OpenAgent vs Chatwoot at a glance
| Feature | OpenAgent | Chatwoot |
|---|---|---|
| Licence and hosting | Proprietary, hosted | MIT-licensed open source, cloud or self-hosted |
| Data ownership | Vendor-hosted with Enterprise DPA | Complete, if self-hosted — a genuine advantage |
| Pricing basis | Flat plan, seats included | Per agent — $19 / $39 / $99 per month, billed annually |
| Free tier | Free plan — one AI agent on website chat | Hacker plan — 2 agents, 500 conversations/month |
| AI allowance | Unlimited text replies on every paid plan; voice minutes are the only meter | Captain AI credits: 300 / 500 / 800 by plan; $20 per extra 1,000 |
| Native order actions | Track, return, exchange, refund, subscriptions | Built via API or community integrations |
| Shared inbox | Included on Desk and above | Core product — mature and well liked |
| Channels | Chat, email, WhatsApp, IG, Messenger, Slack; voice higher up | Omnichannel; voice on Business and above |
| Product recommendations & cart recovery | Built in | Not an ecommerce-specific capability |
| Infrastructure burden | None | Yours, if self-hosted |
| Best fit | Stores automating the order queue | Teams that need data ownership or a general-purpose inbox |
Why ecommerce teams choose OpenAgent over Chatwoot
Seats included rather than billed per agent
Chatwoot's cloud plans are $19, $39, and $99 per agent per month. OpenAgent's Desk plan is $149 flat with five seats and Front Desk is $399 with fifteen, so growing the human team does not grow the bill.
AI sized to resolve, not just assist
OpenAgent does not meter text conversations at all — every text channel is unlimited on every paid plan — so the agent can attempt the whole queue rather than assisting a human on selected replies.
Native ecommerce actions
Order tracking, returns and exchanges with label generation, refunds inside merchant-set caps, subscription changes, product recommendations, and cart recovery work across Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce as soon as the store is connected.
No infrastructure to run
Self-hosting buys data ownership and costs upgrades, patching, backups, monitoring, and on-call time. OpenAgent is hosted, so that maintenance is not your team's problem.
Ecommerce reporting out of the box
Resolution rate, CSAT, and revenue influenced are reported by default, rather than general conversation metrics you interpret into ecommerce outcomes.
Pricing compared
As of August 2026, flat monthly plans, one per business: Free ($0, a single AI agent on website chat), Desk $149 (every text channel unlimited — website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, SMS, email — with help desk, CRM, workflows, and 5 seats), Front Desk $399 (adds the AI receptionist on a real phone number, 500 voice minutes included then 25¢/minute, 15 seats), Concierge $1,200 (done-for-you setup and monthly tuning, 1,500 voice minutes then 25¢/minute). Text is never metered; voice minutes are the only meter, with a spend cap you set. Seats are included per tier rather than billed per agent.
As published in July 2026, Chatwoot's cloud plans are billed per agent per month with annual billing: Hacker $0 (up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month, live chat only), Startups $19 (unlimited conversations, all channels except voice, 300 Captain AI credits), Business $39 (voice, teams, automation, 500 credits), Enterprise $99 (SSO/SAML, audit logs, 800 credits). Additional Captain AI credits are $20 per 1,000. Self-hosting is available under the MIT licence, and the Startups plan is free for open-source projects. Confirm current figures on chatwoot.com/pricing.
Chatwoot's cloud pricing is fair for a human-led help desk and self-hosting is genuinely free of licence cost. The pressure points for a store are per-agent billing, which grows with headcount, and modest AI credit allowances relative to a busy queue. OpenAgent trades data ownership for unmetered text AI volume, included seats, and native ecommerce actions.
Choose OpenAgent when
- You run a Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce store and want order actions natively
- You expect support headcount to grow and do not want per-agent pricing
- You want the AI to resolve the queue rather than assist selected replies
- You do not want to run, patch, and monitor support infrastructure
- You report on resolution rate, CSAT, and revenue influenced
Choose Chatwoot when
- Data ownership or residency is a hard requirement rather than a preference
- You want to self-host and already run infrastructure competently
- Avoiding vendor lock-in is a deliberate architectural choice
- Your business is not ecommerce, or the inbox serves several unrelated teams
- You are an open-source project eligible for the free Startups plan
Switching from Chatwoot
Moving from Chatwoot to OpenAgent is straightforward on the content side and needs a decision on the data side. Export your knowledge base articles and canned responses, import them into OpenAgent's training panel, connect your store with OAuth, route your support address, and swap the widget snippet. Order actions work immediately, so any Shopify integration you built against Chatwoot's API is retired rather than ported. The question to settle first is why you self-hosted: if it was for data ownership, review OpenAgent's Enterprise terms — DPA, SSO and SAML, audit logs — before deciding. If it was to avoid subscription cost, compare the hosted plan against the infrastructure and engineering hours you are currently spending.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to switch from Chatwoot?
Join the ecommerce teams resolving more tickets, answering 24/7, and turning support into a revenue channel with OpenAgent.