wacrm vs Kommo: an honest open-source alternative comparison

Kommo (formerly amoCRM) is one of the best-known WhatsApp sales CRMs, especially across Latin America. It's polished, multichannel, and quick to switch on. So why do teams go looking for a Kommo alternative? Usually one of three reasons: the per-user pricing adds up, they want to own their data instead of renting a seat on someone's cloud, or they want to customise the CRM itself rather than live inside a closed product.

wacrm answers all three — it's a free, open-source, self-hosted WhatsApp CRM. But it isn't the right pick for everyone, and this comparison is written to help you decide, not to pretend one tool wins every row. Here's the honest version.

TL;DR — which should you pick?

• Pick wacrm if WhatsApp is your channel, you want no per-seat pricing, and you value owning your data and code (MIT, self-hosted). Best for lean teams, agencies who rebrand per client, and anyone comfortable with a one-time deploy.
• Pick Kommo if you need several channels (Instagram, Telegram, email) in one inbox today, want a fully managed product with support and a mobile app, and would rather pay per seat than run any infrastructure.

wacrm vs Kommo at a glance

	wacrm	Kommo
Pricing model	Free (MIT); pay only hosting + Meta API	Per user / month
Indicative cost	$0 software, no per-seat	~$15 / $25 / $45 per user/mo
Minimum commitment	None	6-month minimum subscription
Hosting	Self-hosted (your infra)	Vendor cloud
Data ownership	You (your Supabase project)	Kommo cloud
Source code	Open source (MIT)	Proprietary
Channels	WhatsApp (focused)	WhatsApp, IG, Messenger, Telegram, email
Shared inbox	Yes	Yes
Sales pipelines	Yes (kanban)	Yes (kanban)
No-code automations	Yes (all tiers)	Salesbot on Advanced+
Broadcasts	Yes	Advanced+
Customisation	Full — fork and edit the code	Config + marketplace
Managed support / mobile app	Community / self-run	Yes

Pricing and tier limits change often — check each vendor's current plans before you commit. Meta's WhatsApp Business API messaging cost applies to both and is billed by Meta, not the CRM.

Comparing support-focused tools too? See our wacrm vs Trengo comparison.

Why teams look for a Kommo alternative

Per-seat pricing scales with your team, not your usage. Kommo is billed per user per month, and the automation most teams actually want — Salesbot and broadcasting — starts on the Advanced tier (around $25/user). A five-person team there is roughly $125/month before Meta's messaging cost, and Kommo asks for a 6-month minimum commitment up front. Every new agent is another recurring line item.

Your data lives on their cloud. With a hosted CRM, your contacts and conversation history sit on the vendor's infrastructure under their terms and their retention. For some teams that's fine; for others — agencies, regulated businesses, anyone who wants portability — it's a dealbreaker.

You can configure it, but you can't change it. Kommo has a marketplace and settings, but it's a closed product. You can't alter how a feature works, remove what you don't need, or ship it under your own brand.

wacrm vs Kommo, feature by feature

Pricing and commitment

wacrm is MIT-licensed: no license fee, no per-seat charge, no minimum term. Adding your sixth or sixtieth teammate costs nothing on the software side. You pay for hosting (modest — it runs comfortably on Hostinger Managed Node.js Hosting) and for Meta's API messaging, which is identical on Kommo. Kommo's strength here is predictability and zero ops; its cost is the recurring per-user bill.

Data ownership and hosting

wacrm stores everything in your own Supabase project — contacts, conversations, deals, automation logs — so there's no lock-in and you can export anytime. The trade-off is that you run it: a one-time deploy and the occasional update. Kommo removes that operational burden entirely by hosting it for you, at the cost of your data living on their cloud.

Channels

This is Kommo's clearest win. It unifies WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and email in one inbox. wacrm is WhatsApp-focused — it does WhatsApp thoroughly (shared inbox, templates, reactions, quote-replies) but does not currently pull in other channels. If multichannel is a hard requirement today, Kommo fits better.

Automations

Both offer no-code, visual automations. In wacrm, automations and broadcasts are available without a pricing tier gating them. In Kommo, Salesbot and broadcasting begin on the Advanced plan. Kommo layers in more AI tooling on higher tiers; wacrm keeps automations straightforward and free.

Customisation

Because wacrm is open source, you can fork it, change how anything works, strip features you don't need, and ship it under your own brand — which is why agencies like it as a per-client CRM. Kommo offers configuration and a marketplace of add-ons, but you're working within a closed product.

Where Kommo is still the better choice

An honest comparison names the cases where the competitor wins:

• You need true multichannel now — Instagram, Telegram, Messenger, and email in one inbox. wacrm doesn't do this yet.
• You want zero infrastructure — no deploy, no updates, a managed product with a support team and a polished mobile app.
• You rely on an established marketplace of prebuilt integrations and a large template/partner ecosystem.
• You're deep in a region where Kommo is entrenched and your team already knows it.

If those describe you, Kommo is a reasonable choice and wacrm won't change your mind. wacrm is for the team that wants WhatsApp done well, without a per-seat bill, on infrastructure and code they control.

Migrating from Kommo to wacrm

If you decide to switch, the path is short:

1. Export your contacts from Kommo as a CSV.
2. Fork and deploy wacrm — see Getting started and Deploy on Hostinger.
3. Import the CSV into wacrm's contact hub.
4. Rebuild your pipeline stages — a few minutes in the pipelines view — and connect your WhatsApp Business API number.

Note the honest limit: historical chat transcripts and pipeline history don't transfer automatically between two different systems. You carry your contacts and start fresh on conversations — which, for most teams making the move, is an acceptable one-time cost to drop the per-seat bill and own their data.