ComparisonsComparisons and alternatives
EzyConn vs Chatwoot: Pricing, AI and Self-Hosting
Chatwoot is open source, priced per agent in the cloud, and meters its AI agent in credits. EzyConn is priced per workspace with the AI agent on every plan. Here is what each costs a six-person team, line by line.
The short answer
Chatwoot is an open-source support inbox you can run on your own server or rent in the cloud. Chatwoot Cloud costs $19, $39 or $99 per agent a month, and its AI agent, Captain, uses one credit per reply: 300 to 800 credits come with each paid plan, and more cost $20 per 1,000. EzyConn is priced per workspace, with the AI agent on every plan, the free one included. For a shop we made up with six people and 1,500 conversations a month, Chatwoot’s Startups plan comes to $168 a month. EzyConn’s Professional plan covers the same team for $95 a month. Figures checked on 3 November 2026.
Chatwoot began as an open-source answer to Intercom and Zendesk, and it still is one: you can read the code, run it on your own machine and pay nothing for the software. Its cloud version adds an AI agent called Captain, billed by the reply. EzyConn starts from the other end: an AI agent for customer conversations that answers on the website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, email and inbound phone calls, books appointments in the chat, and hands the conversation to a person when it should. This guide sets the two side by side on price, AI, hosting and a normal week, with every sum shown.
What Chatwoot is, and who it is built for
Chatwoot is a customer support platform built around a shared inbox, with a help center and an AI agent alongside. Its homepage calls it “the modern customer support tool for your business” and sets it up as an alternative to Intercom and Zendesk. The code is on GitHub, released under the MIT License, where the repository showed 38.8k stars on 3 November 2026. Chatwoot says more than 15,000 businesses use it.
Its channel list is long. The channels page names the website live chat widget, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, LINE, TikTok, X, SMS, voice and an API channel for anything else. Agents work in one inbox with macros and automation rules, from a browser or the iOS and Android apps, and can handle conversations from Slack.
Two kinds of team tend to choose it. One has a developer and wants to own the stack: customer data on its own servers, code it can change, an inbox wired into internal tools. The other wants a familiar shared inbox on a per-agent bill, with AI added as needed. Chatwoot Cloud runs on AWS with servers in the United States, according to its pricing FAQ.
Captain, Chatwoot’s AI agent
Captain answers customers from help center articles, website pages, PDFs and FAQs, one assistant per inbox. When it cannot help, it hands the conversation to your team with a message you write, and you choose what happens when a customer goes quiet, after a wait of 5 minutes to 24 hours (Chatwoot help center). It also drafts replies for agents (Copilot), keeps memories about each customer, and suggests FAQs your help center is missing.
Where Chatwoot is strong
You can own it. An MIT-licensed codebase means you can run Chatwoot on your own server, read every line, fork it and change it. The self-hosted Community Edition is “free forever”, and Chatwoot says you can start there and move to a paid self-hosted plan later with your data and settings carried over. For a business with strict rules about where customer data lives, that matters more than any feature list.
It reaches a lot of channels. Twelve channel types sit on one inbox, so a shop that sells on Instagram or TikTok keeps every message in the same queue.
It is built for developers to extend. A REST API, webhooks, and agent bots built with Dialogflow, Rasa or Amazon Lex sit beside live integrations such as Slack, Linear and Stripe (integrations page).
Its AI meter is easy to read. One reply to a customer is one credit. Label and priority suggestions and Captain conditions in automation rules use none (how Captain credits work). You can forecast the bill by counting replies.
People can take calls in the inbox. On Business and Enterprise, the voice channel connects a Twilio number or WhatsApp Calling, rings whichever agent is free in the browser, lets agents call a contact from the conversation, and saves a recording of every call. Open-source projects also get the Startups plan free, and cloud plans are refundable.
How each one charges
The two price lists count different things, so the headline numbers do not line up. Chatwoot Cloud charges for each agent and meters Captain in credits. Self-hosted Chatwoot charges for each agent too, except on the free Community Edition, and the server is yours to pay for. EzyConn charges for the workspace, and each plan includes a number of people and a number of messages.
Chatwoot Cloud
From Chatwoot’s pricing page:
| Plan | Price | Conversations | Captain credits a month | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker | $0, up to 2 agents | 500 a month | Not included | Live chat only; 30 days of data |
| Startups | $19 an agent a month | No cap, under fair use | 300 | All channels and the help center; 1 year of data |
| Business | $39 an agent a month | No cap, under fair use | 500 | Adds voice, teams and automation rules; 2 years of data |
| Enterprise | $99 an agent a month | No cap, under fair use | 800 | Adds SSO/SAML and audit logs; 3 years of data |
Read the credits column carefully. A Captain reply uses one credit, and so does each Copilot draft, playground test, editor rephrase, audio transcription and Captain translation. Monthly credits do not carry over, and bought credits expire after six months (Chatwoot help center).
Chatwoot self-hosted
From the self-hosted plans page:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Community Edition | $0 an agent a month | Runs on your server, with help through Discord and GitHub. Captain and voice calls are not part of it. |
| Premium Support | $19 an agent a month | Adds Captain, voice calls, custom branding, roles and permissions, and priority email support. |
| Enterprise Edition | $99 an agent a month | Adds SSO/SAML, SLA policies, phone support and developer office hours. |
EzyConn
EzyConn has four plans: Free, Starter, Professional and Enterprise (talk to us). The price is set per workspace, so it stays the same whether one teammate answers or the plan’s full number of people do.
- Free: free, with no card and no end date. 2 people, 500 messages and 1,000 AI credits a month, AI agent included.
- Starter: $25 a month (₹2,499 at checkout). 4 people, 5,000 messages and 10,000 AI credits a month. The phone line and bookings in the chat start here.
- Professional: $95 a month (₹6,499 at checkout). 11 people, 25,000 messages and 50,000 AI credits a month.
Paid plans start with one month free. Checkout bills in Indian rupees, which is why the rupee amount sits next to each dollar price.
What self-hosting costs in practice
The software is free. Running it is a job. Chatwoot’s self-hosting guide asks for at least 2 CPU cores, 4GB of RAM and a 20GB SSD, and recommends 4 or more cores, 8GB or more and 50GB or more for production. It wants Ubuntu 20.04 or later, PostgreSQL 12 or later, Redis 6 or later and a reverse proxy such as Nginx, and installs with a script, Docker, Kubernetes or one-click cloud images.
To put a price on the server, take one host. On DigitalOcean, a Basic server with 2 vCPUs and 4GB of memory costs $24 a month, and one with 4 vCPUs and 8GB, the recommended production size, costs $48 a month (DigitalOcean pricing, checked 3 November 2026). Other hosts charge differently, and a managed database or off-site backups cost extra.
The larger cost is a person. Someone has to apply updates and patches, watch disk space, back up the database, test a restore now and then, and look into it when the server stops answering on a Saturday. A team that already runs servers absorbs that into its week. A shop without one should count those hours, or use the cloud plans. And to get Captain on your own server, the plan is Premium Support at $19 an agent a month. Our guide to open-source versus hosted AI chatbots works through the total cost of owning the stack.
Chatwoot and EzyConn side by side
Chatwoot figures were read on chatwoot.com on 3 November 2026 and describe the cloud plans.
A worked month: six people, 1,500 conversations
Fernleaf Tea Co. is an online tea shop we made up for this example. Six people answer customers: the owner and five part-timers who cover shifts. The shop gets about 1,500 conversations a month on the website chat, WhatsApp and email. Most are the same dozen questions: how long delivery takes, how to brew a particular tea, whether an order has shipped.
One assumption, for the arithmetic only: the AI sends an average of two replies in each conversation, an answer and one follow-up. We leave out Copilot drafts, which also use Chatwoot credits, and the shop pays monthly.
On Chatwoot
| Line | How we got it | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Agent seats | 6 agents × $19 on Startups | $114 |
| Captain replies | 1,500 conversations × 2 replies × 1 credit | 3,000 credits |
| Credits in the plan | Startups includes 300 a month | 300 credits |
| Credits to buy | 3,000 less 300 = 2,700, at $20 per 1,000 | $54 |
| Month on Startups | $114 + $54 | $168 |
| Month on Business | 6 × $39 = $234, plus 2,500 credits at $20 per 1,000 = $50 | $284 |
| Self-hosted, Premium Support | 6 × $19 = $114, plus a $48 server | $162, before model usage and upkeep |
Startups gives the shop every channel, the help center and Captain for $168 a month; Business, with automation rules, teams and voice, is $284. We read the included credits as one allowance for the account, as the pricing FAQ words it. If they were per agent, the Startups top-up would fall from $54 to $24.
On EzyConn
Six people fit inside EzyConn’s Professional plan, which covers 11 people. It includes 25,000 messages a month, about 16 per conversation at this volume, and 50,000 AI credits. The month costs $95 a month (₹6,499 at checkout), the same whether two of the six are on shift or all of them. The bill has no charge per reply or per resolution; each plan sets the messages and AI credits it includes.
The plan also covers the phone line and bookings in the chat. A team of four or fewer fits Starter at $25 a month, within its 5,000 messages.
Your numbers will differ, but the method holds. On Chatwoot: agents times the seat price, plus credits beyond the allowance. On EzyConn: the plan whose people and messages fit the month.
Three moments from a normal week
Sunday, 22:40: a question on WhatsApp
A customer asks whether the jasmine green tea ships to Ireland and how long it takes. Nobody is on shift. Either product can answer at once from the shipping page. On EzyConn the reply shows its source, so the owner can check it on Monday.
Monday, 10:15: a customer who wants a person
A parcel arrived with a split bag of loose tea, and the customer wants a refund, not an article. On EzyConn the AI offers a person, and when the customer accepts they see: “Thanks, I’m connecting you to a support specialist now. Please hold for a moment.” The least busy part-timer is assigned and notified with the whole conversation, the AI pauses, and one click hands it back once the refund is sorted. Our guide to chatbot hand-overs covers what a good one looks like.
Thursday, 11:00: a wholesale call booked in the chat
A café owner on the website chat wants to talk to Fernleaf about buying wholesale. On EzyConn, with the owner’s Google Calendar connected, the AI offers 11:00 or 14:00 on Thursday, books the one the café picks, and sends a confirmation. The bookings page shows how the calendar is checked first.
Which one fits your team
You want to try the AI on real customers before you pay
EzyConnThe Free plan includes the AI agent, 2 people and 500 messages a month, with no card and no end date. Paid plans start with one month free.
Your team is growing past three or four people
EzyConnThe price is set per workspace. Professional covers 11 people, so a new part-timer joins the inbox without a new line on the bill.
Customers ring as often as they write
EzyConnFrom Starter, the AI agent answers inbound calls on your own Twilio number from the same content as the chat, and each call lands in the inbox as a conversation.
You want customers to book a time in the chat
EzyConnThe AI offers open times from your Google or Microsoft 365 calendar, books the appointment and sends the customer a confirmation, on the website chat or WhatsApp.
You want one shared inbox where the AI hands over to a person
EitherBoth put an AI agent in front of a shared team inbox and pass the conversation to a person when the AI should stop.
Where EzyConn fits
EzyConn suits a small or mid-size team that wants an AI agent doing the first reply on chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, email and the phone, with people stepping in when they should. The AI agent is on every plan, answers from your own content in multiple languages, and shows the source.
Customers reach it on the website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, email and, from Starter, inbound phone calls on your own Twilio number, answered with your greeting in one of six English voices. Every call is saved as a conversation in the inbox. Your team replies in the shared inbox or in Slack threads that reply to the customer, and the portal works on phones. You can choose how the AI behaves: answer and hand over, answer only, or people only. See the phone line and the customer support page for how it looks.
Reports show conversations handled by the AI, escalated and led by a person, first reply times, and the reasons the AI could not answer. A teammate’s reply to a question the AI missed waits as a draft answer for you to approve, and reports export to CSV. Zapier, signed webhooks, Google Analytics 4 and a WooCommerce catalogue connect to it. Every limit is on the pricing page, and you can start free and ask it the questions your inbox gets every day.
Chatwoot and EzyConn: common questions
Chatwoot pricing: how much does Chatwoot cost in 2026?
Chatwoot Cloud has four plans: Hacker is free for up to 2 agents and 500 conversations a month on live chat; Startups is $19 an agent a month; Business is $39; Enterprise is $99. Paid plans include 300, 500 or 800 Captain AI credits a month, and more cost $20 per 1,000. Self-hosted, the Community Edition is $0, Premium Support is $19 an agent and Enterprise Edition is $99. All checked on chatwoot.com on 3 November 2026.
Is Chatwoot really free?
The software is. The code is MIT-licensed and the self-hosted Community Edition costs $0 an agent, but you pay for a server and someone to run it, and Captain comes with the paid self-hosted plans. In the cloud, the free Hacker plan covers up to 2 agents and 500 conversations a month on live chat.
Is there a free Chatwoot alternative?
Yes. EzyConn’s Free plan includes the AI agent, 2 people, 500 messages and 1,000 AI credits a month, with no card and no end date. It answers on your website chat from your own content, and paid plans start with one month free when you need more.
What is Captain in Chatwoot, and how are its credits counted?
Captain is Chatwoot’s AI agent. It answers customers from your help center, website pages, PDFs and FAQs, hands the conversation to your team when it cannot help, and drafts replies for agents. Each reply to a customer uses 1 credit, as do Copilot requests and Captain translations. Monthly credits do not carry over; bought credits expire after 6 months.
What do I need to self-host Chatwoot?
Chatwoot’s guide asks for at least 2 CPU cores, 4GB of RAM and a 20GB SSD, and recommends 4 or more cores, 8GB or more and 50GB or more for production, on Ubuntu 20.04 or later with PostgreSQL 12+ and Redis 6+. A DigitalOcean server at the recommended size was $48 a month on 3 November 2026. Add the time of someone who applies updates and checks backups.
Is EzyConn a good Chatwoot alternative?
Yes, for a small team that wants the AI to do the first reply. EzyConn answers on website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, email and inbound phone calls from your own content, books appointments in the chat from Starter, and hands the conversation to a teammate with the whole history. It is priced per workspace, with people and messages included in each plan.
Which is cheaper, Chatwoot or EzyConn?
It depends on how many people answer and how often the AI replies. In our worked example, six people and 1,500 conversations a month, Chatwoot Startups with Captain top-ups came to $168 a month. EzyConn’s Professional plan covers the same team for $95 a month (₹6,499 at checkout).
The verdict
Chatwoot is a serious open-source inbox: the code is yours to run, the channel list is long, and its cloud plans put that inbox on a fair per-agent price, with Captain metered at a rate you can predict.
EzyConn is built for a different first question: how does a customer get a good answer at 22:40 on a Sunday, on the channel they chose, and reach a person when they need one? It answers on chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, email and the phone from your own content, books appointments in the chat, and hands over with the whole conversation, for one price per workspace: $95 a month for the six people in our worked example.
For more head-to-heads, see the EzyConn comparison pages, or read EzyConn vs Tawk.to, EzyConn vs LiveChat and EzyConn vs Zendesk.
Keep reading
- Open-source vs hosted AI chatbots: the total cost
- A guide to self-hosted AI chatbots
- EzyConn vs Tawk.to
- AI support pricing models compared
- How a chatbot hands a conversation to a person
Pricing and features for EzyConn and Chatwoot were checked on each vendor’s published pages on 3 November 2026.