Customer communication is one of those areas where tools often fall short. Big-name platforms like Intercom or Zendesk are powerful, but they are also notoriously expensive and overloaded with features that many teams will never touch. For a growing business, what you want is something focused, affordable, and flexible. That’s exactly what Chatwoot delivers.

We've been using Chatwoot for a few months at Agility HQ, and it has quickly become a central part of how we handle customer and prospect conversations. What excites us even more is the potential to roll it out for clients, giving them the same streamlined way to manage communication without the steep costs of traditional enterprise platforms.

Multi-Channel Support That Works

One of Chatwoot’s biggest strengths is its multi-channel approach. Whether messages come in by email, WhatsApp, or directly from a website chat widget, they all flow into the same shared inbox. This might sound straightforward, but in practice it makes a huge difference. Instead of jumping between disconnected tools or losing track of conversations, everything is centralised and easy to follow.

The unified inbox means our team can collaborate more effectively, assigning, tagging, and tracking conversations with full visibility. It’s simple but powerful, and it ensures customers never feel ignored, no matter which channel they use to reach out.

Integrations That Extend Its Value

Chatwoot is designed to work well alongside the rest of your business tools. The Slack integration is particularly useful, ensuring updates and conversations can flow directly into the channels where the team is already active. Beyond that, Chatwoot’s API and webhook support open up almost unlimited possibilities.

Rather than relying on a rigid marketplace of prebuilt connectors, Chatwoot provides the flexibility to build exactly what you need. Webhooks make it straightforward to trigger actions in other systems whenever events occur in Chatwoot, such as new messages or updated contacts. The API allows for deeper integrations, whether that’s pulling data into a CRM, triggering automations in a platform like n8n, or embedding Chatwoot into a broader workflow.

This approach requires a little more setup than a plug-and-play connector, but it also gives you far more control. For businesses that want custom automation or who already have a tech stack built around tools like Airtable or internal systems, the openness of Chatwoot’s integration options is a real strength.

AI That Actually Helps

AI features in many tools feel more like a gimmick than a real asset. Chatwoot’s implementation is different. Summaries, canned responses, and intent detection have been genuinely useful in reducing the workload. Summaries are especially valuable when dealing with ongoing conversations, giving quick context without trawling through message history. Intent detection adds another layer of intelligence by helping route or prioritise conversations more effectively.

Areas for Improvement

No tool is perfect, and Chatwoot is no exception. One of the biggest improvements I’d like to see is the ability to use Gmail aliases as the primary email address. Many teams rely on aliases for managing customer-facing communication, and having this built in would make setup far smoother.

I’d also love to see a way to view the history of SMS campaigns directly on the contact record. This would make it easier to track past outreach efforts and keep communication fully transparent.

On the usability side, the mobile app is quite lightweight. It works, but it doesn’t yet match the depth of the desktop experience. Similarly, some configurations, particularly for WhatsApp, can feel convoluted, which may be a hurdle for less technical teams. These are not deal-breakers, but they are areas where refinement would add real polish.

A Better Alternative to Intercom + Others

Despite these small gaps, Chatwoot delivers exceptional value. Compared to tools like Intercom and Zendesk, it is not only more affordable but also more approachable. The fact that it can be run as open source makes it even more compelling for organisations that want greater control over their customer communication stack.

For us, it's already become essential. Chatwoot proves that you don’t need to pay enterprise prices to get enterprise-level results.