Chatwoot Hosting on Your Own VPS
Live chat, email and WhatsApp in one inbox, without per-agent pricing.
Size a server for Chatwoot
Every stop is a real configuration you can deploy. Priced per 30 days, billed by the hour, exclusive of 18% GST.
What Chatwoot is
Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement platform. It brings live chat, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram into a single shared inbox, with agent assignment, canned responses, automation rules and a help centre.
It is a Rails application with PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq, and a Vue front end. The live chat widget maintains persistent WebSocket connections to browsers, which is the characteristic that shapes hosting: concurrent visitors with the widget open each hold a connection, and that is a different load pattern from ordinary request traffic.
The economics resemble other self-hosted support tools. Commercial equivalents charge per agent per month, and adding someone occasional is a purchase decision. Self-hosted, it is a user record. The trade is that you run Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq yourself, and email deliverability is your responsibility.
Why run Chatwoot on a VPS
No per-agent pricing, so occasional contributors can have accounts.
Conversation history and customer data on your own machine.
Memory sized for Rails and Sidekiq, which is what Chatwoot actually is.
Root access for the WebSocket and reverse proxy configuration the widget needs.
Chatwoot features
Shared inbox across chat, email and messaging channels
WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram integration
Live chat widget for your site
Canned responses and automation rules
A help centre with articles
Agent assignment and team routing
Reporting on conversations and response times
Recommended server
A starting point for Chatwoot, not a hard floor — size it on the sliders.
| Memory | 8 GB — Rails, Sidekiq, PostgreSQL and Redis together |
|---|---|
| CPU | 4 vCPU with active chat volume |
| Storage | 80 GB; conversation history and attachments accumulate |
| Operating system | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS |
How deployment works
Chatwoot is deployed as a Rails application with PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq, behind NGINX configured for WebSocket upgrade — the live chat widget will not work without that proxy configuration, and it is the most common setup mistake. Outbound email needs an SMTP relay with SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
What people run it for
Multi-channel support
Chat, email and WhatsApp in one inbox rather than three tools.
WhatsApp-first support
Common in India, and handled as a first-class channel.
Website live chat
A widget on your own domain with data that stays yours.
Leaving per-agent pricing
Team size decoupled from monthly cost.
Chatwoot hosting questions
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Root access, your choice of size, and no container between you and the application.