Both let a team answer WhatsApp and other channels from a shared inbox. The difference is what else each one does and how they charge. This comparison is written by IdeasDevOps, and we manage Chatwoot for our clients; that is why we also say when Kommo is the better fit.
Kommo is a sales CRM with messaging: pipelines, sales bots and AI, licensed per user. Chatwoot is an open-source customer service inbox: installed on your own server, you do not pay for every person who answers.
| Chatwoot (community, self-hosted) | Kommo | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source omnichannel customer service inbox (MIT license). | Sales CRM with messaging, delivered as a cloud service. |
| How it charges | No per-agent license fee. You pay for the server and its management. Note: Chatwoot Cloud, hosted by Chatwoot, does charge per agent (USD 19 to 99 per month). | Per user: USD 20 (Basic), USD 30 (Advanced) or USD 45 (Pro) per month, with a 6-month minimum payment. Enterprise is custom. |
| Official WhatsApp API (Meta Cloud API). | WhatsApp Business with Meta-approved templates. Numbers by plan: 1 on Basic, 3 on Advanced (plus 1 per additional user), unlimited on Pro. | |
| Other channels | Instagram, Facebook Messenger, website chat, email and Telegram, in the same inbox. | Multichannel messaging built into the CRM. |
| Sales pipeline | No. It is built for customer service and support. | Yes. It is the core of the product. |
| Bots and AI | The community edition does not include Captain, Chatwoot’s AI. An external AI agent can be connected. | AI credits per user by plan and AI agents from the Advanced plan; no-code bots. |
| Where the data lives | On the server where it is installed. | In Kommo’s cloud. |
With Kommo, 5 users on the Basic plan cost USD 100 per month (USD 600 every 6 months); on Advanced, USD 150; on Pro, USD 225. If the team grows to 8 people, the cost grows in the same proportion. With Chatwoot community on your own server, adding people does not change the license, which is free: the cost is the server and whoever maintains it.
Chatwoot is one of the open-source tools we integrate with our clients’ systems. We install it on a server, connect your number to the official WhatsApp API and the other channels, and take care of updates, monitoring and backups. If you need an AI agent, we connect it with AI Agent Engine. The service is quoted based on channels and numbers.
The community edition is open source (MIT license) and charges no per-agent license when you install it on your own server. Chatwoot Cloud, the version hosted by the company itself, costs USD 19 to 99 per agent per month.
Kommo connects to WhatsApp Business with Meta-approved templates and shows official Meta partner badges on its website. The official API is not what sets the two apart: the pricing model and the purpose of each tool are.
That is not its purpose. Chatwoot organizes customer service: conversation assignment, labels, private notes and saved replies. If your sales process needs a pipeline with stages, Kommo or another sales CRM fits better.