The support stack, without running the support stack
Chatwoot's open-source inbox is genuinely good — if someone owns the hosting, upgrades, and LLM keys. Asks is the managed alternative: an AI-first agent with citations and a full inbox, live in minutes, with nothing to operate.
7-day trial · No per-resolution fees
Choose Asks if you want managed, AI-first support with real answer-quality controls. Stay on Chatwoot if data residency or self-hosting is a hard requirement and you have the ops capacity.
Asks vs. Chatwoot
| Asks | Chatwoot | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat $39 / $149 / $349 per month with AI credits included — no per-resolution or per-conversation meter | Self-hosted free (you run it); cloud $19/$39/$99 per agent per month; Captain AI credit-metered ($20 per 1,000 beyond allotments) |
| Operations | Fully managed — nothing to host, upgrade, or patch | Self-hosted: hosting, upgrades, backups, and LLM API keys are yours to manage |
| AI agent | Core of the product: trained on your content, citations, groundedness check, handoff with AI summary | Captain — a capable assistant, credit-metered, not available on the free community edition |
| Data ownership | Export or delete your data anytime; never used to train models for other customers | Full ownership when self-hosted — the honest advantage |
| Cost of 'free' | $39–349/month, all-in | $0 license + server costs + upgrade time + LLM keys — cheap becomes expensive if nobody owns it |
Competitor details from public pricing pages and docs, as of mid-2026 — verify before deciding. Read the full field in 6 best Chatwoot alternatives in 2026 (hosted and open source).
Your engineers have a product to build
Self-hosted support software is a standing ops tax — upgrades, incidents, keys. Asks removes the whole category of work.
AI answering is the core, not an add-on
Captain assists; the Asks agent resolves — trained on your content, with citations and a groundedness check, on every plan.
Flat, seat-inclusive pricing
Chatwoot cloud is per-agent. Asks includes 10–50 seats in flat plans, so adding a teammate isn't a pricing decision.
When Chatwoot is the better choice
- Data residency or self-hosting is a compliance requirement.
- You have engineering capacity and want full control of your stack.
- You need an MIT-licensed foundation you can fork and customize.
Is Asks open source like Chatwoot?
No — Asks is a managed product. If open source is a hard requirement, Chatwoot (or Zammad) is the right lane. What Asks offers instead is zero operational burden plus AI answer-quality controls (citations, groundedness checks) that no self-hosted option ships today.
How does Asks compare to Chatwoot's Captain AI?
Captain is credit-metered ($20 per 1,000 beyond plan allotments) and unavailable on the free community edition. The Asks agent is the core of every plan: trained on your website and docs, answering with citations, escalating with an AI summary attached.
Is Asks more expensive than self-hosting Chatwoot?
On license cost alone, yes — self-hosting is free. All-in, it depends what your time is worth: hosting, upgrades, backups, and LLM API keys are real recurring costs. Asks is $39–349/month with nothing to operate.
Try the Chatwoot alternative today
Train Asks on your website in minutes, test it in the playground, and see the difference before your trial ends.