Chatwoot vs Crisp
Chatwoot and Crisp are both live chat software. Chatwoot is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 39k GitHub stars. Crisp is a commercial product from Crisp IM.
Which to pick
- Pick Chatwoot when
- You want to self-host a shared inbox, especially one that handles WhatsApp or chat beside email.
- Pick Crisp when
- A small startup wants chat and shared inbox for the whole team without per-seat pricing.
Side by side
A customer messaging inbox for email, website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and social, with assignment, private notes, collision warnings, canned responses, rules, reports, contact profiles and mobile apps.
Customer messaging with website chat, shared inbox, knowledge base, chatbots and campaigns, priced per workspace rather than per seat.
Reply-time policies are in the paid Enterprise edition, and the chat-style screen handles long email threads less naturally than an email client.
It is a small vendor and AI features are limited on lower plans.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server, cloud service and mobile app
Cloud service, mobile app and desktop app
Ruby, Rails, Vue, PostgreSQL and Redis
Not published
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Closed source, sold by Crisp IM
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
39k GitHub stars
No Wikipedia article of its own
Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v4.19.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More live chat and customer messaging tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-06 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.