Chatwoot vs UVdesk
Both are alternatives to Freshdesk. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Chatwoot
An open-core omnichannel inbox strongest at live chat, WhatsApp, and social messaging.
Chatwoot unifies live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, SMS, and email into one team inbox, with a Captain AI layer for FAQ-driven auto-replies on paid tiers. Chatwoot ships as an 'open core' project: the community edition (the whole visible codebase outside one folder) is MIT-licensed and free to self-host with no seat limit, while a smaller set of enterprise features (SSO/SAML, agent capacity management, custom branding, SLA policies) live in a separate 'enterprise/' directory under Chatwoot's own proprietary license and require a paid subscription even when self-hosted.
UVdesk
A Symfony-based open-source help desk with ticketing, a knowledge base, and e-commerce integrations.
UVdesk is a PHP/Symfony help desk offering email ticketing, a customer knowledge base, saved replies, workflows, and native integrations aimed at online sellers (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento). It's a solid, mature option for teams already in the PHP/Symfony ecosystem or running an e-commerce storefront who want ticketing tied closely to order/customer data — a niche Freshdesk serves through paid connector apps rather than native integrations.
Side by side
| Chatwoot | UVdesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 84 | 79 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT (core); enterprise/ directory is a separate proprietary license, verified directly against chatwoot/chatwoot's own LICENSE file | OSL-3.0 |
| Pricing | Community edition free to self-host, unlimited agents. Self-hosted paid tiers: Premium Support $19/agent/month (Captain AI, voice, branding, roles/permissions) and Enterprise $99/agent/month (adds SSO/SAML, SLA). Cloud-hosted plans start at $19/agent/month (Startups tier). | Free to self-host (community edition). UVdesk also sells a separate hosted SaaS plan and paid marketplace add-ons. |
Chatwoot edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Chatwoot
Strengths
- +MIT-licensed core is genuinely open source, not source-available — you can audit, fork, and modify it freely
- +Best-in-class channel coverage for chat-first support: WhatsApp, Instagram DM, Telegram, SMS, and live chat widget out of the box, broader than Freshdesk's native channel set on lower tiers
- +Very active project (multiple releases a month) with a large community and strong docs
- +Self-hosting the community edition is completely free with no agent-count restriction
Trade-offs
- −SSO/SAML, SLA policies, and agent capacity management sit behind a paid license even when self-hosted — not a full feature set for free
- −Captain AI (the auto-resolution layer, Chatwoot's rough equivalent of Freddy AI Agent) is a paid add-on, not part of the free community edition
- −Less oriented toward classic long-form ticket workflows than Freshdesk or Zammad; strongest for chat-style support
UVdesk
Strengths
- +Open Software License 3.0 is OSI-approved, and the code is fully visible/modifiable
- +Strong out-of-the-box e-commerce integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento) that neither Zammad nor FreeScout match natively
- +Sizeable community (19k+ GitHub stars) and an active Symfony-based plugin ecosystem
- +Free self-hosted core with no agent-count ceiling
Trade-offs
- −OSL-3.0 is a copyleft license with unusual patent-termination clauses that are less common and less well-understood than AGPL/MIT/Apache — worth a quick read for anyone building a commercial product on top of it
- −Release cadence is slower than Zammad, Chatwoot, or FreeScout (last tagged repository activity noticeably quieter over the past several months)
- −Symfony/PHP setup has a steeper install curve than FreeScout's simpler stack
More Freshdesk head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-11. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.