Shared inbox tools
Every conversation, from web chat or any other inbox, has a status, a priority, an assignee and labels. Agents leave private notes for each other, mention a colleague to pull them in, and see when someone else is already replying.
All of this is free on every edition, with unlimited agents. This page describes the ASP.NET Core edition of ZChat 2.0.5; the separate Web Forms package does not include the 2.0.5 additions.
Open, pending, snoozed or resolved. A snoozed conversation reopens by itself at the time you choose.
Set a priority from low to urgent and give each conversation one owner, then filter the list by either.
Label conversations for reporting, and add private notes that the customer never sees.
When a colleague has the same conversation open or is typing a reply, a banner says so, so two agents do not answer the same customer.
Filter by status, assignee, priority, label and who handled it, and act on many conversations at once.
Invite another agent into a live chat, or transfer it to an agent or a department. The visitor sees who joined.
Type @ and a colleague's login in a private note. They get an entry on their Mentions page, with an unread count, and a browser push notification if they have turned notifications on.
Select up to 200 conversations and change their status, priority or assignee, or add and remove a label, in one step.
The conversation shows who else has it open and who is typing a reply, so a customer does not get two different answers.
Macros, automation rules and auto-assignment build on these tools and are part of Premium. Everything listed above stays free.
Yes. Statuses, priority, assignees, snooze, labels, private notes, mentions, bulk actions and collision warnings are all in the free Community edition.
Yes. An agent can invite a colleague into a live chat, or transfer it to another agent or a department.
A snoozed conversation leaves the open list and reopens by itself at the date and time you chose, up to a year ahead.
Add Premium only if you want automation rules, macros and auto-assignment on top.
ZChat gives you the installable server, web dashboard, website widget, and desktop agent tools in one self-hosted product, with live chat free to run. Run it on infrastructure you trust and connect AI only if and how you want it.
Deployment
Install on Windows or Linux, behind IIS or Nginx, in a VM, or in Docker if that fits your stack.
Commercial model
Live chat is free with unlimited agents. Only the optional AI assistant is billed, per agent per month.
AI Flexibility
Use Ollama locally or connect OpenAI and Anthropic with your own provider accounts.