentions
- Voice: connect a Twilio number to make and take calls in the browser, or take WhatsApp calls. Calls are recorded, transcribed and threaded with everything else
- Macros bundle a reply, a label and a snooze. Automation rules run a macro on their own when a conversation matches
- Help center with several portals. Each gets its own custom domain, and Chatwoot issues and renews the SSL certificate. Articles can be published per language, and AI search answers with links to the source articles
- Open API and webhooks for sending messages, creating channels and connecting Chatwoot to your other tools
- Self-host from the public code via Heroku one-click, DigitalOcean 1-Click Kubernetes, Docker or a Helm chart
- Missing: auto-translation of incoming messages is marked "Coming soon" and has not shipped
- Missing from the pages we read: any order action from the conversation (refund, cancel, address edit). Shopify is listed on the integrations page as coming in Q4 2026, for order history, cart activity and order updates in chat. It is not live yet, and no refund or cancel action is described
Pricing at a glance
| Plan | Billed monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker | Free | Up to 2 agents. |
| Startups | $19 | Unlimited conversations, subject to the fair use policy. |
| Business | $39 | Unlimited conversations, subject to the fair use policy. |
| Enterprise | $99 | Unlimited conversations, subject to the fair use policy. |
Prices are an agent a month, in US dollars. Source: chatwoot.com/pricing, checked .
- Chatwoot Cloud charges per agent per month. The pricing page shows one figure per plan, with no monthly or annual label and no billing toggle in its text. The billing period is therefore unconfirmed on every paid figure below
- Hacker $0 per agent per month: up to 2 agents, 500 conversations a month, live chat only, no help center or Captain, 30-day data retention
- Startups $19 per agent per month (billing period not stated): unlimited conversations under a fair-use policy, all channels except voice, help center, 300 Captain credits, 1-year retention
- Business $39 per agent per month (billing period not stated): adds voice, teams and automation rules, 500 Captain credits, 2-year retention
- Enterprise $99 per agent per month (billing period not stated): adds SSO/SAML and audit logs, 800 Captain credits, 3-year retention
- The gate most teams hit first: teams and automation rules start at Business. Ten agents cost $390 a month on Business against $190 on Startups (billing period not stated). The extra $200 a month buys routing that runs without someone watching the queue
- The expensive gate: SSO and audit logs need Enterprise. That puts the same ten agents at $990 a month (billing period not stated), $600 more than Business
- 15-day free trial. Cloud plans are refunded for unused time on cancellation, except Captain credits
- The Startups plan is free for open-source projects; nonprofits are invited to email
- Self-hosted (self-hosted plans): Community Edition $0 per agent per month, free forever. Premium Support $19 per agent per month adds Captain AI, voice calls, custom branding, roles and permissions, and priority support. Enterprise Edition $99 per agent per month adds SSO/SAML and SLA policies. Billing period not stated on any of them
AI pricing
- Captain comes with paid plans only; Hacker gets none
- Credits included each month: 300 on Startups, 500 on Business, 800 on Enterprise. The page does not say whether that is per account or per agent
- Extra credits cost $20 per 1,000, which is $0.02 a credit, billed on usage
- The pricing page does not say what one credit buys. It says credits cover reply suggestions, summaries and knowledge-base answers. How many credits one conversation uses is explained in a help article we did not read, so you cannot yet work out a cost per resolved conversation
- Credits are non-refundable, and the pages we read mention no monthly spending cap
- What it does: answers customers end to end and hands off to an agent (Assistant), drafts replies for agents (Copilot, reply suggestions), keeps notes on each customer (Memories), summarizes long threads, drafts FAQs where your docs have gaps, counts conversations on a theme you describe (Monitors), sets priority, labels and team on new conversations (Triage), and follows steps you write (Scenarios)
- Triage assigns a team, but Teams is a Business feature. On Startups, ask what Triage can actually route to
- What it can't do, as far as the pages show: in the e-commerce demo, Captain drafts a "where is my order" reply and an agent sends it. The Scenario example adds a note and hands off. Nothing describes Captain cancelling, refunding or editing an order
Before you commit
- Get the billing period confirmed before you budget: no price on the page says monthly or annual
- "Unlimited" conversations fall under a fair-use policy we have not read. If your volume spikes during sales, get the limit in writing
- Data retention depends on the plan: 30 days on Hacker, 1 year on Startups, 2 on Business, 3 on Enterprise. The page does not say what happens to older conversations. Ask before you rely on ticket history for chargeback or warranty disputes
- Chatwoot Cloud runs on AWS in the United States. Requests for other data locations go to an email address; there is no published option
- Data export is through the API, so budget developer time for leaving later
- Voice needs a Twilio number or WhatsApp Business calling. The pricing page does not say who bills the call minutes
- The homepage claims SOC 2 Type II. We did not read the security or status pages, so there is no uptime or incident record here
Who should buy it, and who should skip it
Who should buy
- DTC brands whose customers contact them on WhatsApp and Instagram more than email
- Teams that want, or are required, to keep support data on their own infrastructure and have someone to run it
- Very small teams starting from nothing: two agents on live chat cost $0
- Teams that want AI to draft replies and handle first-line answers, with agents still sending the hard replies
Who should skip it
- Shopify stores that expect to refund, cancel or edit an order from the ticket; nothing we read shows it
- Teams that need EU hosting on the cloud product
- Anyone who needs SSO but cannot justify $99 per agent per month
- Buyers planning to stay on Startups who expect rules-based routing, which starts at Business
- Multilingual teams counting on auto-translation today
How we checked this
Prices, plan limits and Captain credit terms were read from Chatwoot's own pricing page on 2026-10-06. The figures appear in the page text, but none is labelled monthly or annual and no billing toggle appears. A screenshot of the rendered page is needed before the billing basis can be stated. Channels, Captain features, the help center and deployment options were checked against Chatwoot's homepage the same day. The self-hosted plans page and the integrations page were read on 2026-10-12. We ran out of fetches before we could read the fair-use policy, the help article on how Captain credits are used, the security page or the status page. Each gap is flagged above rather than filled. No review-site text was used.
What’s new in Chatwoot
The latest from Chatwoot’s own changelog, linked to each post.
- Introducing Auto Translate
chatwoot.com
- Stripe integration
chatwoot.com
- WhatsApp campaigns
chatwoot.com
- Label and priority suggestions from Captain
chatwoot.com