Chatwoot
Better knownA full customer engagement suite — a Rails app, not an engine
No ratings yet# Gemfile
gem "chatwoot", github: "chatwoot/chatwoot"Chatwoot vs Livechat
Both replace Intercom and Crisp. Chatwoot is the better-known of the two (23,000 stars), while Livechat also stands in for Help Scout.
A live chat widget and agent inbox that run inside your Rails app
5.0 · 3 ratings# Gemfile
gem "livechat", github: "yshmarov/livechat"What Chatwoot does
Chatwoot is the most complete open-source alternative to Intercom: shared inbox, live chat, email, social channels, help centre, automations, reports. It is not a mountable engine. It is a full Rails application you deploy separately, with its own database, Redis and workers. It is here because it is the honest comparison point. If you need the whole Intercom surface — routing rules, SLAs, multi-channel, reporting — no engine covers it, and running Chatwoot is a reasonable answer. If what you need is a chat bubble and an inbox that already…
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Why you might pick it
- It also replaces Zendesk.
- It has substantially more adoption — 23,000 stars against 186.
- Its licence is MIT, with a commercial edition, which may matter more than the feature list.
What Livechat does
Live chat as an engine. The visitor widget and the agent inbox both run in your app, over Action Cable, against your own User records. A chat bubble you render in your layout Real-time messaging over Action Cable An agent-side inbox listing open conversations Conversations tied to your existing users when they are signed in A hosted chat widget knows an email address. This one knows the account, the plan, the last five orders, and anything else already in your schema — because it is querying the same database your…
Read the full Livechat listing →
Why you might pick it
- It also replaces Help Scout.
- Members here rate it higher, at 5.0 against 0.0.
- Its licence is MIT, which may matter more than the feature list.
Side by side
Rows where the two differ are marked.
| Chatwoot | Livechat | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Customer support | Customer support |
| Replaces (differs) | Crisp, Intercom, Zendesk | Crisp, Help Scout, Intercom |
| License (differs) | MIT, with a commercial edition | MIT |
| GitHub stars (differs) | 23000 | 186 |
| Gem (differs) | chatwoot | livechat |
| Mounts at (differs) | — | /livechat |
| Member rating (differs) | — | 5.0 |
What each one gets off your invoice
Questions
- What is the difference between Chatwoot and Livechat?
- Both replace Intercom and Crisp. Chatwoot is the better-known of the two (23,000 stars), while Livechat also stands in for Help Scout.
- Can I mount both Chatwoot and Livechat in the same Rails app?
- Technically yes — engines mount at different paths — but they overlap, so running both usually means two sets of tables doing one job. Pick one.
- Do Chatwoot and Livechat replace the same SaaS product?
- Both are listed as replacements for Intercom and Crisp.