Chatwoot: Open-Source Customer Communication Platform for Support and Sales

What is Chatwoot?

Chatwoot is an open-source customer communication platform that unifies messaging across multiple channels including email, chat, social media, and SMS. Built with focus on customer support and sales engagement, Chatwoot enables teams to communicate with customers from a single interface. Over 500,000 users worldwide use Chatwoot for customer communication and support.

Unlike Zendesk ($49-499/month) or Freshdesk ($15-115/month) where communication is centralized on commercial servers, Chatwoot enables self-hosted deployment with complete data ownership. Organizations manage all customer conversations on their infrastructure.

Chatwoot serves as the unified customer communication platform. Support teams respond to customer inquiries. Sales teams engage prospects. Marketing teams communicate with customers. All communications unified in one system.

Key Features and Capabilities

Multi-Channel Communication

Email: Manage email conversations
Chat: Website chat widget for customer conversations
WhatsApp: Communicate via WhatsApp Business
Facebook: Manage Facebook messages and comments
Instagram: Handle Instagram direct messages
Twitter: Respond to Twitter direct messages

Collaboration Features

Team Collaboration: Assign conversations to team members
Internal Notes: Add internal notes not visible to customers
Canned Responses: Quick response templates
Conversation Labels: Tag and organize conversations
Customer Profiles: View complete customer history

Business Features

Automation: Automate responses and routing
SLA Tracking: Track and enforce SLA commitments
Reports: Analytics and performance reporting
Knowledge Base: Self-service customer support

System Requirements

Server Requirements

OS: Linux (Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+)
Node.js: 14+ for backend
PostgreSQL: 10+ for database
Redis: For caching and jobs
RAM: 2GB minimum, 4GB+ recommended

Installation

Docker Installation

docker run -d 
  --name chatwoot 
  -p 3000:3000 
  -e DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@postgres/chatwoot 
  chatwoot/chatwoot

# Access at http://localhost:3000