Chatwoot — Open Source Customer Support & Live Chat

What it is

Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement platform that serves as a self-hosted alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. Built with Ruby on Rails and Vue.js, it provides a unified inbox for managing customer conversations across live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram.

Chatwoot is designed for support teams that want full data ownership and the ability to customize their customer communication workflows without paying per-agent SaaS pricing.

How it saves time or tokens

Chatwoot consolidates multiple communication channels into a single dashboard, eliminating the need to switch between separate tools for email, chat, and social media. Rule-based automation handles routing, labeling, and auto-responses. Canned responses let agents reply to common questions with a single keystroke. The embeddable chat widget requires just one script tag to add to your website.

How to use

1. Run the Chatwoot Docker container with docker run providing a secret key and frontend URL.
2. Open http://localhost:3000 and create your admin account.
3. Set up your first inbox (website live chat, email, or social channel) and install the widget on your site.

Example

# Start Chatwoot with Docker
docker run --name chatwoot -p 3000:3000 \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand -hex 64) \
  -e FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:3000 \
  chatwoot/chatwoot:latest

# Open http://localhost:3000
# Create admin account -> Set up inbox -> Install widget

Related on TokRepo

• Self-hosted tools -- Chatwoot is a self-hosted customer support solution
• Automation tools -- automate customer support routing and responses

Common pitfalls

• The single Docker container setup works for evaluation but lacks persistence; use Docker Compose with PostgreSQL and Redis for production deployments.
• WhatsApp integration requires a separate WhatsApp Business API provider (360dialog or Twilio), which adds cost.
• Email channel setup requires correct IMAP/SMTP configuration; misconfigured DNS records cause emails to land in spam.