The short answer
- Chatwoot's official migration guide moves 2 kinds of data in full and 1 partly; 2 things stay behind. What moves
- 3 public accounts of making this switch: 1 switching, 1 switched, 1 went back. Read them
- Switching help: Chatwoot Cloud offers a 15-day free trial plus a permanently free Hacker plan: up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month, 30-day data retention (voice and Teams features not included). chatwoot.com
What Zendesk and Chatwoot cost
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, as stored in the Stackcut catalog. Each price links its source.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zendesk Support Team | $25/user/mo | $19/user/mo | Email and ticketing, ticket routing, pre-written responses (macros), automations and triggers, prebuilt dashboards; no messaging/live chat or help center (Suite only). $25/agent billed monthly (the page's Monthly toggle), $19/agent/month paid yearly. |
| Zendesk Suite Team | $69/user/mo | $55/user/mo | Adds messaging and live chat, 1 help center (knowledge base), AI agents (billed per automated resolution), omnichannel routing and telephony; file storage 10 GB + 2 GB per agent. $69/agent billed monthly, $55/agent/month paid yearly. |
| Zendesk Suite Professional | $149/user/mo | $115/user/mo | Adds skills-based routing, SLAs, CSAT surveys, side conversations, up to 5 help centers, up to 100 light agents and an IVR phone tree. Copilot add-on $50/agent/month paid yearly. |
| Chatwoot Startups cloud | $19/user/mo | not shown | All channels but voice (email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, SMS, Telegram, API); help center; reports; 300 Captain AI credits a month ($20 per extra 1,000); no teams or automation rules; 1-year data retention; unlimited conversations under the fair-use policy. |
| Chatwoot Business cloud | $39/user/mo | not shown | Adds teams, automation rules, voice, SLAs, custom attributes and pre-chat forms; 500 Captain AI credits; 2-year data retention. |
| Chatwoot Enterprise cloud | $99/user/mo | not shown | Adds SSO/SAML, audit logs, agent capacity and branding removal; 800 Captain AI credits; 3-year data retention. |
| Chatwoot Premium Support self-hosted | $19/user/mo | not shown | Self-hosted with Captain AI, custom branding, agent capacity, roles and permissions, and priority email support. |
- Chatwoot free plan: Hacker cloud plan: up to 2 agents, 500 conversations a month, website live chat only (no email or help center), 30-day data retention. The self-hosted Community Edition is free. chatwoot.com
Moving from Zendesk to Chatwoot
What Chatwoot's importer carries over, what it leaves behind, and any help it offers switchers.
To Chatwoot
Official guide chatwoot.com · Tools: Chatwoot Contacts CSV import, Chatwoot conversation API, Website live chat snippet swap
Moves: contacts (full); live chat widget (full); conversations (tickets) (partial). chatwoot.com
Doesn't move: No self-serve conversation importer: ticket history requires API work, not a dashboard upload; Guide does not cover help-center articles, triggers, automations or macros. chatwoot.com
Watch out for:
- Remove the Zendesk widget before pasting the Chatwoot snippet to avoid running both chatwoot.com
- Ticket history has no one-click importer; it must be pushed through the API chatwoot.com
Community guide flag92.com · Tools: Zendesk REST API (tickets.json, users.json), curl export scripts, Chatwoot Automation Rules, n8n
Moves: tickets (subject, priority, status, custom fields, comments) (partial); users (partial); organizations (partial); triggers (partial). flag92.com
Doesn't move: Zendesk Triggers + Automations + Macros + SLA Policies have no 1:1 equivalent in Chatwoot; redesign required; Scheduled Zendesk automations: no native Chatwoot equivalent; wire an n8n cron querying the API instead; Macro field/tag changes: Chatwoot canned responses are text-only; tags and fields must move elsewhere. flag92.com
Watch out for:
- Don't cut over without a parallel run: unmaintained Zendesk automations only surface as missing after cutover flag92.com
- Don't drop historical search: customers will reference old tickets flag92.com
- Don't carry every macro: curate to the 30-50 actually used flag92.com
Switching help: Chatwoot Cloud offers a 15-day free trial plus a permanently free Hacker plan: up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month, 30-day data retention (voice and Teams features not included). chatwoot.com
Switching help: Chatwoot offers the Startups plan free of charge to open-source projects and nonprofits; claim by emailing hello@chatwoot.com with details of the project. chatwoot.com
Switching help: 15-day free trial of full Chatwoot Cloud. Separately, Chatwoot gives the Startups plan free of charge to open-source projects and nonprofits on request. chatwoot.com
From each destination's own migration docs and switching pages, plus community write-ups where no official guide exists, each checked against its page. Confirm terms on the linked page before you rely on an offer.
People who moved from Zendesk to Chatwoot
3 public accounts of leaving Zendesk: 1 switching, 1 switched, 1 went back. Summaries are ours; each links the original, and each was checked against its page before it appeared here.
A team mid-migration from Zendesk to self-hosted Chatwoot filed a bug in week one: agent emails thread into conversations attributed to the customer, and there is no reliable reply-by-email path, a workflow they relied on in Zendesk. GitHub
An engineer who implemented self-hosted Chatwoot for a growing support team benchmarks it against Zendesk: fine so far, but they worry search performance on PostgreSQL will make Chatwoot feel sluggish versus Zendesk once archives and agent counts grow. GitHub
Author of a vendor blog (Supp sells an AI classification layer) reports watching four teams leave Intercom/Zendesk-style cloud tools for self-hosted Chatwoot in the past year; two reverted to cloud within six months. Supp
How to leave Zendesk
Export first, then cancel. Every step links the vendor's own help page, checked on the date shown.
How to leave Zendesk
Export first
- Tickets, users, organizations: Admin Center → Account → Tools → Reports (after Support enables it) (JSON, CSV (no comments), XML (≤500 MB)). Suite Growth+/Support Professional+; Team plans must use the REST API. Can take a day; links last ≥3 days. support.zendesk.com
What you lose
- SLA policies and timers
- CSAT surveys
- Assignment, collision detection, reporting
Cancel
- Export tickets as JSON (CSV leaves out comments). The account owner must first ask Zendesk Support to enable exports.
- Admin Center → Account → Billing → Subscription → Manage → Remove products or cancel account (account owner only; sales-assisted accounts must contact Sales).
- Takes effect
- End of the billing cycle.
- Refunds
- Fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable.
- Notice
- 30 days before the term ends, or the term auto-renews (revops@zendesk.com).
- After you cancel
- Data deletion starts 90 days after cancellation; tickets are then removed within 40 days, irreversibly.
FAQ
Can I move my Zendesk data to Chatwoot?
Chatwoot's official guide moves: contacts; live chat widget; conversations (tickets). It doesn't move: No self-serve conversation importer: ticket history requires API work, not a dashboard upload; Guide does not cover help-center articles, triggers, automations or macros. chatwoot.com
What do I lose when I leave Zendesk?
Per Zendesk's own pages, leaving or downgrading loses: SLA policies and timers; CSAT surveys; Assignment, collision detection, reporting. support.zendesk.com
Does Chatwoot help people switch from Zendesk?
Chatwoot Cloud offers a 15-day free trial plus a permanently free Hacker plan: up to 2 agents, 500 conversations/month, 30-day data retention (voice and Teams features not included). chatwoot.com
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find_alternatives({"vendor": "Zendesk"})