Chatwoot on Google Cloud Run

Chatwoot is an open-source, multi-channel helpdesk and customer-engagement platform (email, live chat, social, and messaging inboxes, SLA tracking, and reporting) that serves as a GDPR-compliant alternative to Zendesk or Intercom. This module deploys Chatwoot on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Chatwoot uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What Chatwoot costs on RAD, and how that compares

Chatwoot on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$102 a month in your own Google Cloud project, with no extra licence fee — Chatwoot is open source. In a project RAD manages for you, the same deployment is metered at 32 credits a day (about 960 a month, about US$96 at the top-up price). Or see the GKE guide for always-on capacity across pods. If you only need Chatwoot occasionally — studying, a demo, a short-lived project — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a few credits, so that monthly figure becomes a few dollars instead. See Pause it for free, below.

What you pay on RAD

Chatwoot is open source, so there is no licence fee. You pay for three things:

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	110 credits (US$11 at the top-up price)	99 credits (10% lower)
Build time	A few credits per build (roughly 3–6 credits)	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$102 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 32 credits a day, about 960 a month (about US$96 at the top-up price)
Who owns what	You own the project and its billing; RAD deploys and updates it	RAD owns the project, with guardrails, quotas and budget alerts; you get console access, and a minimum purchased balance is held in reserve

10 credits cost US$1 on a one-off top-up, and less on a monthly plan. In a project RAD manages, the database, file server and network are shared by every application in the project, so a second application does not add a second database.

Default running cost in your own project (us-central1, Google list prices):

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 2x vCPU / 4 GiB (scaleToZero)	US$31.53
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	US$13.43
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
Total	about US$102

Cloud SQL and Cloud Run/GKE pod pricing is the same in africa-south1 (Johannesburg); the small VM costs about 10% more there.

• Scale-to-zero is the default on Cloud Run. The figure above assumes modest daily use; set min_instance_count ≥ 1 to keep it always warm (and avoid cold starts), which raises the Cloud Run line but not the rest of the table.

How it compares, for a team of ten agents

Chatwoot's own team sells hosted Chatwoot Cloud per agent:

Option	Per month (10 agents)	Notes
Chatwoot Cloud, Hacker	US$0	Free tier, limited
Chatwoot Cloud, Startups	US$190 (US$19/agent)	Hosted by Chatwoot
Chatwoot Cloud, Business	US$390 (US$39/agent)	Hosted by Chatwoot, most popular
Chatwoot Cloud, Enterprise	US$990 (US$99/agent)	Hosted by Chatwoot
RAD, Cloud Run, your own project	About US$102, plus US$11 once per deployment	RAD's automation, in your project
RAD, Cloud Run, a RAD-managed project	About 960 credits (US$96)	RAD

• Chatwoot Cloud's price grows with every agent seat; RAD's cost is the infrastructure. At ten agents, RAD's own-project running cost already undercuts even the cheapest paid Chatwoot Cloud tier.
• A cheap server is cheap until something breaks. On RAD the database is Cloud SQL with automated backups, and secrets live in Secret Manager. On your own server, each of those is a job someone has to do.

Pause it for free: delete a RAD-managed project, restore it when you need it

If Chatwoot runs in a project RAD manages for you, deleting the whole project — rather than deleting just this module — unlinks its billing first, then asks Google to delete the project outright. Google keeps it, recoverable, for 30 days, and because billing is already unlinked, nothing is charged while it waits. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down Cloud SQL, any VM or the compute resource one by one: the whole project simply stops.

• Restoring is a check, not a rebuild. Within 30 days, the project's owner can ask Google to undelete the project and reattach its billing account, then run Update on each deployment to confirm everything came back. Because nothing was individually destroyed, that Update finds the same resources already there, and an Update never charges the module fee again. For a typical 2–3-deployment chain this costs only a handful of credits in total (roughly 5–10 credits, under US$1).
• What this needs. You must own the project (not one RAD only manages billing for), restore it yourself within 30 days — after that Google deletes it for good — and clear the tier's admission floor again (100 credits for the sandbox tier most study/demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.
• One real gap: nightly backups do not survive. Backups are written to a bucket inside the project, and that bucket has Cloud Storage's soft-delete turned off, so it is very likely gone as soon as the project is deleted — even though the project itself is recoverable for 30 days. Copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before deleting if there is anything in it worth keeping; for a default install with nothing irreplaceable, this does not matter.

Source: Delete and restore projects.

Pay only while you use it, the other way: delete and redeploy

In your own project, or once the 30-day restore window above has passed, the way to stop paying is to delete the deployment and deploy it again when you need it.

• What a redeploy costs. The module fee again, plus the builds: about 114 credits (about US$11.40) at the top-up price, and roughly 15–20 minutes of build time (RAD's own platform average). Deleting saves money only once Chatwoot would otherwise sit unused for about 3 days or more — in your own project that is about US$3.40 a day, and in a RAD-managed one it is 32 credits a day.
• Most of the running cost here is usually the database and/or the shared file/cache VM or cluster. They stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting Chatwoot while another application shares the project saves only Chatwoot's own compute part.
• Keep data first. Nightly backups go to a bucket inside the deployment and are deleted with it, so copy the latest backup out before deleting if you want to keep it.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training. A trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets the app in their own Google Cloud project for 15 minutes to 24 hours, within an allowance the trainer sets. Either the trainer funds every place, or each participant pays for their own. Everything is deleted when the session ends and unused credits go back to the trainer.
• Managed Environments, for consultancies. A partner runs the app for a client from a ring-fenced wallet it funds, and settles with the client directly. If the wallet runs low, billing pauses and the data is kept, so nobody receives an unexpected charge. At the end the partner hands the project over and the deployments become the client's own.

Credits can be bought in more than 20 currencies, including XAF, XOF, NGN, GHS, KES and ZAR, by card, bank transfer or mobile money.

Sources (8 October 2026): Google Cloud list prices from the Cloud Billing Catalog API; RAD fees and the daily-credit estimate from radmodules.dev/pricing; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore window and backup-bucket caveat; Chatwoot Cloud pricing; prices change, check each source before relying on a figure.

1. Overview

Chatwoot runs as a single Ruby on Rails container that combines the web server and a background Sidekiq worker in one process tree. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Rails + co-located Sidekiq worker on port 3000, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — database_type is fixed to POSTGRES_15; the vector (pgvector) extension is enabled for Chatwoot's AI/search features
Cache & queue	Redis (NFS-hosted or external)	Backs Sidekiq's job queue and ActionCable pub/sub; enabled by default
File persistence	Cloud Filestore (NFS)	Attachments persist under /opt/chatwoot/storage, shared across revisions
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A storage-suffixed bucket provisioned automatically by the Common module, plus a default data bucket declared in storage_buckets
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated Rails SECRET_KEY_BASE; database password
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. database_type is hardcoded to POSTGRES_15 by the Common module's config output; Chatwoot's schema and pgvector-backed search features require it.
• Custom-built image. container_image_source = "custom" — the Common module builds FROM chatwoot/chatwoot:${APP_VERSION} and layers in a cloud-entrypoint.sh that maps the Foundation's DB_*/REDIS_* env vars onto Chatwoot's POSTGRES_*/REDIS_URL convention and launches Sidekiq in the background before exec'ing the Rails server. The image runs as root — matching the upstream image, whose /app//app/tmp are root-owned and not group-writable, so Rails' create_tmp_directories step needs root to succeed.
• Cloud SQL is reached via a Unix socket, not a TCP loopback. With enable_cloudsql_volume = true, Cloud Run mounts the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy socket at /cloudsql/<instance>; the entrypoint passes the injected DB_HOST straight through as POSTGRES_HOST (the Ruby pg driver accepts a directory path as a Unix-socket host). This differs from the GKE variant, where a sidecar proxy listens on 127.0.0.1:5432.
• Two initialization Jobs run in sequence. db-init (creates the database, role, and grants — including a cloudsqlsuperuser grant so Chatwoot can create Postgres extensions itself) runs first, then chatwoot-prepare (bundle exec rails db:chatwoot_prepare) creates/upgrades the schema and seeds defaults, using the built Chatwoot app image. There is no in-container migration step; schema setup happens entirely in these two Jobs before the app container needs to serve traffic.
• Redis defaults on (enable_redis = true). Leave redis_host blank to use the shared NFS-server-hosted Redis IP that the Foundation injects automatically.
• SECRET_KEY_BASE is generated once and shared between the Rails web process and the Sidekiq worker (co-located in the same container) — it must stay stable across restarts/redeploys, since Rails uses it to sign sessions and encrypt ActiveRecord-encrypted columns.
• NFS is on by default (enable_nfs = true) so uploaded attachments persist and are shared across revisions at /opt/chatwoot/storage.
• cpu_always_allocated defaults to false (request-based billing, cold-start). Sidekiq (notifications, webhooks, auto-assignment) and ActionCable's real-time UI updates only run while a request is being served or during the post-request keep-warm window; set cpu_always_allocated = true with min_instance_count >= 1 to keep background delivery continuous.
• ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP defaults to "false" — open self-service admin/agent signup is disabled on a freshly deployed helpdesk; flip it via environment_variables if you want public signup.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Chatwoot service

Chatwoot runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each pod-equivalent revision runs both the Rails web server and a background Sidekiq worker process in the same container, so the service should not spend long periods at zero instances if timely message/notification delivery matters.

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Chatwoot stores all application data (conversations, contacts, inboxes, agents, reports) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance, including the vector extension used by its AI/search features. The service connects privately through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy over a Unix socket at /cloudsql/<instance>; no public IP is exposed. On first deploy the db-init Job creates the application database, role, and grants (including a cloudsqlsuperuser grant so Chatwoot's own extension-creation calls succeed), then the chatwoot-prepare Job runs rails db:chatwoot_prepare to build the schema.

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database, user, and password secret are in the Outputs. See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage

A dedicated storage-suffixed Cloud Storage bucket is provisioned automatically by the Common module, alongside the default data bucket declared in storage_buckets. Additional buckets can be declared the same way.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~chatwoot"
  gcloud storage ls gs://<bucket-name>/

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Redis (queue, cache, and pub/sub)

Sidekiq (Chatwoot's background job queue) and ActionCable (real-time UI updates) both require Redis. enable_redis = true by default; when redis_host is left blank, the Foundation injects the shared NFS-server-hosted Redis IP, and the container entrypoint builds REDIS_URL from REDIS_HOST/REDIS_PORT/REDIS_AUTH at startup — this is self-healing regardless of whether redis_host was set explicitly or left blank.

Sidekiq needs Redis 6.2 or newer, and the NFS-hosted Redis is 6.0. The shared Redis on the NFS VM runs 6.0.16, and Sidekiq 7 refuses to start against it. The web UI still serves (the entrypoint backgrounds Sidekiq), so the deployment looks healthy while no background job runs. Point redis_host at a Redis 6.2+ instance — for example Memorystore, via create_redis = true in Services_GCP, which provisions Redis 7.2.

• Console: Memorystore → Redis (if using a dedicated instance).
• CLI:

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" \
    --format='value(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)'

E. Secret Manager

One Chatwoot-specific secret is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager: SECRET_KEY_BASE (Rails' session-signing / ActiveRecord-encryption key, shared identically between the web and Sidekiq processes, and also injected into the chatwoot-prepare init Job). The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~chatwoot"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=secret-<resource-prefix>-chatwoot-secret-key-base --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

F. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default (ingress_settings = "all"), which allows external channel integrations (webhooks, live-chat widget embeds) to reach it. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container stdout/stderr (both the Rails and Sidekiq processes, since they share a container) flows to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

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3. Chatwoot Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup runs as two chained Jobs. db-init (image postgres:15-alpine) connects over the Cloud SQL socket, idempotently creates the database role and database, grants privileges, grants cloudsqlsuperuser to the app role (needed because Cloud SQL's app user is not a real Postgres superuser and db:chatwoot_prepare's schema.rb calls enable_extension for several extensions), and pre-creates vector, pg_stat_statements, pg_trgm, and pgcrypto defensively. chatwoot-prepare depends on db-init (depends_on_jobs = ["db-init"]) and runs bundle exec rails db:chatwoot_prepare using the built Chatwoot app image, not a generic client image. Both Jobs have execute_on_apply = true.
• No in-container migrations. Schema creation/upgrade is entirely handled by the chatwoot-prepare initialization Job before the app container is expected to serve traffic — the runtime entrypoint does not run rails db:migrate.
• chatwoot-prepare prefers TCP over the socket when both are available. Its script explicitly checks whether DB_HOST is a socket path (leading /); if so and DB_IP (the instance private IP) is also present, it connects over DB_IP with PGSSLMODE=require instead, because the Cloud SQL Unix socket does not always materialise inside a Cloud Run Job in time. It only falls back to the literal socket path when DB_IP is unset. The long-running app container's own entrypoint has no such fallback — it passes DB_HOST straight through as POSTGRES_HOST, relying on the socket being present for the service itself.
• DB env-var aliasing. The platform injects DB_HOST (the Cloud SQL socket directory on Cloud Run), DB_PORT, DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD; cloud-entrypoint.sh (baked into the image) maps these onto Chatwoot's POSTGRES_HOST/POSTGRES_PORT/POSTGRES_DATABASE/ POSTGRES_USERNAME/POSTGRES_PASSWORD convention.
• Redis URL is self-healing. If REDIS_URL is not already set, the entrypoint builds it from the injected REDIS_HOST/REDIS_PORT/ REDIS_AUTH — covering both the explicit redis_host case and the default NFS-fallback case.
• Sidekiq runs co-located, in the background. cloud-entrypoint.sh starts bundle exec sidekiq -C config/sidekiq.yml & before exec'ing the Rails server; a trap on TERM/INT stops Sidekiq alongside the container. Because Sidekiq processes background jobs (channel delivery, notifications, reports) only while the container is running, keep min_instance_count >= 1 (and consider cpu_always_allocated = true) if timely delivery matters more than idle cost.
• ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP is off by default. The Common module injects ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP = "false" alongside RAILS_ENV=production, RAILS_LOG_TO_STDOUT=true, and RAILS_MAX_THREADS=5 (sized above Cloud Run's default concurrency to avoid "could not obtain a connection from the pool"). Chatwoot's own onboarding UI creates the first admin account interactively on first visit — there is no auto-generated admin credential secret for this module.
• Health path. Startup and liveness probes are HTTP GET / — the login/onboarding page returns 200 with no auth. The default startup_probe allows an initial 60-second delay plus up to 30 retries at a 15-second period (~8 minutes) before failing, to absorb chatwoot-prepare running ahead of the app container.
• Cloud SQL proxy shutdown signal. The init Jobs signal the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar to exit on completion so the Job pod finishes instead of hanging on a live sidecar.
• Inspect job execution and running config:

  gcloud run jobs list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run jobs executions list --job <db-init-job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run jobs executions list --job <chatwoot-prepare-job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

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4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Chatwoot are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 1 — Project, Identity & Search Integration

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the service and regional resources.
elasticsearch_url	""	Optional Elasticsearch endpoint (e.g. from Elasticsearch_GKE) for Chatwoot's full-text search. Leave empty to disable.
elasticsearch_username	""	Elasticsearch username; leave empty when xpack.security.enabled is false.
elasticsearch_password_secret	""	Secret Manager secret ID holding the Elasticsearch password; when set, injected as ELASTICSEARCH_PASSWORD and the workload SA is granted secretAccessor.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	chatwoot	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Chatwoot Helpdesk	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
description	Chatwoot - Open-source helpdesk and customer support platform	Service description.
application_version	v4.15.1	chatwoot/chatwoot image tag used as the custom-build base. Increment to trigger a rebuild.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_source	custom	Custom-built from chatwoot/chatwoot; do not set to prebuilt — it skips the cloud-entrypoint.sh wrapper.
cpu_limit	2000m	2 vCPU — Rails + co-located Sidekiq worker.
memory_limit	4Gi	4 GiB recommended; both processes share the container.
cpu_always_allocated	false	Cost-first cold-start default; Sidekiq/ActionCable work pauses between requests. Set true (with min_instance_count >= 1) to restore continuous background delivery.
min_instance_count	0	0 enables scale-to-zero; set 1 to keep the Sidekiq worker warm.
max_instance_count	5	Standard horizontal scaling ceiling.
container_port	3000	Chatwoot's Rails server port.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for NFS and GCS Fuse mounts.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy Unix socket for Postgres connections.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the Chatwoot image into Artifact Registry.
traffic_split	[]	Split traffic across revisions for staged rollouts.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	all is the default so external channel integrations and the live-chat widget can reach the service.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	Route only RFC 1918 traffic via VPC.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in. Blocks public channel webhooks and the live-chat widget.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings, e.g. { ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP = "true" } to open self-service signup. Core RAILS_*/POSTGRES_*/REDIS_* values are set automatically.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name.
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Secret Manager rotation notification frequency.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated backup cron (UTC).
backup_retention_days	7	Retention; raise for production/compliance.
enable_backup_import / backup_source / backup_file / backup_format	restore options	Restore from a backup on deploy.

Group 8 — CI/CD & Binary Authorization

Standard App_CloudRun Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_CloudRun. Key inputs: enable_cicd_trigger, github_repository_url, github_token, enable_cloud_deploy, enable_binary_authorization.

Group 9 — Custom Initialization & SQL Scripts

enable_custom_sql_scripts, custom_sql_scripts_bucket, custom_sql_scripts_path, custom_sql_scripts_use_root — run SQL from a GCS bucket after provisioning. See App_CloudRun.

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Provision Global HTTPS LB + Cloud Armor WAF.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDR ranges exempted from WAF rules.
application_domains	[]	Custom domain names for the HTTPS LB.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the HTTPS LB backend.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Create GCS buckets defined in storage_buckets.
storage_buckets	[{ name_suffix = "data" }]	Additional GCS buckets beyond the Common module's auto-provisioned storage-suffixed bucket.
enable_nfs	true	NFS is on by default so attachments persist and are shared across revisions.
nfs_mount_path	/opt/chatwoot/storage	Where Chatwoot stores uploaded attachments.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts (requires gen2).
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Overridden to a fixed value by the Common module's config output regardless of what is set here; Chatwoot requires Postgres 15+ with pgvector.
db_name	chatwoot	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	chatwoot	Application database user. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
application_database_name / application_database_user	crappdb / crappuser	Inert Foundation-mirror declarations (satisfy convention mirroring only) — Chatwoot's chatwoot.tf wires db_name/db_user instead, so these are never forwarded to main.tf.
enable_auto_password_rotation / rotation_propagation_delay_sec	off	DB password rotation.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the Common module's built-in db-init → chatwoot-prepare job chain.
cron_jobs	[]	Not used — Chatwoot has no platform-scheduled recurring tasks; Sidekiq handles its own scheduling in-process.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP / , 60s initial delay, 15s period, 30 retries	Startup probe; sized to absorb chatwoot-prepare completing ahead of the app container.
liveness_probe	HTTP / , 60s initial delay, 30s period, 3 retries	Liveness probe.
startup_probe_config / health_check_config	HTTP /	Alternative structured probes (service-level); startup_probe/liveness_probe take effect by default.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/" }	Cloud Monitoring uptime check; disabled by default.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis Cache & Queue

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	true	Required for Sidekiq queueing and ActionCable pub/sub; forwarded to the foundation unconditionally.
redis_host	""	Blank uses the shared NFS-server-hosted Redis IP that the Foundation injects.
redis_port	6379	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis auth password (sensitive).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

All other inputs (including the Foundation-mirror-only application_display_name, application_description, container_build_config, additional_services, additional_containers, and networking/SQL-instance overrides) follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour and are inert unless explicitly wired — Chatwoot's chatwoot.tf does not forward them.

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5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint (Cloud SQL socket directory) / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, available regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of the setup jobs (db-init, chatwoot-prepare).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.
audit_logging_enabled / artifact_registry_cmek_enabled	Audit logging and CMEK status.

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6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — a gen1 runtime with NFS/GCS mounts, an out-of-range redis_port/backup_retention_days, an invalid database_type. Invalid configuration fails the plan with a clear, named error before any resource is created, so most mistakes below are caught up front rather than at apply or runtime.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
database_type	POSTGRES_15 (fixed by Common)	Critical	Chatwoot's schema and pgvector-backed search require Postgres 15+; any other engine breaks chatwoot-prepare.
db_name / db_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and orphans all data.
SECRET_KEY_BASE (auto-generated)	Never change	Critical	Rotating it invalidates every signed session/cookie and makes ActiveRecord-encrypted columns permanently unreadable; Sidekiq will also fail to decrypt in-flight jobs.
enable_redis	true (forwarded unconditionally)	Critical	Sidekiq (background jobs, channel delivery) and ActionCable (real-time UI) both require Redis; disabling it silently breaks message delivery even though the web UI loads.
container_image_source	custom	High	Chatwoot is a Docker Hub prebuilt image wrapped in a custom entrypoint (env mapping + Sidekiq launch); switching to prebuilt skips that wrapper and the container won't map DB_*/REDIS_* correctly.
chatwoot-prepare job order	Runs after db-init (depends_on_jobs = ["db-init"])	High	Running schema prep before the database/role/extension grants exist fails the Job (must be superuser on CREATE EXTENSION, or the DB/role missing entirely).
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	High	The Cloud SQL Auth Proxy Unix socket is required for the long-running app container's DB connectivity on Cloud Run.
enable_nfs	true	High	Disabling it makes uploaded attachments ephemeral — lost on the next revision.
min_instance_count	1 for production	High	Below 1, the co-located Sidekiq worker is not running between requests, so background jobs (channel polling, notifications, reports) stall.
cpu_always_allocated	true for production (with min_instance_count >= 1)	Medium/High	The false cost-first default only allocates CPU while serving a request; Sidekiq and ActionCable work pauses outside that window and the keep-warm tail.
ingress_settings	all	High	Setting to internal blocks external channel webhooks and the public live-chat widget.
enable_iap	only when public channels not needed	High	IAP blocks all unauthenticated requests, including channel webhooks and the live-chat widget.
ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP (default "false")	Leave false, enable briefly for first admin if needed	Medium	Leaving public self-service signup enabled on an internet-facing helpdesk lets anyone register an agent/admin account.
backup_retention_days	7 (raise for prod)	Medium	Too short for compliance retention of conversation/customer data.
enable_cloud_armor	enable for production	Medium	The agent console and public channel endpoints are reachable without WAF protection.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. Chatwoot-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant lives in the Chatwoot_Common module (modules/Chatwoot_Common); see Chatwoot_Common for secrets, DB bootstrap, the container image/entrypoint, health probes, and object storage, and Chatwoot_GKE for the parallel GKE-side wiring notes.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Chatwoot on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Chatwoot on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Chatwoot Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Twenty CRM on Google Cloud Run, Cal.com on Google Cloud Run, Listmonk on Google Cloud Run, Metabase on Google Cloud Run in the CRM & Sales Operations solution.