Zammad
94 · HealthyTicketing and helpdesk system with email, chat, phone and social channels in one view.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat
Open source Helpdesk & live chat
Chatwoot
89 · HealthyOmnichannel customer support inbox covering website chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels.
FreeScout
76 · StableShared-inbox helpdesk in PHP, close in spirit to Help Scout, extended through modules.
osTicket
54 · CautionVeteran PHP support-ticket system that routes inquiries from email, web forms and phone.
Papercups
15 · At riskLive chat widget and support inbox built with Elixir and React.
Directory / Helpdesk & live chat / Chatwoot
Chatwoot
Omnichannel customer support inbox covering website chat, email, WhatsApp and social channels.
Will it still be around?
Health 89/100 · Healthy
Activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness. Breakdown
Can a business use it freely?
Open source (permissive)
MIT (core) + separate license for enterprise/. Details
Alternative to
Savings proposal
A 25-seat team on Intercom Essential pays about $725 a month. Self-hosting Chatwoot costs about $264 a month to run plus $1,200 to set up, so it pays for itself in month 3 and saves about $15,396 over three years.
List price: Intercom Essential, billed annually. Advanced is $85 and Expert $132 per seat. Fin AI Agent is billed on top at $0.99 per outcome. Source, checked 2026-10-07.
Saved over 3 years
$15,396
Pays for itself
Month 3
Saved in year one
$4,332
Each month
$725 → $264
Show as a table
| Month | Intercom | Self-hosted | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $0 | $1,200 | −$1,200 |
| Month 3 | $2,175 | $1,992 | $183 |
| Month 6 | $4,350 | $2,784 | $1,566 |
| Month 9 | $6,525 | $3,576 | $2,949 |
| Month 12 | $8,700 | $4,368 | $4,332 |
| Month 18 | $13,050 | $5,952 | $7,098 |
| Month 24 | $17,400 | $7,536 | $9,864 |
| Month 30 | $21,750 | $9,120 | $12,630 |
| Month 36 | $26,100 | $10,704 | $15,396 |
Assumptions you can change
Self-hosting Chatwoot usually means an app server, a database and a cache or worker. Hours are for one engineer; the server cost is a typical cloud VPS with backups and grows with the number of people using it.
Not included: paid editions or features of Chatwoot (see What's free?), large data migrations, and compliance work. All amounts in US dollars at list price; your negotiated price may differ.
Health score: 89/100
Activity45% weight
100/100
- Last commit today (100/100).
- 1457 commits in the past 12 months (100/100).
- 24 releases in the past 12 months (100/100).
Bus factor30% weight
100/100
- Top contributor wrote 22% of the last 97 commits (past 12 months).
- 14 people authored those commits.
Responsiveness25% weight
55/100
- 82% of all issues are closed (1068 open, 4856 closed) (87/100).
- 10 of 30 recent issues got a reply or were closed (33/100).
Score v2. How the health score works.
License
MIT (core) + separate license for enterprise/ · Open source (permissive)
Everything outside enterprise/ is MIT. Enterprise code needs a paid license.
OSI-approved license with few conditions beyond keeping the copyright notice.
License text checked 2026-10-07: read it.
What's free?
Enterprise features many open-core projects keep for paid plans.
| Feature | Self-hosted, free? |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | Unknown |
| SSO (OIDC) | Unknown |
| SCIM provisioning | Unknown |
| Audit logs | Unknown |
| Role-based access control | Unknown |
| Multi-tenancy | Unknown |
We haven't verified which of these features are free for this project yet.
GitHub metrics
| Stars | 38k | Forks | 9.2k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last commit | today | Commits, 12 months | 1.5k |
| Releases, 12 months | 24 | Last release | 20 days ago |
| Contributors | 383 | Active authors | 14 in last 97 commits |
| Open issues | 1.1k | Closed issues | 4.9k |
Funding: github · open collective
Snapshot from 2026-10-08.