Deploy Chatwoot

Deploy and Host Chatwoot on Railway

Chatwoot is an open-source customer engagement platform: live chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and SMS collapsed into one shared inbox your support agents work from. Built on Rails and Vue, it is the self-hosted alternative to Intercom, Zendesk and Freshdesk — no per-seat fee, and every conversation stays on infrastructure you control.

Self-host Chatwoot on Railway from the official chatwoot/chatwoot:v4.16.2-ce image. chatwoot-web runs Puma on port 3000 behind the public domain, health-checked at /health; a private chatwoot-worker runs Sidekiq, so job throughput is never tied to web memory. Managed Postgres, Redis and a Railway object storage bucket hold records, queues and attachments — no volume needed.

Getting Started with Chatwoot on Railway

Open the Railway domain once both services are green. Chatwoot ships no default credentials: the first request redirects to /installation/onboarding, a one-time form creating the super-admin. It appears even with ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP=false and closes for good once submitted, so claim it immediately. Then open Settings → Inboxes → Add Inbox → Website for a script tag to paste into your site. To verify end to end, load the widget in a private window, message yourself as a visitor and reply from the dashboard: a live conversation proves Postgres, Redis and ActionCable are wired, the bot follow-ups prove Sidekiq is draining, and an attachment confirms the bucket. Set SMTP before inviting teammates; unset, the mailer falls back to sendmail, which the image lacks.

About Hosting Chatwoot

Self-host Chatwoot when transcripts are regulated data, when per-agent pricing stops scaling, or when the widget must come from your domain.

• Shared omnichannel inbox — website chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, SMS and an API channel in one queue.
• Embeddable live chat widget — colours, greetings, pre-chat forms and business hours per inbox.
• Automations, canned responses and a Help Center — routing rules plus a knowledge base inside the widget.
• Reports, CSAT and CSV export, a REST API, signed webhooks and agent bots.

Why Deploy Chatwoot on Railway

Railway runs the web tier, worker tier and all three data stores as one project:

• Pinned v4.16.2-ce image on both services — no latest drift.
• Explicit start commands, so neither container falls back to the image's IRB default.
• Migrations run as a pre-deploy step, not on every boot.
• Managed Postgres already carrying pgvector, plus Redis and a bucket.
• HTTPS domain, /health check and the SSL setting Rails needs behind a proxy.

Common Use Cases

• Omnichannel support desk — one queue for chat, email and social; no tab-hopping.
• WhatsApp-first support — work a WhatsApp Business number beside every other channel.
• In-product support — embed the widget, identify logged-in users, route by plan.

Dependencies for Chatwoot

• chatwoot-web — chatwoot/chatwoot:v4.16.2-ce, port 3000, health check /health. Puma serves the dashboard, widget and API. The image sets CMD ["irb"] and no ENTRYPOINT, so a start command is required.
• chatwoot-worker — same image running sidekiq -C config/sidekiq.yml, private: mail, webhooks, bot replies, report rollups. Match its tag to web; stay at one replica, as scheduled jobs assume one leader.
• Postgres — Chatwoot's schema declares the vector extension, so plain Postgres refuses the schema load; pg_trgm, pgcrypto and pg_stat_statements are needed too. Managed Postgres 18 has all four.
• Redis — Sidekiq queues, ActionCable pub/sub for live delivery, cached config.
• chatwoot-storage — S3-compatible bucket for attachments, avatars and article images.

Chatwoot Environment Variables Reference

Deployment Dependencies

chatwoot/chatwoot · Docker Hub · docs. The pinned -ce (Community Edition) build is MIT throughout; the plain v4.16.2 tag bundles an enterprise/ tree licensed for production only with a paid subscription, so Captain AI, SLAs and SAML are absent.

Hardware Requirements for Self-Hosting Chatwoot

At rest it draws ~1.0 GB for web, ~0.56 GB for the worker and ~0.15 GB for the data stores; WEB_CONCURRENCY=1 roughly halves the web figure.

Self-Hosting Chatwoot with Docker

Upstream ships a production Compose file covering both roles plus Postgres and Redis:

git clone https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot.git
cd chatwoot && cp .env.example .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yaml run --rm rails rails db:chatwoot_prepare
docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yaml up -d

Or run the web container alone, passing the start command:

docker run -d --name chatwoot-web -p 3000:3000 \
  -e SECRET_KEY_BASE="$(openssl rand -hex 64)" \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:pass@postgres:5432/chatwoot_production" \
  -e REDIS_URL="redis://:pass@redis:6379" \
  -e FRONTEND_URL="https://support.example.com" \
  chatwoot/chatwoot:v4.16.2-ce \
  bundle exec rails s -p 3000 -b 0.0.0.0

The worker runs the same image with bundle exec sidekiq -C config/sidekiq.yml; migrations belong in a release step.

Chatwoot vs Intercom and Zendesk

Only Chatwoot runs end to end on hardware you own.

How Much Does Chatwoot Cost to Self-Host?

Chatwoot Community Edition is free and MIT-licensed with no agent cap, conversation cap or per-message fee, so self-hosting on Railway costs infrastructure only. Chatwoot Cloud runs from a free 2-agent tier through $19, $39 and $99 per agent per month, and paid self-hosted plans ($19 for Captain AI, $99 for SSO/SAML and SLAs) unlock the enterprise build.

Troubleshooting Self-Hosted Chatwoot

Health checks time out with no request logs → FORCE_SSL=true redirects plain-HTTP requests, and the probe arrives internally without X-Forwarded-Proto. Chatwoot sets force_ssl but not assume_ssl, and the SSL middleware sits above the Rails logger, so redirected probes log nothing and the app looks idle rather than broken. The start command sets assume_ssl in an initializer, keeping HSTS and secure cookies.

Schema load aborts on extension "vector" is not available → vector and pg_stat_statements are untrusted extensions a non-superuser cannot create. Create them as a superuser before first boot; Railway's managed Postgres already has them.

FAQ

What is Chatwoot?

A shared omnichannel inbox for live chat, email, WhatsApp, social and SMS, plus a knowledge base, automations and reports — open source and self-hostable.

What does this Railway template deploy?

chatwoot-web (chatwoot/chatwoot:v4.16.2-ce, port 3000, health check /health), a private chatwoot-worker running Sidekiq on the same image, managed Postgres, Redis and a bucket. No volume.

Why does self-hosted Chatwoot need Postgres, Redis and object storage?

Postgres holds accounts, contacts and messages; Redis backs the Sidekiq queues and the ActionCable channel behind live delivery; the bucket holds attachments, so both containers stay stateless.

What are the default login credentials for self-hosted Chatwoot?

None. The first visit redirects to /installation/onboarding, which creates the super-admin once, then closes.

How do I send and receive Chatwoot messages programmatically?

Create an access token under Profile Settings → Access Token and call /api/v1/accounts/{id}/... with an api_access_token header; webhooks under Settings → Integrations push signed events out.