CRM + AUTOMATION REVIEW · 2026

Keap review

One plan at $299 a month, a mandatory $500 setup fee, and a contact meter that pushes the bill to $539 a month by 10,000 contacts.

Ratings from G2 (31 reviews), Capterra (1,298) and Trustpilot (498), pricing verified August 2026.

The verdict

Keap is what became of Infusionsoft, the small-business platform that more or less invented the marketing-automation category. It is now a subsidiary: Thryv Holdings bought the company for $80 million in cash in a deal that closed in Q4 2024, a modest price for a business that had generated roughly $85 million in trailing-twelve-month revenue through June 2024. The change of ownership coincided with a pricing overhaul. Keap now sells exactly one plan — $299 per month billed monthly, or $249 per month effective if you pay $2,988 for a year upfront — covering 1,500 contacts and two users. The former Pro plan, which sold for roughly $159 to $199 per month, and the Max plan above it were discontinued when the lineup collapsed into a single tier around 2024. For a new customer, the effective entry price roughly doubled.

The pitch itself is legitimate. Keap bundles a CRM, sales pipeline, marketing and sales automation, email marketing, US text marketing, landing pages, appointment booking, quotes, invoicing, and native payment processing (Keap Pay) into one subscription with two seats included. The automation engine inherited from Infusionsoft remains the strongest reason to buy: simple “Easy Automations” for routine tasks, advanced branching automations for complicated funnels, and a library of pre-built campaign blueprints for things like lead nurture, review requests, and billing follow-up. Onboarding is service-heavy by design. The implementation package includes a business mapping session, two automations built for you, up to 15 hours of data migration, and strategy calls scheduled through your first 12 months, and every subscription comes with a dedicated Customer Success Manager.

The cost structure is where this review gets less friendly. That implementation package is not optional — the pricing page lists “Required implementation services” as part of the plan, a one-time $500 charge (with a $1,500 list price shown crossed out) on top of the subscription. Contacts above the included 1,500 are billed through flat stairstep brackets that climb quickly: Keap’s own calculator prices 10,000 contacts at $539 per month on monthly billing, an 80 percent premium over the $299 base. Extra users run $39 per month each. Cancel an annual contract early and there is a $299 early termination fee, and any cancellation requires at least 10 days’ notice before your next invoice date.

Review platforms disagree about Keap to an unusual degree. Capterra holds a respectable 4.1/5 across 1,298 reviews. G2’s current listing — the post-acquisition “Thryv Keap” page, which replaced the older listing and its larger review base — sits at 3.8/5 from 31 reviews. Trustpilot is a different world entirely: 1.1/5 from 498 reviews, with recent complaints centering on price increases and cancellation friction. Our Lab Score of 6.3 reflects that split. The capability is real and the onboarding is genuinely generous, but the single-plan pricing, mandatory setup fee, and contact meter work against exactly the small businesses Keap says it serves. For calibration, ActiveCampaign scores 8.7 on our scale and HubSpot — no bargain itself — scores 7.0.

What Keap really costs at scale

Keap’s list price is easy to state and unusually hard to pay as listed. The single plan costs $299 per month billed monthly, or $2,988 per year paid upfront — $249 per month effective, a saving of about 17 percent versus month-to-month billing ($3,588 per year). That covers 1,500 contacts and two user licenses. Nearly everything beyond that point moves the number up.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per mo)	What you get
Keap (only plan sold)	$299/mo	$249/mo ($2,988/yr upfront)	1,500 contacts, 2 users, full CRM + automation platform
Implementation package (required)	$500 one-time (list $1,500)	n/a (one-time fee)	Business mapping session, 2 automations built for you, data import, up to 15 hours migration, strategy calls for 12 months, up to 2 third-party integrations
Additional users	$39/mo per user	Vendor quotes monthly rate only	Seats beyond the 2 included licenses
Text marketing (US only)	Tier 1 trial included; paid tiers $24–$279/mo	Tier 1 free for 1 year, then billed at renewal	Tier 1: 500 messages + 100 voice minutes; overage $0.015/message, $0.01/voice minute; dedicated local number $10/mo
At 10,000 contacts (example)	$539/mo	$441/mo ($5,292/yr)	Same platform; contact stairstep add-on applied, read from Keap’s own calculator, Aug 2026

The contact meter is the main cost driver. Additional contacts are billed in flat brackets stacked on the base plan (monthly-billing rates, from the pricing page’s embedded rate table): $36 per month covers up to 1,000 extra contacts, $84 up to 2,500, $150 up to 5,000, $240 up to 10,000, and $330 up to 15,000 extra contacts. The brackets do get cheaper per contact as volume grows — the one piece of good news in this section — but the absolute figures accumulate fast. At 10,000 total contacts, Keap’s own pricing calculator reads $539 per month on monthly billing, or $441 per month ($5,292 per year) on annual billing. We pulled both figures directly from keap.com/pricing in August 2026.

Teams compound the meter. A 10-seat operation at 10,000 contacts pays for eight additional users at $39 each — $312 per month on top — landing at roughly $753 per month on annual billing or $851 month-to-month, before the $500 required implementation fee and before any paid text-marketing tier. First-year total for that team on annual billing: north of $9,500. If you want to model your own contact count and seat mix, our real cost calculator does the arithmetic.

The hidden costs

The setup fee is not optional. Keap’s pricing page lists “Required implementation services” as a component of the plan, not an upsell. It is a one-time package advertised at $500, with a $1,500 list price shown crossed out — a framing that suggests the promo price may not be permanent. You do get real services for it (mapping session, two built automations, migration hours), but it is a $500 barrier to entry that competitors simply do not charge, and it needs to be in your first-year math.

The “included” text marketing is a timed promo. Tier 1 texting — 500 messages and 100 voice minutes per month — reads like a plan feature, but it is a trial: one year on annual plans, three months on monthly plans. After that it is billed; the monthly-plan disclaimer specifies an additional $9 per month. Overages run $0.015 per message and $0.01 per voice minute, a dedicated local number is $10 per month extra, and the whole feature is US-only. Paid tiers range from $24 to $279 per month. Budget for texting as a paid add-on from year two, because that is what it becomes.

Leaving costs money and requires notice. Canceling an annual contract early triggers a $299 early termination fee, and any cancellation — annual or monthly — requires at least 10 days’ notice before the next invoice date. Miss the window and you pay another cycle. This is the specific pattern Trustpilot reviewers complain about, and it is written into the pricing page rather than buried in a separate agreement, which is at least honest.

The free trial is a demo, not an evaluation. The trial requires no credit card, which is good, but it is hard-capped at 25 email sends, with no payment processing and no text messaging. Twenty-five emails is not enough to test deliverability, automation timing, or anything resembling a real campaign. There is no permanent free plan. In practice you evaluate Keap by paying for it — after the $500 implementation fee.

The cheap tiers are gone. Until roughly 2024, Keap sold a Pro plan at about $159 to $199 per month and a Max plan above it. Both were eliminated when the lineup collapsed into today’s single plan following the Thryv acquisition. Existing customers aside, the practical effect is that the cheapest way into Keap roughly doubled, to $249–$299 per month. A vendor that has already consolidated tiers upward once is a vendor whose renewal letters deserve close reading.

Features that matter

The automation engine. This is the inheritance from Infusionsoft, and it is still the product’s core asset. Keap runs two automation modes: “Easy Automations” for straightforward trigger-action work, and an advanced builder with real branching logic for multi-path funnels. On top of both sits a library of pre-built “Play” blueprints — lead nurture sequences, review-request campaigns, billing automation and the like — that ship ready to adapt. For a small business without a dedicated marketing-ops person, the blueprints plus the two automations built during implementation mean the system does something useful in week one rather than month three.

Genuine all-in-one scope. The single subscription covers CRM, sales pipeline, email marketing, landing pages, appointment scheduling, quotes, invoicing, and native payments through Keap Pay, plus US text marketing. For a business currently paying separately for a CRM, an email tool, a scheduler, and an invoicing product, consolidation is the honest argument for Keap’s price — the $299 has to replace three or four other subscriptions to pencil out, and for some service businesses it can.

Service-heavy onboarding. The required implementation package is a hidden cost, but it is not an empty one: a business mapping session, two automations launched for you, data import with up to 15 hours of migration work, up to two third-party integrations, and strategy calls scheduled across your first 12 months. Every subscription also carries a dedicated Customer Success Manager. Most rivals at this price point sell onboarding separately or not at all.

Support without a support tier. US-based phone support runs business hours Monday through Friday, and chat support is available around the clock, at no extra tier. Capterra’s customer-service sub-score is 4.0/5 across 1,122 ratings — solid, and notably out of step with the Trustpilot picture, which skews toward billing disputes rather than day-to-day support quality.

Per-contact economics improve with volume. The stairstep brackets get cheaper per contact as they widen, and annual billing takes about 17 percent off the base. Keap at 10,000 contacts costs proportionally less per contact than Keap at 3,000. That is faint praise — the absolute numbers remain high — but if you are going to be on Keap at all, a large list on annual billing is the least bad configuration.

Who should choose Keap

Keap makes sense for a specific customer: a US-based service business with one or two people working the tools, a contact list somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000, and three or four existing subscriptions (CRM, email, scheduling, invoicing) that the single plan would replace. The two included seats fit that profile exactly, and the implementation package plus 12 months of strategy calls suit an owner who wants the automation built for them rather than a blank canvas. Businesses that invoice clients and take payments get extra mileage from the native quotes-and-payments stack. If you fit that description, buy annual — the 17 percent saving is real, and the $299 termination fee only matters if you leave early — and treat the $500 implementation charge as part of the entry price, because it is.

Who should look elsewhere

Most everyone else has cheaper, better-reviewed options. If automation is the draw, ActiveCampaign (Lab Score 8.7) delivers a comparable automation engine with a materially lower entry price and no mandatory setup fee. If you mainly need a sales pipeline, Pipedrive (8.6) does that one job well for a fraction of Keap’s cost per seat — relevant when Keap charges $39 per month for every user past the second. Budget-conscious teams that still want a broad suite should look at Zoho CRM (8.6), and teams that want to start free and grow into paid tiers should read our HubSpot review (7.0) — we have reservations about HubSpot’s cost at scale too, but its on-ramp is far gentler than a $2,988 upfront commitment plus $500 setup. Anyone outside the US who cares about SMS should pass entirely, since Keap’s text marketing is US-only. And teams of five or more should model the $39-per-seat charge before signing; it adds up faster than the contact brackets. Our full CRM rankings cover the field.

FAQ

How much does Keap really cost?

The only plan sold is $299 per month billed monthly, or $2,988 per year upfront ($249 per month effective), for 1,500 contacts and 2 users — plus a required one-time implementation package at $500 (list price $1,500). At 10,000 contacts, Keap’s own calculator shows $539 per month on monthly billing or $441 per month on annual billing. Extra users are $39 per month each.

Is Keap’s implementation fee really mandatory?

Yes. The pricing page lists “Required implementation services” as part of the plan. The one-time package is advertised at $500 with a $1,500 list price crossed out, and includes a business mapping session, two automations built for you, data import with up to 15 hours of migration, up to two third-party integrations, and strategy calls for 12 months.

Does Keap have a free plan?

No. There is a free trial that requires no credit card, but it is hard-capped at 25 email sends and excludes payment processing and text messaging, which makes it a product tour rather than a real evaluation. There is no permanent free tier.

What does it cost to cancel Keap?

Canceling an annual contract early triggers a $299 early termination fee. All cancellations require at least 10 days’ notice before the next invoice date, or you are billed for another cycle. Month-to-month billing avoids the termination fee but costs $50 more per month than the annual rate.

RealCostLabs is independent and reader-supported. We may earn a commission on purchases made through our links, at no extra cost to you, and our scores are never for sale.