The same AI chatbot, live chat and co-browse platform, deployed on your Windows Server, your IIS and your Microsoft SQL database. No per-seat cloud bill. No visitor data leaving your perimeter.
Figures are modeled from the assumptions in the calculator below. Replace them with your own contract rates and your ChatBeacon quote.
ChatBeacon started in 2005 as an on-premise installation. Self-hosting is not a variant we bolted on for enterprise buyers. It is the product we began with, and twenty years later we still ship, install and support it.
Cloud chat is priced per agent, per month, forever. On-premise is priced once, then maintained. The crossover point is the only number that matters, and it arrives earlier than most teams expect. Enter your own figures below.
Every transcript, visitor record, co-browse session and AI prompt is written to a database your DBAs administer, on a server your team patches, behind the firewall your security group already audits.
Chat transcripts, visitor identities, uploaded files and session replays are stored in your Microsoft SQL database. There is no vendor-side copy, no shared tenancy, and no third-party subprocessor holding your customers’ conversations.
The platform runs with no outbound internet route at all. For classified, defence and isolated OT environments, install media and updates are delivered as signed packages and applied through your existing offline patch process.
Encryption at rest uses keys your organisation generates, escrows and rotates. Key custody stays with your security team, which means access revocation is a decision you make and execute yourself, without filing a vendor ticket.
Operators authenticate against the directory you already run. Group membership drives ability groups and permissions, joiners and leavers flow through your existing identity lifecycle, and there is no separate password store to audit.
A hosted platform adds a vendor to your compliance surface. Every audit then has to cover their controls, their staff and their subprocessors as well as yours. A self-hosted install does not. ChatBeacon AIX runs inside the environment you have already accredited, so the evidence your auditors need is evidence you already produce.
A rack in your own data centre is one option. So is a virtual machine in your existing cloud tenancy. On-premise here means the software, the database and the data belong to you and run in an environment you control, wherever that environment happens to live.
A standard Microsoft stack your infrastructure team already supports, whether the host is a rack in your building or a VM in your cloud account. The Operator App is web-based, so agents need nothing installed on their machines.
These are the current interfaces. On-premise customers get the same three surfaces, running on their own servers.
Visitor traffic, chat volume, quality and satisfaction, agent performance. Every metric is computed from your own SQL data, so reporting continues to work with no outbound telemetry.
Queued visitors, session replay, event timeline and the AI assistant pane in one browser tab. Nothing to install on agent workstations and nothing to package for your desktop image.
The visitor-facing widget answers tier-one questions and escalates to a live agent when it should. Served from your own domain, styled to your brand in the Admin Portal’s theme studio.
Most self-hosted chat platforms stop at text. ChatBeacon has shipped co-browse since long before it was fashionable, and the on-premise build includes it. When a customer cannot find the field, the agent sees the page with them rather than describing it over three messages.
Agents see the visitor’s page in real time at the DOM level and can guide them through a form or a checkout. No download, no screen-share invitation, no third-party relay service in the path.
A chat can become a video call in one click when identity verification or a complex problem needs a face. The media path stays inside the deployment you control.
Every session is reconstructable with a timeline of visitor and agent events, for quality review, dispute resolution and training. Replays live in your database like everything else.
We size the Windows Server and SQL instance against your traffic, confirm the TLS and DNS plan, and agree the firewall rules.
IIS site and services deployed, database schema created, directory binding configured and tested with a pilot operator group.
Business rules, ability groups, widget theming and the AI knowledge base, followed by operator and administrator training.
Widget script switched to your domain, cloud history migrated if you are moving, and the subscription cancelled.
Several platforms now advertise a self-hosted option. The differences show up in the detail, usually after the contract is signed. Put these to every vendor on your shortlist, including us.
A Windows Server host running IIS and a Microsoft SQL Server instance. Sizing depends on concurrent chat volume and replay retention; we produce the specification during the environment review.
No. The Operator App is web-based and runs in a current browser, so there is no desktop client to package, deploy or keep updated.
Yes. The platform operates with no outbound route. The one component that can require external access is a hosted AI model provider, which is optional and can be switched off.
You do. Keys are generated, escrowed and rotated by your security team under your own key management policy.
On-premise is licensed once and maintained annually rather than billed per seat per month, so adding agents does not change your monthly run rate. Your quote sets the licence tiers.
Yes. Existing transcripts, visitor records and configuration are exported from ChatBeacon Cloud and imported into your SQL database as part of cut-over.
Your team, on your change-control calendar. Releases are delivered as signed packages with release notes, and you decide when a version reaches production.
Yes. AI chatbots, live chat, co-browse, video, session replay and Viewport 360 analytics are all present in the on-premise build.
Tell us how many agents you run and what your current platform costs. We will send licence pricing, a sizing specification for your Windows and SQL environment, and a three-year comparison against your existing contract.
