The tool from my reel is Chatwoot. It puts your website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and SMS messages into one shared inbox, and its code is open source. This page has every link, how each channel is connected, and what it really costs, because open source does not mean everything is free.
The short version
- Chatwoot is a shared inbox for customer messages. Its GitHub page describes it as “Open-source live-chat, email support, omni-channel desk”.
- You can use it in 2 ways: Chatwoot Cloud (they host it, you pay per team member) or self-hosted (you run it on your own server, the software is free).
- The free cloud plan only covers website live chat. WhatsApp, Instagram and the other channels need a paid cloud plan or a self-hosted setup.
- WhatsApp works through Meta’s official WhatsApp Business Platform. Meta charges for messages separately. SMS needs a Twilio or Bandwidth account, which is also billed separately.
- Slack is not a place where customers message you. It is an integration that lets your team see and answer Chatwoot conversations from a Slack channel.
- SMS is the weak spot in India. It works only through Twilio or Bandwidth, and Twilio’s India rules need DLT registration first. Start with WhatsApp.
The links
- Website: chatwoot.com
- Code on GitHub: github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot (about 39,600 stars on 11 Nov 2026)
- Cloud sign-up: app.chatwoot.com/app/auth/signup
- Cloud pricing: chatwoot.com/pricing
- Self-hosted pricing: chatwoot.com/pricing/self-hosted-plans
- Self-hosting guide: developers.chatwoot.com/self-hosted
- User guide for every channel: chatwoot.com/hc/user-guide/en
What it does
Most small businesses answer customers in 5 or 6 different apps. Chatwoot gives your team one screen. Each channel you connect becomes an “inbox”, and every customer message becomes a conversation you can reply to, assign to a team member, label and close. Chatwoot’s help centre also has guides for its Android and iOS apps.
Chatwoot’s channels page lists these: website live chat, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, email, Telegram, LINE, TikTok, X, SMS, voice calls and a custom API channel.
Cloud or self-hosted?
Cloud means Chatwoot runs the software for you. You sign up and start. Self-hosted means you rent a server and install Chatwoot on it yourself. The software costs nothing, but you pay for the server and you look after updates and backups.
Chatwoot Cloud prices
From the official pricing page, checked 11 Nov 2026. Prices are in US dollars, per agent (team member) per month. I did not find rupee pricing on the page, so expect your card to be charged in dollars. The rupee amount will depend on your bank’s exchange rate, and your bank may add a foreign transaction fee.
| Plan | Price | Channels | Main limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker | $0 | Website live chat only | Up to 2 agents, 500 conversations a month, 30 days of history |
| Startups | $19 | All | 300 Captain AI credits, 1 year of history. No teams or automation rules |
| Business | $39 | All | Adds voice, teams and automation rules. 500 AI credits, 2 years of history |
| Enterprise | $99 | All | Adds SSO and audit logs. 800 AI credits, 3 years of history |
The page offers a 15-day free trial, and says “unlimited” conversations on paid plans are subject to a fair use policy. Captain is Chatwoot’s built-in AI assistant. Extra AI credits cost $20 per 1,000.
Two things to know before you pick. “All channels” on Startups covers normal WhatsApp chats and templates, but Chatwoot’s WhatsApp guide says WhatsApp broadcast campaigns and WhatsApp calling need the Business plan or higher. And the jargon: SSO means your team logs in with their company login. Audit logs are a record of who changed what. A small team does not need either.
Self-hosted prices
| Edition | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Community | $0, “Free forever” | The open-source inbox on your own server. No Captain AI, voice calls, custom branding, roles and permissions, SSO or priority support. Help comes from the community on Discord and GitHub |
| Premium Support | $19 per agent per month | Adds Captain AI, voice calls, custom branding, agent capacity (a cap on how many chats each agent gets), roles and permissions, priority support |
| Enterprise | $99 per agent per month | Adds SSO and SLA policies (reply-time targets) |
A note on “open source”: the licence file in the repository says the main code is under the MIT licence, and the code inside the “enterprise” folder is under a separate licence. That is why some features are paid even when you self-host.
The costs people miss
- Hosting. If you self-host, you pay for a server. Chatwoot’s docs give the minimum as 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM and a 20 GB SSD. The price depends on the hosting company you choose.
- WhatsApp messages. Meta bills these, not Chatwoot. If you connect through Twilio, Twilio adds its own fees. Details are in the WhatsApp section below.
- SMS. Chatwoot does not send SMS itself. You connect a Twilio or Bandwidth account and pay that provider for the number and each message.
- Your time. Self-hosting needs someone comfortable with a Linux server. If that is not you, start on the cloud.
Get started on the cloud (easiest)
- Create an account at app.chatwoot.com/app/auth/signup. The pricing page offers a 15-day free trial. The free Hacker plan has website chat only, so to keep WhatsApp, Instagram and the other channels you need Startups ($19 per agent per month) or higher.
- Go to Settings, then Inboxes, then Add Inbox.
- Start with Website. Enter your site name and address, and Chatwoot shows a small piece of code. Chatwoot’s guide says to paste it into the root file of your website, meaning the main file that loads on every page. If that sounds unfamiliar, send the code to whoever manages your site. On WordPress, use Chatwoot’s plugin instead: the WordPress guide has the steps.
- Add your team members as agents on that inbox.
- Send a test message from your website and reply from Chatwoot.
- Add the next channel the same way, one at a time.
How each channel is connected
Every channel starts in the same place: Settings, then Inboxes, then Add Inbox.
| Channel | What you need | Official guide |
|---|---|---|
| Website chat | Paste Chatwoot’s widget code into your site | Live chat settings |
| Forward your support email to the address Chatwoot gives you, or enter IMAP and SMTP details (your mail server settings). Microsoft accounts can sign in directly | Email channel | |
| A Facebook Page you manage | Facebook channel | |
| An Instagram Business account (Chatwoot’s guide lists this as a prerequisite). Then click Continue with Instagram and allow access to messages | Instagram channel | |
| A Meta business portfolio (Meta’s business account) and a phone number. See the next section | WhatsApp in Chatwoot | |
| Telegram | Create a bot with BotFather in Telegram and paste its token into Chatwoot | Telegram channel |
| SMS | A Twilio or Bandwidth account with a phone number | SMS channel |
On Telegram, customers message your bot, not your personal Telegram account.
WhatsApp for an Indian small business
Chatwoot does not connect to the normal WhatsApp app on your phone. It connects to Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform, also called the Cloud API. This is Meta’s official way for software to send and receive WhatsApp messages. Chatwoot connects to WhatsApp in 3 ways (Quick setup with Meta, Manual setup and Twilio), and Quick setup has an extra option called Coexistence. Its guide covers 4 situations:
- Quick setup with Meta. For a new number. You click Connect with WhatsApp Business and finish the steps in a Meta window.
- Coexistence. For a number you already use in the WhatsApp Business app and want to keep using on your phone. It is part of Quick setup. Meta decides which numbers are eligible.
- Manual setup. For numbers already on the API, or self-hosted installs without Quick setup. You create a Meta app and paste in the IDs and an access token.
- Twilio. If you already use Twilio and want to keep the billing there. Chatwoot says campaigns and calling are not available this way.
You may have heard of BSPs (Business Solution Providers). These are companies that sell WhatsApp API access and usually add their own charges on top of Meta’s. With Quick setup, Coexistence or Manual setup, Chatwoot uses Meta’s Cloud API, and Chatwoot’s guide says Meta charges for the messages. The Twilio route is the exception: the same guide says Twilio adds its own fees. If your number is already with another provider, talk to that provider and to Chatwoot support before you disconnect or change anything.
What to keep ready
- A Facebook account that is an admin of your Meta business portfolio. This is Meta’s business account, which many people know as Business Manager. If you do not have one, you can create it in the Meta window during Quick setup. Keep your business name, address and website ready.
- A phone number that can receive a code by SMS or voice call. Landlines need voice verification. Numbers that answer with an automated phone menu (IVR) are not supported by Meta.
- On Chatwoot Cloud, the Startups plan or higher, or the free trial. Chatwoot’s guide says WhatsApp is not available on the free Hacker plan.
- Meta reviews your display name and may ask you to verify your business by uploading documents.
Rules you should know
- You can reply freely for 24 hours after the customer’s last message. After that, you can only send a template, which is a message Meta has approved in advance.
- Old chats are not imported. You see messages from the moment you connect.
- With Coexistence, connecting unlinks WhatsApp Web and desktop, so you have to link them again, and group chats are not synced and cannot be used in Chatwoot.
What Meta charges
Meta’s developer pricing page (updated 30 Sep 2026, checked 11 Nov 2026) says it charges per delivered message, and the rate depends on the type of message and the customer’s country code. Messages that customers send you are not charged. Template messages come in 3 types: marketing, utility and authentication. For normal replies inside the 24-hour window, which Meta calls service messages, the page says every business number gets 1,000 free a month, and Meta charges from the 1,001st message, as of 1 October 2026. Utility templates sent inside the 24-hour window are also charged since that date. The same page says billing in rupees is available for India.
I am not quoting rupee rates here because Meta can change them at the start of any quarter. On that page, open the file called “INR list rates” and look at the India row before you plan a budget: Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform pricing.
SMS in India
In the reel I mention SMS in the first line. It does work, but in India it takes more setup than the reel suggests. SMS in Chatwoot runs through Twilio or Bandwidth. Twilio’s own guideline page for India says that for domestic routes you must register your company and Sender ID (the short name that shows as the sender in place of a number) on the mobile operators’ DLT portal first. DLT is the registration system Indian mobile operators use for business SMS. The page also lists domestic long codes (normal 10-digit numbers) as not supported. Twilio also has an international route that needs no DLT registration, but those messages arrive from a random short number, not from your own number. So for most Indian small businesses, WhatsApp is the more practical channel to connect first. Read Twilio’s India SMS guidelines before you pay for anything.
What Slack actually does here
In the reel I mention Slack along with Telegram. To be accurate: Slack is an integration for your team, not a channel for customers. You connect it under Settings, then Integrations, then Slack, and pick a Slack channel. New Chatwoot conversations then appear in that channel, and your team can answer from Slack. Chatwoot’s guide says you must reply inside the Slack thread, or the reply will not reach the customer. Guide: How to answer conversations from Slack.
Self-hosting: the quick path
Skip this section if you are not technical. Chatwoot’s Linux guide targets a server running Ubuntu 24.04. Log in to the server over SSH and run these commands one line at a time. Run them as the root (admin) user. On most servers you can switch to root by typing sudo -i first. Otherwise the script stops with “This needs to be run as root.”
wget https://get.chatwoot.app/linux/install.sh
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh --installThe script asks if you want to set up a domain. If you say yes, point your domain’s A record (the DNS setting that sends your domain to the server’s IP address) to the server first. The script then sets up the web server (Nginx) and a free SSL certificate, which gives you the padlock and https. Without a domain, you open Chatwoot at your server’s IP address on port 3000. The Linux guide also says to set FRONTEND_URL, an email (mailer) service and cloud file storage in the .env file, which is Chatwoot’s settings file on the server, for the install to work properly. After you change anything in that file, restart with:
sudo systemctl restart chatwoot.targetDocker, Kubernetes and one-click options for cloud providers are in the same docs: developers.chatwoot.com/self-hosted.
One more thing the cloud does for you. On a self-hosted install, Facebook, Instagram and Slack need your own Meta app and your own Slack app, set up by following the self-hosted guides. The docs also list an Instagram App Review step. WhatsApp Quick setup only works if you configure your own Meta app too. Otherwise use the manual setup. On Chatwoot Cloud all of this is already done.
FAQ
Is it really free?
The Community edition is free software. You still pay for a server, for WhatsApp messages to Meta, and for SMS to your provider. The free cloud plan covers website chat only.
Can I connect my personal WhatsApp number?
Not while it stays on the normal WhatsApp app. Chatwoot’s guide says Coexistence works with the WhatsApp Business app, not the personal WhatsApp app. The other route in the guide is Quick setup with a new number, which you verify by SMS or voice call.
Which plan should a 2 or 3 person team pick?
If you only need website chat, the free Hacker plan works for up to 2 agents. If you want WhatsApp and Instagram without managing a server, Startups at $19 per agent per month is the lowest cloud plan that includes all channels. If someone on your team can manage a server and set up Meta and Slack developer apps, the self-hosted Community edition has no per-agent fee.
My reply from Slack did not reach the customer. Why?
Reply under the same Slack thread. Chatwoot uses the thread to match your reply to the conversation.
Sources
All checked on 11 Nov 2026. Prices and rules change, so open the official page before you pay.
- Chatwoot on GitHub (description, star count, licence file)
- Chatwoot Cloud pricing
- Chatwoot self-hosted pricing
- Chatwoot channels list
- WhatsApp in Chatwoot (connection methods, plan limits, provider charges)
- Choose how to connect WhatsApp
- WhatsApp Quick setup with Meta
- WhatsApp templates and the 24-hour window
- Instagram channel guide and Facebook channel guide
- Answering conversations from Slack
- Self-hosting docs and the Linux install guide
- Meta: Pricing on the WhatsApp Business Platform
- Twilio: India SMS guidelines
That is the tool link and everything around it. Start with the free website chat, add WhatsApp next, and check the official pricing pages before you pay, because prices and rules change.
