Chatwoot

Chatwoot is a customer support platform used by 15,000+ businesses to handle conversations across every major channel from a single inbox. It's a direct alternative to Intercom and Zendesk, with the option to self-host on your own infrastructure and keep full control of your data.

The core of the product is an omnichannel inbox that pulls in messages from live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Line, and more. Agents don't need to switch between tools. Everything lands in one place, with full conversation history attached.

The AI layer is built around a feature called Captain. It handles two distinct jobs:

• Automated responses Captain learns from your help center, past chats, and FAQs to answer common questions without agent involvement, reducing inbound support volume.
• Copilot suggestions For conversations that need a human, Copilot surfaces smart reply suggestions, pulls relevant help articles, and gives agents quick access to prior conversations.
• Real-time translation Agents can respond in a customer's native language without leaving the conversation.

The knowledge base is built in. You can create multiple portals for different brands or products, write segmented content, and let customers search with natural-language queries powered by AI. Custom domains with SSL are supported on cloud plans.

For teams with specific workflows, the developer API lets you build custom integrations and extend behavior beyond what's available out of the box. The live chat widget is fully customizable: colors, language, copy, and layout can all be adjusted to match your brand.

Self-hosting gives you complete data ownership and helps with regulatory compliance. The cloud version is SOC 2 Type II certified. Both options are backed by the same codebase, which has over 25,000 GitHub stars and 400+ contributors.

Compared to other chatbot platforms and open support tools like Tiledesk or Chaskiq, Chatwoot covers a broader surface area: omnichannel inbox, AI automation, and a self-service knowledge base in one product rather than requiring you to stitch together separate tools.