Free code. Expert support from £15/hr.
Chatr is MIT-licensed — clone, deploy, and own it forever at zero cost. Need a hand getting set up? Our paid support starts at just £15/hour, with monthly plans that save you even more.
Three paths to live chat
Buy a SaaS subscription, build from scratch, or deploy Chatr for free.
- £39–99 per seat, per month
- Usage caps and overage charges
- Vendor lock-in — closed source
- Limited customisation options
- Your data on their servers
- Monthly bills that never stop
- Open source (MIT) — yours forever
- Unlimited seats, zero per-user fees
- Complete white-label customisation
- Runs on your own servers
- No recurring cost, ever
- Full customisation — change anything
- All features included from day one
- 3–6 months of development time
- WebSocket infrastructure from scratch
- Authentication & security system
- File handling & media pipeline
- Testing across three tiers
- Ongoing maintenance & bug fixes
The code is free. Expert support isn’t.
Chatr is MIT-licensed and always will be. But if you need help with setup, deployment, customisation, or troubleshooting — we’re here at £15/hour.
- Full source code (MIT)
- Getting Started guide
- Documentation & API reference
- GitHub Issues
- Community discussions
- Everything in Community
- 1-on-1 expert support
- Setup & deployment help
- Troubleshooting & debugging
- 48-hour response time
- Everything in Pay As You Go
- 8 hours/month (£12.38/hr)
- Additional hours at £12/hr
- 24-hour response time
- Email & video call support
- AWS deployment assistance
- Everything in Starter
- 20 hours/month (£12.45/hr)
- Additional hours at £10/hr
- Same-day response
- Custom feature development
- Priority bug fixes
- Architecture & scaling advice
What’s included in support:Setup and installation, AWS/cloud deployment, environment configuration, database migrations, Nginx & SSL setup, widget integration, custom branding, feature customisation, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and architecture guidance. Anything you need to get Chatr working for your business.
Every month you pay SaaS is money you’ll never get back
| Team Size | Intercom /year | Chatr /year | You Save | 5-Year Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 agents | £2,340 | £0 | £2,340 | £11,700 |
| 10 agents | £4,680 | £0 | £4,680 | £23,400 |
| 25 agents | £11,700 | £0 | £11,700 | £58,500 |
| 50 agents | £23,400 | £0 | £23,400 | £117,000 |
| 100 agents | £46,800 | £0 | £46,800 | £234,000 |
Infrastructure cost:A single AWS EC2 t3.small (~£15/month) runs the entire Chatr platform — backend, frontend, and widget. Add RDS and ElastiCache for managed databases and you’re still under £100/month total, regardless of team size.
What You Get
Everything a funded engineering team would build — delivered as a complete, tested, deployable product.
The Numbers
A complete platform built, tested, and deployed by a single developer.
The maths speak for themselves
Replace SaaS subscriptions with a platform you own. Savings grow with every seat.
Total cost of ownership: Chatr costs nothing to license. Your only expense is infrastructure — a single AWS EC2 instance (from ~£15/month) runs the entire platform. Compare that to £39–99/seat/month for Intercom, Drift, or Zendesk.
What you’d need to build this from scratch
The roles, timeline, and budget required to replicate Chatr’s feature set with an in-house or agency team.
| Role / Resource | Duration | Est. Cost (UK) |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Full-Stack Developer | 6 months | £45,000–£60,000 |
| UI/UX Designer | 3 months | £15,000–£25,000 |
| DevOps / Infrastructure Engineer | 2 months | £12,000–£18,000 |
| QA / Test Engineer | 3 months | £15,000–£22,000 |
| Project Manager | 6 months | £20,000–£30,000 |
| AWS Infrastructure (dev + staging + prod) | 6 months | £3,000–£6,000 |
| Third-party services (email, SMS, AI) | 6 months | £1,500–£3,000 |
| Total Estimate | 3–6 months | £111,500–£164,000 |
And that’s before ongoing maintenance, bug fixes, security patches, dependency updates, and feature requests. Chatr delivers all of this today — built, tested, documented, deployed, and ready to customise.
Four ways to monetise Chatr
Own the code, own the revenue stream. Here’s how businesses are turning open-source chat platforms into recurring income.
A turnkey messaging product
Chatr isn’t a prototype. It’s a production-deployed, fully tested product with documented architecture and immediate commercial potential.
Estimated build cost: An agency or team would spend £50,000–£150,000+ and 3–6 months to build equivalent functionality. Chatr delivers it today — tested, documented, and deployed.
Ready to get started?
Clone the repo for free — or book expert support to get running fast.