chatwoot

Chatwoot

Overview

Chatwoot is an open-source customer support platform. Self-hosted Intercom alternative with live chat, shared inbox, multi-channel support (website, email, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, SMS), a help center and an AI agent (Captain). A deployment is four containers: the Rails web app, a Sidekiq worker, PostgreSQL and Redis.

Instructions

Step 1: Docker Deployment

# docker-compose.yaml — follows docker-compose.production.yaml in the Chatwoot repository
x-chatwoot: &chatwoot
  image: chatwoot/chatwoot:v4.18.0        # v4.18.0-ce = community edition without enterprise code
  env_file: .env
  volumes:
    - storage_data:/app/storage
  restart: always

services:
  rails:
    <<: *chatwoot
    depends_on: [postgres, redis]
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3000:3000"             # localhost only; a reverse proxy terminates TLS
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - RAILS_ENV=production
      - INSTALLATION_ENV=docker
    entrypoint: docker/entrypoints/rails.sh
    command: ["bundle", "exec", "rails", "s", "-p", "3000", "-b", "0.0.0.0"]

  sidekiq:
    <<: *chatwoot
    depends_on: [postgres, redis]
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - RAILS_ENV=production
      - INSTALLATION_ENV=docker
    command: ["bundle", "exec", "sidekiq", "-C", "config/sidekiq.yml"]

  postgres:
    image: pgvector/pgvector:pg16         # Chatwoot v4 needs the pgvector extension
    restart: always
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=chatwoot
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  redis:
    image: redis:alpine
    restart: always
    command: ["sh", "-c", "redis-server --requirepass \"$REDIS_PASSWORD\""]
    env_file: .env
    volumes:
      - redis_data:/data

volumes:
  storage_data:
  postgres_data:
  redis_data:

# .env — next to the compose file, never committed
cat > .env <<EOF
SECRET_KEY_BASE=$(openssl rand -hex 64)
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 24)
REDIS_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 24)
FRONTEND_URL=https://support.northwind.dev
POSTGRES_HOST=postgres
POSTGRES_USERNAME=postgres
REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379
ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP=false
MAILER_SENDER_EMAIL=Northwind Support <[email protected]>
SMTP_ADDRESS=smtp.postmarkapp.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=${SMTP_USERNAME}
SMTP_PASSWORD=${SMTP_PASSWORD}
EOF
chmod 600 .env

# Create the schema first — also after every image upgrade
docker compose run --rm rails bundle exec rails db:chatwoot_prepare
docker compose up -d
curl -I localhost:3000/api                # expect HTTP 200