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Keap, a Thryv company and formerly known as Infusionsoft, is a full-featured customer relationship management (CRM) platform with built-in marketing, sales and e-commerce tools. Compared to other products on the market, we found that Keap’s CRM offers exceptionally powerful and user-friendly automation features, with readily available templates, an intuitive drag-and-drop automation builder, and a collection of AI-powered, cross-functional workflows designed for generating new leads, increasing conversions and driving customer loyalty. It provides numerous top-tier services to help companies manage their business and customers with ease, while remaining straightforward, intuitive and easily scalable.
9.4 / 10
Unlike many of the other top CRMs we reviewed, Keap offers two tiers of sales automation options: easy and advanced. Business owners who want to set up straightforward “when-then” workflows to gather website leads, follow up with prospects, schedule appointments, send automated notifications and emails, and create deals based on set conditions can choose from a variety of ready-made, customizable templates or build their own in just a few clicks.
Even though advanced automations give users the option to go much deeper and set up alternative decision paths, delay timers and complex conditions, creating workflow automations can be done on a highly visual canvas with a simple drag-and-drop process. The platform also includes an AI automation assistant, which provides dozens of templated bundles that you can preview, modify and test — all without leaving one consolidated view.
All in all, Keap stands out from the competition with its ease of use, various thematic templates and modification options, and numerous available integrations, making it our best pick for a CRM focused on sales automation.
Keap CRM is simple enough for beginners but flexible enough to handle the advanced capabilities more experienced users need. We particularly liked the following ease-of-use features.
There are key CRM features to look out for when you’re shopping for the right platform to support your sales team. These are the ones that make Keap stand out.
Keap’s sales automation features are stellar. You can choose to set up easy or advanced workflows, with both options offering a generous selection of customizable templates to power up your lead generation, drive customer loyalty and even help nominate an Employee of the Month.
We love that, thanks to AI-powered automation “plays,” you can launch and automate entire multi-channel campaigns to support customer journeys. The AI will suggest optimal topics and content for each step and help you customize messages to fit a certain tone of voice. It can also translate them — a particularly helpful feature for small businesses looking to expand into international markets.
We also appreciate that you can automate most of your sales processes. You can create and share custom price quotes from the Keap app, and clients can accept them online. Once accepted, your sales team can be notified via text message so they can convert the quote into an order customers can pay online. You can also use the platform’s sales pipeline management tools for lightweight project management across your sales, marketing and operations teams. We particularly like that Keap’s AI provides suggested workflows based on natural language prompts.
Keap offers a drag-and-drop tool and templates that make creating and managing email marketing campaigns quick and painless. Its automated sales correspondence helps prevent communication gaps and keeps deals moving forward. The broadcasting feature lets you send email blasts to segmented audiences, accelerating outreach while ensuring messages stay relevant. Pairing email templates and automation with built-in list segmentation tools improves the likelihood of lead conversion by making sure tailored messages reach the right recipient at the right time.
We were impressed by Keap AI’s content-generation capabilities. In addition to offering a wide range of customizable templates, it can work from natural language prompts to create tailored messages, then modify, shorten or translate them as needed. When designing emails for broadcasts, the AI assistant can also suggest optimal calls to action and headings, proofread copy, and help refine your message, streamlining email marketing and freeing your team to focus on closing.
While many CRMs can manage aspects of e-commerce, most require third-party integrations to do so — but not Keap. This system includes built-in automated e-commerce functions, making it a viable choice for businesses that live and breathe online.
Keap lets you create quotes, send invoices with direct payment links, connect bank details to receive payments, add promo codes, set tax rates and build custom checkout forms for your website — all without leaving the app. You can also set up linked automations to pursue upselling and cross-selling opportunities at checkout or to save time chasing overdue payments. To help drive more leads, Keap lets you create custom landing pages and contact forms or use one of many predesigned templates.
Like many CRMs, Keap has a dedicated section to store businesses and contacts. Each customer profile contains detailed records, including contact details, associated deals, and your previous sales interactions and communications.
What sets Keap apart is the array of actions you can take straight from the contact card, without opening multiple tabs or navigating to a separate CRM area. You can create tasks, schedule appointments, send emails and record payments via handy pop-ups that don’t interrupt your flow. You can also add contacts directly to automation workflows, ensuring each lead is actioned immediately and nothing falls through the cracks.
Custom data fields let you focus on information critical to your business, rather than manipulating preset fields that may be irrelevant. We also like that, unlike many other CRMs, Keap lets you add new custom fields, tags or values directly from the editing form rather than the admin panel, eliminating unnecessary admin steps.
All Keap users get access to a free business phone number for calls and texts, along with the option to set up voicemails and auto-reply messages. The number is connected to your smartphone, and the caller ID clearly indicates when a call is coming from a business contact. The business line is connected to both mobile and desktop versions of the CRM, making it easy to keep all conversations in one place, attach files to your messages, set up appointments and more.
We were particularly impressed by Keap’s ability to set up tasks from individual messages, ensuring no customer request or opportunity falls through the cracks. We also like that you can create message templates to streamline communication and reduce admin work.
Unlike most CRMs we reviewed, which offer tiered plans with different features, Keap charges based on the number of users and contacts in your account. The more users or contacts you add, the more you’ll pay.
Here’s a sampling based on 1,500 contacts (the lowest increment available):
Number of users | Rate (billed annually) |
---|---|
2 | $249 per month |
5 | $345 per month |
10 | $505 per month |
15 | $665 per month |
20 | $825 per month |
Take the following into account when figuring out pricing:
All Keap users get equal access to its CRM, marketing, sales, operations and administrative tools. The core CRM and sales-specific features include:
Marketing features include:
The platform also provides user role management, calendar sync, a built-in Zapier integration and a mobile app.
Keap’s business line feature supports both business text messages and voice calls, so its messaging plans include a bundle of texts and voice minutes. All users start on Tier 1, which includes 500 free text messages, 100 free minutes and a toll-free phone number.
If you want to expand your text and phone marketing efforts, there are five paid tiers:
Plan | Price per month | Texts | Voice minutes |
---|---|---|---|
Tier 2 | $24 | 1,000 | 300 |
Tier 3 | $39 | 2,500 | 500 |
Tier 4 | $79 | 5,000 | 800 |
Tier 5 | $139 | 10,000 | 1,000 |
Tier 6 | $279 | 25,000 | 2,000 |
You can also purchase a separate text message add-on, which gives you access to 500 texts for $6 per month, and a local number add-on for $10 per month.
Keap does a good job of ensuring its customers start strong and continue to succeed.
Keap’s customer support options include email and 24/7 live chat access, as well as a community forum and Keap Academy, an online learning platform with an extensive collection of how-to videos, courses and on-demand webinars.
Phone support is available Monday through Friday for businesses in the U.S., Monday through Saturday for those in the U.K., and Monday through Saturday for companies in Australia. All users also get access to a dedicated Keap Customer Success Manager who can help resolve issues, provide resources and offer expert business advice along the way.
To test the quality of Keap’s customer support, we contacted the vendor as a small business owner interested in its software. The representative we spoke with was knowledgeable and helpful, describing each feature in detail and reminding us that the support team would be available every step of the way if we needed assistance. They also discussed common challenges small businesses face with CRM software and how Keap’s CRM addresses them. The rep was extremely patient, offering to call us back and set up a demo to help us understand every aspect of the software.
In contrast, the in-app chat option was less effective, with wait times exceeding 30 minutes — a significant drawback in our experience.
Here are a few potential concerns about Keap:
This review is based on our extensive research comparing dozens of the best CRM software solutions on the market, along with a detailed product review process that included comprehensive communication with the platform’s customer support team, a trial to evaluate the product’s functionality, and an examination of numerous tutorials, webinars, demos and support materials. As part of the review, we took a close look at Keap’s features and functionality, including contact and deal management, sales automation, reporting and analytics, e-commerce capabilities, email marketing and integrations. We also factored in pricing and setup. We chose Keap as the best CRM for sales automation because of its powerful automation tools, user-friendly workflows and breadth of prebuilt templates that make it easy for businesses to streamline sales processes from lead capture to close.
We recommend Keap CRM for …
We don’t recommend Keap CRM for …