Keap is a CRM and marketing-automation platform aimed at established small businesses that want a single place to manage contacts, run email and text sequences, take payments and book appointments. Starting from $299 per month (as of October 2026), it sits well above budget options — but it bundles features that simpler tools split across multiple subscriptions. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends almost entirely on how many of those features you will actually use and whether the required onboarding investment makes sense for your operation.
What Is Keap and Who Makes It?
Keap has been a fixture in the small-business CRM market for more than two decades, and its pricing page notes it is trusted by over 200,000 small businesses. As of 2026, Keap operates under Thryv, which acquired the company — you may see references to "Keap acquired by Thryv" in its own navigation.
The product was previously known as Infusionsoft, and it has always positioned itself around "lifecycle automation" — a framework for automating the entire journey from lead capture through repeat purchase and referral. If that framing resonates with how your business thinks about growth, Keap is worth examining closely. If you just need a place to store contacts and send newsletters, it is likely more platform than you need.
Keap Pricing: What You Will Pay in 2026
The base plan
Keap publishes a single starting price: $299 per month billed monthly, or $2,988 per year billed annually (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). That annual figure works out to $249 per month — a meaningful saving if you commit upfront.
That base price includes two user licenses. If your team is larger, each additional user is $39 per month (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026).
Contact tiers
The base plan starts with a set number of contacts, and additional contacts are priced in tiers. The pricing page does not publish the tier rates directly — you will need to use the interactive slider on keap.com/pricing or speak with their team to see what your contact count will cost. Budget for this if your list is already large or growing fast.
Required onboarding
This is the line item that surprises most people: Keap requires implementation services for new customers. The pricing page frames this as a feature rather than a tax — "never again buy software you don't have the time or expertise to use fully" — but it is a real upfront cost regardless. The specific package prices are not listed on the pricing page; Keap asks you to contact them or view packages for details. Budget an onboarding investment on top of your first monthly or annual fee, and confirm the current package prices directly before signing.
Text marketing tiers
US-only text marketing is built in. Tier 1 — 500 messages and 100 minutes — is included in the base plan. Paid tiers run from $24 to $279 per month for higher volumes (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). If SMS is central to your outreach, map your monthly volume to the right tier before comparing Keap's all-in cost to alternatives.
Free trial
Keap offers a free trial that requires no credit card. The trial is limited: you can send up to 25 emails, and payment processing and texting are not available during the trial period (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). That limitation means you can explore the interface and set up contacts, but you cannot fully test the automation sequences or payment flows without committing to a paid plan.
Cancellation Terms: Read Before You Sign
Keap is month-to-month if you pay monthly — you can cancel any time, with the request submitted at least 10 days before your next invoice date (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). That 10-day window is easy to miss if you decide to cancel close to renewal.
Annual contracts carry a $299 early-termination fee if you cancel before the year ends (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). That is not a catastrophic penalty, but it is worth knowing. If you are not confident in the fit, start monthly.
Core Features: What Keap Actually Does
CRM and contact management
Keap's CRM lets you house contact activity, data and communications in one place. Its pricing page lists contact management, contact segmentation via tags, custom lists, filters and saved searches as core features. The B2B use case is supported — you can organize contacts by company, not just individually.
Marketing and lead automation
Marketing automation is where Keap has always staked its reputation. You can build automated email and text sequences that fire based on contact behavior, tags or pipeline stage. Lead capture tools — landing pages and forms — feed directly into the automation engine, so a new opt-in can trigger a welcome sequence without manual intervention.
Sales and appointments
Sales automation, appointment scheduling and invoice generation are bundled into the same platform. For a service business that books consultations and then follows up with a payment request, having those three pieces connected natively is a legitimate convenience. You can also automate review and referral requests after a completed job.
Dedicated mobile number
Each account can have a dedicated mobile number for calls and texts, keeping business communication separate from personal numbers. This is practical for small-business owners who are also the sales team.
Reporting
Keap includes built-in reporting to track progress across your pipeline and campaigns. The depth of reporting available at your plan level is worth verifying on the product page, as the pricing page lists reporting as a feature without breaking down what is included at each contact tier.
Who Keap Is Built For
Keap's sweet spot is the established service-based small business — think a coaching practice, a home-services company, a financial advisory firm or a local professional services provider — that has outgrown basic tools and wants automation that connects lead capture, follow-up, booking and payment in a single workflow.
- Good fit: Businesses with a defined customer lifecycle they want to automate end-to-end.
- Good fit: Teams of two to six people who want one platform instead of stitching together five separate tools.
- Good fit: US-based businesses that rely on SMS follow-up, since text marketing is built in.
- Good fit: Businesses that can use onboarding support — the required implementation services are most valuable when you actually need help getting set up.
Who Should Skip Keap
- Early-stage businesses with small contact lists and tight budgets will find the $299/month entry price hard to justify before the automation is generating clear returns.
- Marketing agencies managing multiple clients will find no published white-label or multi-account infrastructure comparable to platforms purpose-built for agencies. Keap is a business CRM, not an agency platform.
- E-commerce businesses with large product catalogs are not Keap's core use case — it is built around service-business sales cycles.
- Annual-commitment skeptics who want to stay flexible and avoid cancellation penalties should start on the monthly plan or look elsewhere.
Keap vs. The Alternatives: A Direct Comparison
Based on each vendor's published specifications and pricing pages (all checked October 2026), here is how Keap compares with the platforms most commonly evaluated alongside it.
Keap vs. HighLevel
HighLevel (also known as GoHighLevel) is the platform this site's team uses daily, so our coverage of it comes from hands-on experience. At $97/month for the Starter plan or $297/month for Unlimited, HighLevel is priced well below Keap at every tier. HighLevel includes unlimited contacts, unlimited users and — on the Unlimited and Agency Pro plans — sub-accounts for managing multiple client businesses. For agencies, HighLevel's infrastructure is purpose-built in a way Keap's is not. For a small service business that just wants CRM plus automation, HighLevel's feature depth may be more than needed, but the price ceiling is lower. See our full GoHighLevel pricing breakdown for every plan and add-on.
Keap vs. HubSpot
HubSpot's Starter Customer Platform starts at $7 per seat per month billed annually for new customers (a limited-time promotion as of October 2026), which makes it dramatically cheaper at entry level. However, HubSpot's Marketing Hub Professional — the tier where automation depth starts to rival Keap — starts at $800 per month plus a required $3,000 one-time onboarding fee (per hubspot.com/pricing/marketing, checked October 2026). At that level, Keap's all-in cost is actually competitive. The choice often comes down to ecosystem: HubSpot has broader third-party integrations and a larger partner network; Keap has a tighter, more opinionated workflow designed specifically for small-service-business lifecycles. See pricing at HubSpot's pricing page.
Keap vs. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign offers Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans with a 14-day free trial (per activecampaign.com/pricing, checked October 2026). Dollar prices for ActiveCampaign were not readable from its pricing page at the time of our research, so a direct price comparison is not possible here — check their current pricing page for up-to-date figures. ActiveCampaign is widely regarded as a strong email-automation specialist; Keap adds native payment processing and appointment scheduling that ActiveCampaign does not include by default.
Side-by-side facts
- Keap starting price: $299/month (monthly) or $2,988/year; 2 users included; contact tiers add cost
- Keap trial: Free, no credit card, limited to 25 emails; no payment processing or texting in trial
- Keap cancellation: Month-to-month flexible; annual contracts carry a $299 early-termination fee; 10-day notice required
- Keap onboarding: Required implementation services; price not published — confirm directly
- HighLevel Starter: $97/month; unlimited contacts and users; 14-day free trial; no long-term contract
- HighLevel Unlimited: $297/month; unlimited sub-accounts; rebilling without markup
- HubSpot Starter: From $7/seat/month billed annually (new-customer promotion, October 2026); 1,000 marketing contacts
- HubSpot Marketing Pro: From $800/month plus $3,000 one-time onboarding fee
- ActiveCampaign: Starter / Plus / Pro / Enterprise plans; 14-day trial; prices not readable from pricing page — check their site
Keap for Marketing Agencies: A Specific Warning
If you are a marketing agency evaluating Keap to run client accounts, pause before committing. Keap is designed as a single-business CRM. There is no published white-label infrastructure, no client sub-account model and no agency-specific pricing tier visible on its pricing page. You would effectively be buying one instance of Keap per client, with no shared management layer.
Platforms built for agencies — HighLevel with its sub-account model, or Vendasta with its marketplace and client-portal infrastructure — are better architectural fits for managing multiple businesses under one roof. Our GoHighLevel overview goes deeper on how sub-accounts work in practice, and our coverage of how this site evaluates tools explains our research methodology.
Setup and Onboarding: What to Expect
Because Keap requires implementation services, your first weeks will involve working with their onboarding team rather than self-serving through a knowledge base alone. The pricing page positions this as an advantage — faster time-to-value, professional migration and data import. Whether that is true for your specific situation depends on how complex your existing contact database is and how clearly you can articulate your desired automation workflows before the engagement starts.
Practical steps to prepare:
- Export and clean your existing contact list before the implementation call — messy data slows every onboarding.
- Map out your current customer lifecycle on paper: how does a lead enter, what follow-ups happen and at what intervals, and when does a customer become a repeat buyer?
- Identify your two or three highest-priority automations so the onboarding team can focus there first.
- Confirm the onboarding package price and timeline before signing — ask what is included and what falls outside scope.
Common Mistakes Buyers Make When Evaluating Keap
Ignoring the onboarding cost
The monthly price gets the headline, but required implementation services are a real budget item. Do not compare Keap's $299/month to a competitor's $99/month without factoring in what both will actually cost to get live. Get the onboarding package price in writing.
Underestimating contact-tier costs
If your list is already at 5,000 or 10,000 contacts, the entry price is not $299. Use the pricing slider on Keap's site to model your actual cost before comparing to alternatives, which may price contacts differently or not at all.
Signing an annual contract too quickly
A $299 early-termination fee is not the end of the world, but paying a full annual contract worth of fees for a platform you stop using after three months is painful. Start monthly, get through onboarding, and upgrade to annual once you have confirmed the platform fits your workflow.
Expecting a full agency platform
Keap is a business CRM, not an agency management platform. Agencies searching for white-label client management will be better served by tools purpose-built for that use case.
What Our Research Is Based On
This review is based on Keap's published pricing page (keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026) and the page text extracted from that source. We have not purchased or installed Keap, and we do not claim to have done so. Where facts were ambiguous or missing — such as contact-tier pricing and onboarding package costs — we say so and direct you to confirm with the vendor. For how we approach every tool we cover, see our research methodology page. For disclosures about affiliate links, see our affiliate disclosure.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Keap cost per month in 2026?
Keap starts at $299 per month billed monthly, or $2,988 per year billed annually, which works out to $249 per month on the annual plan. That base price includes two user licenses. Additional users are $39 per month each. Contact-tier pricing is not published on the pricing page — use the interactive slider on keap.com/pricing or contact their team to confirm the cost for your list size. All prices are from keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026, and prices can change.
Is there a free trial for Keap?
Yes. Keap offers a free trial that requires no credit card. The trial is limited to 25 email sends, with no payment processing and no text marketing available during the trial period (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). This lets you explore the interface and set up contact records, but you cannot fully test automated sequences or payment workflows without moving to a paid plan.
What happens if I cancel Keap?
On a monthly plan, you can cancel any time, but you must submit your request at least 10 days before the next invoice date. Annual contracts carry a $299 early-termination fee if you cancel before the year ends. Keap's pricing page makes clear these are the current cancellation terms (checked October 2026), but always confirm the current policy in writing before signing.
Does Keap include SMS text marketing?
Yes, for US-based businesses. Tier 1 — 500 messages and 100 minutes — is included in the base plan. Higher-volume text marketing tiers run from $24 to $279 per month (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). Text marketing is not available during the free trial. Keap's texting is US-only, so international businesses should confirm coverage before committing.
Is Keap good for marketing agencies?
Not by design. Keap is built as a single-business CRM and does not publish white-label capabilities, client sub-accounts or agency-specific pricing tiers on its pricing page. Agencies managing multiple client accounts would find platforms like HighLevel — which is structured around sub-accounts and white-labeling from the ground up — a better architectural fit. See our GoHighLevel pricing guide for comparison.
What is the onboarding cost for Keap?
Keap requires implementation services for new customers, but the specific package prices are not listed on the public pricing page (per keap.com/pricing, checked October 2026). You must contact Keap directly or use their chat to get package details. Factor this cost into any budget comparison — it is a real expense on top of the monthly or annual subscription fee.
How does Keap compare to HighLevel for small businesses?
HighLevel's Starter plan is $97 per month with unlimited contacts and users and a 14-day free trial, compared with Keap's $299 per month entry point with required onboarding services (prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked October 2026). HighLevel is built for agencies managing multiple clients via sub-accounts; Keap is built as a single-business platform with deep lifecycle-automation focus. A small service business that does not need multi-client management and wants a guided onboarding process may prefer Keap; an agency or cost-conscious SMB should compare total cost carefully.
The Bottom Line
Keap is a defensible choice for an established, US-based service business that wants CRM, email and text automation, appointment scheduling and payment collection under one roof — and that is willing to invest in a structured onboarding process to get there. The $299/month starting price (October 2026) is high relative to simpler tools, but if you will genuinely use the full platform, consolidating five subscriptions into one can justify it. Confirm contact-tier pricing and onboarding costs directly at keap.com/pricing before committing.
If you are a marketing agency, the platform is not built for your use case. HighLevel — which we run daily for client accounts — is purpose-built for sub-account management, white-labeling and agency reselling at a lower entry price. Our GoHighLevel pricing guide and vertical use-case review can help you evaluate it further.
If you are an early-stage business shopping for your first CRM on a tight budget, look at HubSpot's Starter Customer Platform (from $7/seat/month for new customers on an annual plan as of October 2026, per hubspot.com/products/crm/starter) or Systeme.io's free plan — both let you get started without a significant upfront commitment. See our Systeme.io review and Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels comparison for those options.