Chatwoot

Live chat, email, WhatsApp, and Instagram DMs in one inbox. The Intercom alternative that doesn't charge per conversation.

⏱ 40 min ◆◆◇ some copy-pasting ↺ reversible

What it does

One shared inbox for website chat, email, WhatsApp Business, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. Assign conversations, automate replies, track satisfaction - all self-hosted.

Why it's on the shelf

Intercom charges $0.99 per resolution on top of a $39/month base. If you do 200 conversations a month, that's $237/month. Chatwoot is $0/month after setup. The UI is genuinely good - not 'good for open source,' just good.

What it replaces

Intercom, Zendesk, Crisp, Tawk.to. Whatever you pay for that today is what this page is here to delete. Worth being honest with yourself first though: if the bill is already small, the answer may still be that this isn't worth your Saturday.

Skip this one if... You don't want a server you're responsible for. Chatwoot runs on your own box, which is what makes it free and what makes it yours - but it also means the backups, the updates and the 11pm restart are on you. If that's a no, close the tab; it'll cost you 40 min to find out the hard way.

Setting it up

These are the steps in order. The time on the bar above is what this took us end to end, including the reading.

Provision a VPS with at least 2GB RAM
Install Docker and Docker Compose
Clone the Chatwoot self-hosted repo
Edit the .env file with your domain and SMTP credentials
Run docker-compose up -d

The code

The actual configuration, not a sketch of one. The highlighted lines are the ones you have to change.

What this doesThe variables that matter. Chatwoot provides a full .env template.

.env (excerpt)

FRONTEND_URL=https://chat.yourdomain.com  ← your domainSECRET_KEY_BASE=generate-a-long-random-string  ← run: rake secretSMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.yourprovider.com  ← for outgoing emailSMTP_USERNAME=your@email.comSMTP_PASSWORD=your-smtp-password

Before you run this WhatsApp Business API requires a Meta Business account (free, but involves verification). This is Meta's requirement, not Chatwoot's.

What it costs to run

Needs a $10/month VPS (2GB RAM). Redis + Postgres + the app.

This keeps working without us Chatwoot runs on your own box under the MIT, with your data in your own database. If Growth Dudes stops existing tomorrow, nothing on this page stops working. That is deliberate, and it's the only promise here we can actually keep.

Field notes

What people found when they actually ran it - dated, named and specific, including the times our setup number turned out to be optimistic.

Nobody has posted one for Chatwoot yet.

We're not going to invent them. Run it, then tell the room what actually happened - the time you got, and the step that wasn't in the instructions.

Join and post one

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