How to move from Chatwoot to LastWorker

To move from Chatwoot to LastWorker, export your conversation history from their admin settings before you cancel your subscription. This provides a CSV or JSON file of your data. While you can import contacts and ticket information into LastWorker, be aware that internal notes and specific message threading rarely transfer perfectly between different software platforms, so keep a local copy.

Why move away from a seat-based model?

I spent five years managing a regional dental practice. We had eleven front desks across several locations. Every time I hired a new receptionist, I had to look at the budget. Most tools I used charged by the seat. If I wanted every person on my team to have their own login, the bill grew every month.

Chatwoot is a solid tool. Their Hacker plan is free for up to two agents. For a very small shop, that works. But the moment you hire a third person or a weekend part-timer, you have to move to the Startups plan. That plan costs about $19 per agent per month when billed annually. You should check their pricing page to confirm current rates, but for my dental group, that would have been $209 every month just for the right to log in.

LastWorker does not charge for seats. I have seen too many small business owners share one password among four people to save money. It creates a mess. You cannot tell who promised a customer a refund or who told a patient their appointment was moved. On LastWorker, you can give everyone their own account. The shared inbox, contacts, and ticketing are free. You only pay when you use the phone or ask the AI to write a response.

How do I handle the data migration?

Moving your data is the hardest part of switching tools. I have done this four times with different businesses. It is never as simple as clicking a single button. You must go into your Chatwoot admin settings and find the export option. This usually gives you a file containing your conversations and your contact list.

Do this before you cancel your account. Once the account is closed, your data is often gone or very hard to retrieve.

You can bring your contacts into LastWorker easily. Your history is different. No two companies organize their databases the same way. When you move messages from Chatwoot to any other tool, the internal notes you left for your teammates often get left behind. The threading: the way messages are grouped together: can also break.

I tell people to treat their Chatwoot export as an archive. Keep that CSV file on your computer. If a customer writes in and you need to see what they said three years ago, look it up in your archive. Start fresh with your active conversations in the new inbox.

When should you stay with Chatwoot?

I am not writing a brochure. There are good reasons to keep using Chatwoot. They are open source. If you have a developer on your team and you want to host the software on your own servers, Chatwoot is the best choice on the market. You own the data outright. You can modify the code.

LastWorker is a hosted service. We handle the servers and the maintenance. If you want a tool that you do not have to manage or update yourself, then moving makes sense. If you need total control over the source code, you should stay where you are.

What happens to my chat and email channels?

In Chatwoot, you are limited to 500 conversations a month on the free plan. If you have a busy month, you might hit that ceiling. On LastWorker, live chat and email support are free forever with no limits on how many conversations you have.

When you move, you will need to point your support email address to your new LastWorker inbox. You will also need to replace the Chatwoot widget on your website with the LastWorker chat code.

I suggest doing this on a Tuesday morning. Do not do it on a Friday afternoon when you are trying to get home. You want to be there to send a few test messages and make sure the emails are landing in the right place. I have spent too many late nights fixing broken email forwards because I tried to rush a migration.

How does the AI cost compare?

Chatwoot has Captain AI. It includes a set amount of credits depending on your plan, usually between 300 and 800. If you need more, you pay about $20 for 1,000 credits.

LastWorker takes a different approach. AI is off by default. I have worked in shops where an AI started talking to customers before I was ready, and it was embarrassing. On LastWorker, everything is manual until you decide otherwise. If you want the AI to reply to a chat, an email, or an SMS, it costs $0.04 per message. It only costs money when it actually generates a response.

If you are handling phone calls, the AI on LastWorker costs $0.01 per minute. This includes the carrier costs. For the businesses I ran, the phone was the biggest source of stress. Missing a call meant missing a job. Being able to have an AI answer the phone for a penny a minute without paying a $50 monthly subscription is the main reason I joined this team.

How many of these tools have free tiers?

When you look at the market, most companies make it hard to stay on a free plan. Out of the twelve major competitors we track, four of them: LiveChat, Front, Zendesk, and Intercom: do not offer a free tier at all.

Seven of the twelve tools, including Chatwoot, offer a free tier but put a tight cap on your growth. They limit you to two or three seats. They know that as soon as you hire your third employee, they can start charging you $20 or $30 a month per person.

I have watched good leads die in a voicemail box because a business owner didn't want to pay for another seat in their software. That is a bad way to run a shop.

Setting up your new phone system

One thing Chatwoot does not handle natively is your phone line in the same way. On LastWorker, you can get a phone number for $1 a month. Inbound SMS is free. Outbound SMS is $0.03 per segment.

If you are coming from a setup where your chat, email, and phone were all in different places, this is where you will see the biggest change. In my dental practice, we had one person answering phones and another checking the "info@" email address. They never talked to each other.

With LastWorker, you can see the text message the patient sent right next to the email they sent an hour later. You do not have to pay a subscription fee to see that history.

Moving your knowledge base

If you built a help center in Chatwoot, you will need to copy that content over. LastWorker provides a public help center for free. This is another area where you should be careful. Do not just copy and paste. Use the move as a chance to see which articles are actually being read.

I used to spend 2am writing phone scripts and help articles. I found out later that 80% of our customers only asked three questions. If you are moving tools, focus on getting those three answers right in your new knowledge base first.

Final steps for the transition

Once you have exported your data from Chatwoot and saved your CSV, set up your teammates in LastWorker. Remember, you can add everyone. There is no reason to share logins.

Set up your saved replies. These are free. They save you from typing the same directions to your office forty times a week.

Last, check your billing. LastWorker does not require a credit card to start. You only add money to your balance if you decide to use the phone or the AI features. This is a big departure from the monthly invoices you get from most software companies.

I have seen businesses get hit with a $500 bill because they forgot they added three seats during a busy season. That does not happen here. You pay for what you use, and the core tools for your team to communicate are free.

The move might take a few hours of work to get the settings right, but not having to worry about a "per-seat" bill every month makes it worth the effort. Focus on your customers, keep your data archive safe, and stop paying for the right to let your employees do their jobs.