Chatwoot vs Help Scout
Chatwoot and Help Scout are both team inbox software. Chatwoot is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 39k GitHub stars. Help Scout is a commercial product from Help Scout.
Which to pick
- Pick Chatwoot when
- You want to self-host a shared inbox, especially one that handles WhatsApp or chat beside email.
- Pick Help Scout when
- A small support team wants customer email handled cleanly without the overhead of a ticketing system.
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.
Shared inbox helpdesk with a knowledge base, live chat beacon and simple customer profiles, designed to feel like email.
Reply-time policies are in the paid Enterprise edition, and the chat-style screen handles long email threads less naturally than an email client.
Phone support and complex routing are limited.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server, cloud service and mobile app
Cloud service and mobile app
Ruby, Rails, Vue, PostgreSQL and Redis
Not published
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Closed source, sold by Help Scout
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
25 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v4.19.1.
Not known
Other comparisons
More team inboxes and shared inbox 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.