Chatwoot on GKE Autopilot

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 GKE Autopilot on top of the App_GKE foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud and Kubernetes 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 that are common to every GKE application — Workload Identity, ingress, autoscaling, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_GKE foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What Chatwoot costs on RAD, and how that compares

Chatwoot on RAD's GKE Autopilot module costs about US$150 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 111 credits a day (about 3,330 a month, about US$333 at the top-up price). Or see the Cloud Run guide for the lower-cost option. 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	300 credits (US$30 at the top-up price)	270 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$150 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 111 credits a day, about 3,330 a month (about US$333 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
GKE Autopilot pod, 2x vCPU / 4 GiB	US$79.35
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
GKE cluster management fee	shared across every GKE app in the project; $0 if this is your only cluster, else ~73
Total (excluding the shared GKE cluster fee)	about US$150

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

• GKE Autopilot does not scale to zero. At least one pod always runs, so the cost above applies whether or not anyone is using the app; extra pods are added only under load.

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 304 credits (about US$30.40) 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 4 days or more — in your own project that is about US$4.99 a day, and in a RAD-managed one it is 111 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 workload that combines the web server and a background Sidekiq worker in one pod. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	Rails + co-located Sidekiq worker on port 3000, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — the engine is fixed at POSTGRES_15; the vector (pgvector) extension is enabled for Chatwoot's AI/search features
Cache & queue	Redis (Cloud Filestore-hosted NFS VM, or external)	Backs Sidekiq's job queue and ActionCable pub/sub
File persistence	Cloud Filestore (NFS)	Attachments persist under /opt/chatwoot/storage, shared across pods
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A storage bucket suffix provisioned automatically
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated Rails SECRET_KEY_BASE; database password
Ingress	Cloud Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer with a reserved static IP; optional custom domain + managed certificate

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. database_type defaults to POSTGRES_15; Chatwoot's schema and pgvector-backed 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 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 the Auth Proxy sidecar on loopback. enable_cloudsql_volume = true runs a cloud-sql-proxy sidecar listening on 127.0.0.1:5432; the entrypoint maps the injected DB_HOST/DB_IP onto POSTGRES_HOST.
• 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 (rails db:chatwoot_prepare) creates/upgrades the schema and seeds defaults. 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 (they run in the same container here, but the value must also stay stable across restarts/redeploys — Rails uses it to sign sessions and encrypt ActiveRecord-encrypted columns).
• Session affinity is ClientIP so a client's requests reach the same pod.
• PodDisruptionBudget is on by default (enable_pod_disruption_budget = true, pdb_min_available = "1").
• 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 you have run gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster> --region "$REGION" --project "$PROJECT" and that PROJECT, REGION, and NAMESPACE are set. The namespace and other identifiers are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. GKE Autopilot — the Chatwoot workload

Chatwoot pods are scheduled on Autopilot, which bills for the CPU/memory the pods actually request. Each pod runs both the Rails web server and a background Sidekiq worker process, so the workload should not be scaled to zero — Sidekiq is what delivers/receives channel messages and processes background jobs.

• Console: Kubernetes Engine → Workloads → select the Chatwoot workload for pods, revisions, and events. Kubernetes Engine → Services & Ingress shows the external IP.
• CLI:

  kubectl get pods,svc -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> --tail=100
  kubectl describe pod -n "$NAMESPACE" -l app=<service-name>

See App_GKE for how Autopilot, scaling, and the workload type (Deployment vs StatefulSet) are managed.

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. Pods reach it through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1:5432; 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 the Secret Manager secret holding the password are all in the Outputs. See App_GKE for the connection model, automated backups, and password rotation.

C. Redis (cache, queue, 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 as REDIS_HOST, and the container entrypoint builds REDIS_URL from it at startup. Point redis_host/redis_port/redis_auth at a dedicated Cloud Memorystore instance for a heavier production workload.

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 instances (if using a dedicated instance).
• CLI:

  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep -E '^REDIS_'
  gcloud redis instances list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_GKE for how the NFS-hosted Redis fallback and Memorystore integration are wired.

D. Cloud Storage & file persistence (NFS)

A dedicated Cloud Storage bucket (suffix storage) is provisioned automatically and the workload service account is granted access. Separately, Chatwoot's attachments live on NFS (Cloud Filestore) at /opt/chatwoot/storage, shared across pods.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets; Filestore → Instances.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~storage"
  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  kubectl get pvc -n "$NAMESPACE"

See App_GKE for CMEK options and GCS Fuse mounts.

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). The database password is managed separately by the foundation. On GKE, secrets are projected into pods via the Secret Store CSI driver.

• 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_GKE for the Secret Store CSI integration and rotation.

F. Networking & ingress

By default the workload is exposed through an external Cloud Load Balancing IP (service_type = LoadBalancer, reserve_static_ip = true so the address survives redeploys). A custom domain with a Google-managed certificate can be enabled.

• Console: Network services → Load balancing; VPC network → IP addresses.
• CLI:

  kubectl get svc,ingress -n "$NAMESPACE"
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_GKE for custom domains, Cloud CDN, and static IP details.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Pod stdout/stderr (both the Rails and Sidekiq processes, since they share a container) flow to Cloud Logging; GKE and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring. Optional uptime checks and alert policies are available.

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

  gcloud logging read 'resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="'"$NAMESPACE"'"' \
    --project "$PROJECT" --limit 50

See App_GKE for uptime check gating and alert policy wiring.

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3. Chatwoot Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup runs as two chained Jobs. db-init (image postgres:15-alpine) connects to Cloud SQL, 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 then depends on db-init and runs bundle exec rails db:chatwoot_prepare using the built Chatwoot app image (not a generic client image) so the full Rails toolchain and config are present. Both jobs run on 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.
• DB env-var aliasing. The platform injects DB_HOST (the proxy sidecar, 127.0.0.1 on GKE), DB_PORT, DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD; the cloud entrypoint (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 — this covers both the explicit redis_host case and the default NFS-fallback case, so leaving redis_host blank still produces a working REDIS_URL at container start.
• 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 a pod is alive, keep min_instance_count >= 1 in production.
• Admin/first-run account. Chatwoot's own onboarding UI creates the first admin account interactively at /installation/onboarding on first visit — there is no auto-generated admin credential secret for this module.
• Health path. The startup probe is HTTP GET /; the liveness probe is GET /health, because it is mirrored into the Gateway health check, which requires a literal 200 and / redirects. The readiness probe set by the Common module (initial_delay_seconds = 30) targets /. Allow time on first boot — chatwoot-prepare must finish before the app container even starts.
• Cloud SQL proxy shutdown signal. Both init Jobs wget/curl-POST to the proxy sidecar's --quitquitquit endpoint (127.0.0.1:9091/quitquitquit) on exit so the Job pod completes instead of hanging on a live sidecar.
• Updates recreate the pod instead of rolling it. Because enable_nfs = true by default, App_GKE deploys the workload with the Recreate strategy rather than RollingUpdate — two pods contending for the same NFS attachment volume and the shared database would deadlock on the surge Pod during a rollout (verified live via a Chatwoot NFS rollout). A version bump or config change that touches the pod template therefore causes brief downtime while the old pod terminates before the new one starts, rather than a zero-downtime rollover.
• Inspect the init jobs and running config:

  kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" job/<db-init-job-name>
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" job/<chatwoot-prepare-job-name>
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep -E 'POSTGRES_|REDIS_'

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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_GKE with its standard behaviour and defaults.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	chatwoot	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
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
container_resources.cpu_limit	2000m	2 vCPU — Rails + co-located Sidekiq worker.
container_resources.memory_limit	4Gi	4 GiB minimum recommended; both processes share the container.
min_instance_count	1	Keep at 1 so the Sidekiq worker (and ActionCable) stay alive.
max_instance_count	5	Standard horizontal scaling ceiling.
container_port	3000	Chatwoot's Rails server port.
container_image_source	custom	Custom-built from chatwoot/chatwoot; do not set to prebuilt.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Auth Proxy sidecar (loopback) — required on GKE.

Group 6 — GKE Backend & Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	External IP for the Chatwoot UI.
workload_type	null → Deployment	Standard Deployment (no PVC needed by default).
session_affinity	ClientIP	Sticky routing so a client reaches the same pod.

Group 9 — Reliability

Variable	Default	Description
enable_pod_disruption_budget	true	Limits simultaneous voluntary pod evictions.
pdb_min_available	"1"	Keeps at least one pod (and its Sidekiq worker) available during disruptions.

Group 13 — Filesystem (NFS)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	NFS is on by default so attachments persist and are shared.
nfs_mount_path	/opt/chatwoot/storage	Where Chatwoot stores uploaded attachments.

Group 15 — Redis

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 TCP port.
redis_auth	""	Redis AUTH password, if the target instance requires one.

Group 16 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Fixed by the Common module's config output (also hardcoded in the Common config.database_type); Chatwoot requires PostgreSQL 15+ with pgvector.
application_database_name	chatwoot	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	chatwoot	Application database user; password auto-generated in Secret Manager.
enable_postgres_extensions	true (Common default)	Enables vector post-provisioning; db-init.sh also pre-creates it defensively.

Group 1 — Search & Optional Integrations

Variable	Default	Description
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 granted secretAccessor.

Group 19 — Custom Domain, Static IP & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
reserve_static_ip	true	Stable external IP across redeploys.
application_domains	[]	Custom hostnames + managed certificate.

All other inputs follow standard App_GKE behaviour.

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5. Outputs

These values are returned on a successful deployment and are the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Kubernetes Service name.
namespace	Namespace the workload runs in.
service_cluster_ip	In-cluster ClusterIP.
stage_service_cluster_ips	Map of ClusterIPs for stage-specific services.
service_external_ip	External LoadBalancer IP (when a static IP is reserved).
service_url	URL to reach Chatwoot.
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 (127.0.0.1 via the Auth Proxy) / 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	Monitoring status and channels.
initialization_jobs / db_import_job	Names of the setup (db-init, chatwoot-prepare) and (optional) import jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details (repo, trigger, registry).
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	CI/CD GitHub details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
kubernetes_ready	Whether the cluster/workload is ready.
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_GKE foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — mismatched workload-type/PVC settings, IAP enabled with no authorized identities, quota_memory_* given as bare integers, an out-of-range container_port/backup_retention_days. 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.
application_database_name / application_database_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.
min_instance_count	1	High	Below 1, the co-located Sidekiq worker is not running between requests, so background jobs (channel polling, notifications, reports) stall between cold starts.
enable_nfs	true	High	Disabling it makes uploaded attachments ephemeral — lost on pod recreation. Leaving it enabled also switches the deploy strategy to Recreate (brief downtime per update) instead of RollingUpdate — expected, not a bug.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	High	The Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1:5432 is required for DB connectivity on GKE.
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).
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.
pdb_min_available	"1"	Medium	Voluntary node maintenance/upgrades could otherwise evict the only pod running Sidekiq, pausing background processing.
quota_memory_requests / _limits	binary units (4Gi, 8192Mi)	Critical	Bare integers are treated as bytes and block all pod scheduling in the namespace.
reserve_static_ip	true	Medium	Without it, the external IP can change across redeploys, breaking DNS and any configured webhook/channel callback URLs.
ENABLE_ACCOUNT_SIGNUP	"false" (default)	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.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — IAM and Workload Identity, autoscaling, ingress and certificates, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_GKE. Chatwoot-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in the Chatwoot_Common module (modules/Chatwoot_Common); see Chatwoot_Common for secrets, DB bootstrap, the container image/entrypoint, health probes, and object storage.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Chatwoot on GKE Autopilot — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Chatwoot on Google Cloud Run — the same application on Cloud Run, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Chatwoot Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.