Starting from version 2.0, Chatwoot ships two versions of its software. The community edition is MIT licensed, and an enterprise edition is available under a proprietary license. Both software versions are built from a single GitHub repository.
While the community edition will always remain free and open-source, the enterprise edition is the effort to sustain both the offerings and Chatwoot as a commercial business. This model has been derived from other commercial open-source companies like Gitlab, Mattermost, Metabase, etc.
Differences between Community and Enterprise editions
The community edition of Chatwoot has all the relevant customer communication features that a growing business requires. At the same time, the enterprise edition contains proprietary features such as customizable dashboards, SLA Management, agent scheduling software, IP blocklisting, etc., suited for larger organizations.
While the source code for both editions is open to the public in our Github repo, all the /enterprise folder contents are copyrighted.
Choosing the right edition
We recommend you download and install Chatwoot Enterprise Edition to upgrade to a paid tier in the future without having to reinstall Chatwoot.
Enterprise Edition
The Enterprise edition offers the following.
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All Chatwoot features
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Visible and auditable complete source code
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All features of the community edition are available without a subscription.
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Direct Support options
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Option to easily upgrade to paid features
Community Edition
The Community edition offers the following.
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Visible and modifiable complete source code
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No access to the paid features
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Community Support only
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It will require a migration to the Enterprise edition to add paid features in the future.