Originally published at kuponaut.com, where prices and plan details are kept up to date.
Chatwoot puts website live chat and your other messaging channels into one shared inbox, where a small team can reply to, assign and resolve conversations. This walkthrough covers the first setup on Chatwoot Cloud: creating the website inbox, installing the widget, adding agents, setting business hours and a pre-chat form, and writing canned responses. The steps and field names come from Chatwoot's own user guide.
When Chatwoot is the right tool
Chatwoot suits a website or app where visitors ask questions and more than one person answers them. Every agent sees the same inbox, along with who is handling what and each contact's history. Website live chat is included on every plan. Paid plans also bring email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, SMS and other channels into the same view.
If you are a solo founder who gets a handful of messages a week, a contact form is probably enough. Chatwoot earns its place once two or more people share the work, once you want canned replies and labels, or when the same customer writes to you on more than one channel. It is also open source, so a team with a server can self-host it for free. This guide covers the hosted Cloud version.
Step 1: start the trial and create the website inbox
Sign up for the 15-day free trial of Chatwoot Cloud. The pricing page doesn't say whether the trial needs a card, so check the signup screen. Once you are in, go to Settings → Inboxes, click Add Inbox and choose the Website channel.
The user guide lists the fields on this screen:
- Website name, shown inside your inbox
- Website domain, the URL where the widget will live
- Widget color
- Welcome heading, the greeting visitors see
- Welcome tagline, the line under it
- Channel greeting message, an optional message sent automatically when a visitor starts a chat
Then click Create Inbox.
Make the heading and tagline specific to your site. "Questions about pricing or setup? Ask here" tells a visitor what the chat is for. "How can we help?" doesn't.
Step 2: add agents to the inbox
Right after you create the inbox, Chatwoot asks you to pick agents from a drop-down and click Add agents. Don't skip this step. According to the user guide, conversations are routed only to agents linked to the inbox, and that includes administrators: if you don't add yourself, you won't see the inbox.
To invite colleagues first, go to Settings → Agents and add each person as an Agent or an Administrator. Then link them on the inbox's Collaborators tab. The same tab has an automatic assignment toggle. When it is on, new conversations are handed straight to the inbox's agents instead of sitting unassigned.
Step 3: install the widget on your site
After the agents step, Chatwoot shows a snippet with a Copy button. Paste it into your site's main template so it loads on every page. In most setups it goes just before the closing body tag. To find it again later, open the website inbox's settings and go to the Configuration tab.
Chatwoot also publishes guides for specific platforms such as Webflow and React Native, plus a website SDK for passing a visitor's name and email from your own app.
To check the install, open your site in a private window. The widget bubble should appear in the color you chose, and a test message should reach your inbox within seconds.
Step 4: business hours, a pre-chat form and CSAT
Go back to the inbox settings.
- Business Hours: turn on business availability, then set the hours for each day and your time zone. Add an off-hours message so visitors know when to expect a reply.
- Pre Chat Form: ask for a name, email and phone number before the chat starts. For other fields, create a custom attribute first under Settings → Custom Attributes.
- Email collect: on by default. Visitors are asked for an email address when a conversation starts, so you can follow up after they leave.
- CSAT: sends a short satisfaction survey every time a conversation is resolved. The results show up under Reports.
Click Update after each change.
Step 5: canned responses for your most common questions
Go to Settings → Canned Responses and click Add canned response. Each one needs a Short Code, at least two characters long and unique in the account, plus the Content you want to send. In a conversation, type a slash in the reply box, pick a response or type its short code, and press Enter. The text fills the reply box, and you can still edit it before sending.
Canned responses can include variables for the contact's first name, the agent's name, the conversation ID and your custom attributes. If a value is missing, the placeholder is left blank, so write each sentence to read naturally without it.
Five good first responses:
- pricing
- where to find a feature
- how to cancel
- a greeting
- a closing line
Step 6: labels and teams
Labels are the easiest way to see what people ask about. Add them from the conversation sidebar, or select several conversations and label them in bulk. Labels also work as filters, and you can save filters as custom views.
Teams, automation rules and voice are Business-plan features, and only administrators can create teams. To set one up:
- Go to Settings → Teams and click Create new team.
- Give it a name and decide whether to allow auto assign.
- Add its agents.
With auto assign on, the team's conversations are spread across its members. With it off, they wait in the team queue until someone picks one up.
What Chatwoot Cloud costs
I read the pricing page on 26 October 2026. Every Cloud plan is priced per agent per month, and no annual prices are shown.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker | $0, up to 2 agents | 500 conversations a month, live chat only, 30-day data retention |
| Startups | $19 per agent | Unlimited conversations (fair use), all channels, 300 Captain AI credits, help centre, 1-year retention |
| Business | $39 per agent | Adds voice, teams and automation rules; 500 Captain credits, 2-year retention |
| Enterprise | $99 per agent | SSO/SAML, audit logs, 800 Captain credits, 3-year retention |
Extra Captain AI credits cost $20 per 1,000 and can't be refunded, so budget for them separately if you plan to use the AI assistant. Open-source projects can apply for the Startups plan for free, and the self-hosted edition costs nothing to run on your own server. In practice, the number of agent seats moves your bill far more than anything else, so count who really needs a seat before you subscribe.
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