Keap, formerly known as Infusionsoft, is a full-featured contact management software with built-in marketing, sales and e-commerce tools. Compared to other products on the market, we found that Keap’s CRM offers the most powerful and easy-to-use automation features, with readily available templates and an easy drag-and-drop automation builder. It provides numerous top-tier services to help companies manage their business and customers with ease – all for a relatively reasonable price.
Keap CRM and Pricing
The Verdict
Keap allows businesses to automate almost every stage of the sales journey, use a broad range of available workflow templates and create advanced custom workflows with drag-and-drop tools, making it our pick for the best CRM for sales automation.
Keap Editor’s Score: 9.4/10
Why We Chose Keap as the Best CRM Software for Sales Automation
Unlike many of the other top CRM software solutions 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 follow up with leads, send automated notifications and emails, and create deals based on set conditions can choose from a variety of ready-made, customizable templates or create their own in just a couple of clicks.
Even though the advanced automations give users the option to go much deeper and set up alternate decision paths, delay timers and complex conditions, creating the workflows can be done on a highly visual canvas with a simple drag-and-drop process, making Keap our best pick for a CRM focused on sales automation.
What We Like About Keap
- When setting up automations, you can choose from a variety of customizable templates or create your own, and advanced workflows are neatly visualized on a dedicated canvas as you build them.
- Keap’s Pro and Max plans have a built-in appointment scheduler with online invite links, a fully integrated calendar and triggered automations.
- You can create highly targeted email campaigns (or broadcasts) with the numerous professionally designed and customizable templates.
What We Don’t Like About Keap
- Keap’s pricing starts at $129 per month, which can be steep for startups.
- A free business phone line for calls and texts via Keap is available for users in the U.S. and Canada only.
Ease of Use
The intuitive Keap software is easy for novice users to navigate and customizable enough for advanced users who want additional functionality. The CRM’s tools are well organized and clearly labeled, so your sales team can spend more time engaging customers than struggling with complex system layouts. Keap’s advanced features are as user-friendly as its core functions, thanks to various easy-setup automations that keep the sales process moving smoothly.
Each plan includes onboarding checklists, videos, webinars and other resources to guide new businesses, as well as personalized advice from Keap’s expert coaches. The coaching program ensures the CRM suits your company’s needs and that all your employees understand how to use the platform to its maximum potential. Once the onboarding process is complete, Keap’s customer support team remains available as needed for future troubleshooting and guidance.
You can easily connect your Keap CRM to the Google and Microsoft 365 suites, as well as core apps like Zoom, HelloSign, Mailchimp and more. Additional integrations are available through Zapier or can be found in Keap Marketplace. We appreciated that the integrations don’t require any coding experience to set up, and they extend the CRM’s functionality by adding dozens of automations with popular services such as SurveyMonkey, Calendly and Facebook Lead Ads.
Keap Features
There are key features to look for in a CRM when you’re shopping the marketplace. Here are the ones that make Keap stand out.
Sales Automation
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. Easy automations work off the basic “when-then” formula and are best suited for businesses that rely on constant communication with their customers.
For example, you can follow up on an unpaid invoice after a specific amount of time, send a reminder about an upcoming appointment or notify a team member about a new form submission. Advanced automations allow users to set up alternate paths depending on the applied conditions and scenarios. For instance, you can establish rules for asking your biggest clients for reviews and promptly follow up with any unsatisfied customers.
We like that you can also automate most of your sales processes. You can create and share custom price quotes from the Keap app, and your clients can use it to accept the quotes. From there, your sales team can convert quotes into orders, which your clients can pay online. You can also use the platform’s sales pipeline management tools for lightweight project management across your sales and marketing teams.
Integrated Email Builder
Keap has a drag-and-drop tool and templates that make email marketing a quick and painless task. Its automated sales correspondence messages help you avoid gaps in communication and move assignments along. Pairing email templates and automation with built-in list segmentation tools improves your lead conversion probability by ensuring your tailored messages go to the right recipient at the right time.
Built-in E-Commerce Automation
While many CRMs can manage aspects of e-commerce, most require third-party integrations to do so – but not Keap. This system has built-in automated e-commerce functions, making it a viable choice for businesses that live and breathe online. Keap allows you to build custom forms for your website with a simple drag-and-drop process, automatically create new contact accounts with relevant tags for newly captured leads and set up handy automated follow-up messages to kick-start the conversation. You can also create custom landing pages or select one of the predesigned templates.
Contact Manager
Keap’s contact manager section includes client portals, with tools to note how committed each client is. It can easily record every interaction your company has with a potential customer, and you can use this data to create CRM reports, such as analytics focused on timelines, sales activities and even the number of visits to your website. Custom data fields are available, so you can focus on the information critical to your business rather than manipulating preset fields, which can be confusing. One of the great things about Keap, as opposed to some other CRMs, is that it allows you to add new custom fields, tags or values straight from the editing form without taking you to the admin panel or a separate tab that would interrupt your workflow.
Dedicated Business Line
Separating personal and professional calls is vital for both business efficiency and work-life balance. Most Keap plans offer a free business phone number for calls and texts, with an 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 or text 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. However, the Keap Business Line is currently available only for companies in the U.S. and Canada.
Keap Pricing
Keap offers business owners three plans to choose from: Pro, Max and Max Classic. Each package can be customized with additional users ($29 each) and contacts. All levels include lead capture, email marketing campaigns, easy and advanced automations, payment management, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and free migration support.
Keap charges a one-time $499 onboarding fee for its Expert Coaching service regardless of the plan you choose, but a 14-day free trial with access to all of the CRM’s features lets you try before you buy. For each plan, the pricing below reflects annual billing.
Pro
- Price: $129 per month (includes 1,500 contacts and two users)
- Features: Client and deal management, email marketing, sales automations, business phone line and text messaging, appointments, quotes, invoices, sales pipelines, customizable dashboards, landing page builder, internal and external forms, and reports
Max
- Price: $199 per month (includes 2,500 contacts and three users)
- Features: Everything in the Pro plan, plus lead scoring, checkout forms, one-click upsell and cross-sell, business analytics, and subscription management
Max Classic (formerly Infusionsoft)
- Price: Custom quote
- Features: Everything in the Max plan (minus appointments, business phone line and the mobile app), plus lead source tracking, lead auto-assign, custom user roles, opportunity records, order forms, shopping cart and affiliate management
Implementation and Onboarding
Keap’s collection of onboarding checklists and quick in-app video walk-throughs for key features complement the vendor’s how-to video library and detailed knowledge base to help you set up your CRM for success from the start. All together, they explain how to connect lead sources, create workflow automations, track activities, set up invoicing and payments, design and send email campaigns, and manage customer communication. Keap offers free contact import services, which take about two days to complete, and free migration from select platforms. This includes a basic import of your contacts, 10 items and one landing page, and requires 14 to 30 days, depending on the complexity.
The Keap Expert Coaching service takes user readiness to the next level with personalized one-on-one support, training webinars, and a custom sales and marketing plan to help you convert more leads. After clarifying your business goals, the coach also works with you to develop an action plan for growing your sales and encouraging repeat business. The service is available on all plans for a one-time $499 fee.
Customer Service
Keap’s customer support options include email and 24/7 live chat access, as well as a series of how-to videos and an extensive self-service knowledge base. Phone support is also available Monday through Friday for businesses in the U.S., Monday through Saturday for those in the U.K., and Tuesday through Saturday for companies in Australia.
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 very 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 talked about the common challenges small businesses experience with CRM software and how Keap’s CRM addresses those. The rep was extremely patient as well, offering to call us back and set up a demo to help us understand every aspect of the software.
In contrast, an in-app chat option was far less effective, with the wait time exceeding 30 minutes, which was a turnoff for us.
Limitations
We found Keap’s analytics functionality somewhat limited, especially when it comes to sales enablement and revenue forecasting. While the software offers detailed reports on conversions and campaign performance, businesses looking for deeper team management insights or AI-powered predictions might prefer solutions more tailored to sales management. We’d recommend reading our review of Freshworks’ Freshsales CRM in that case.
Also, companies with unique or complex needs may find that Keap lacks the deep customization options and business app integrations they need to manage fluctuating sales circumstances. The Keap Expert Coaching service is ideal for this type of situation, though, and can guide you on how to optimize the system for atypical use cases. Still, our Salesforce CRM review presents an alternative option for businesses most interested in customization.
Methodology
This review is based on our extensive research comparing dozens of software solutions in the CRM space, along with a detailed product review process that included correspondence with the platform’s customer support team, a trial to evaluate the product’s functionality and an examination of numerous tutorials, webinars and support materials. As part of the review, we took a close look at Keap’s features and available functionality, including contact and deal management, sales automation, reporting and analytics, e-commerce features, email marketing, and integrations. We also took pricing and setup into account. [Read our CRM implementation guide for more insights.]
FAQs
Is Infusionsoft the same as Keap?
Infusionsoft was renamed Keap in 2019 to better represent the provider’s evolving brand. The former Infusionsoft functionality is preserved with the Keap Max Classic plan.
Is there a free version of Keap?
Keap doesn’t have a free plan, which is disappointing. However, it offers a free 14-day trial (with no credit card required), which should provide enough time to evaluate the CRM’s suitability for your business.
Bottom Line
We recommend Keap CRM for …
- Companies that have many repetitive processes and would benefit from the easy-setup sales and marketing automations.
- E-commerce businesses looking to automate their lead collection and basic client communication.
- Sales teams that need personalized onboarding support.
We don’t recommend Keap CRM for …
- Solo entrepreneurs and micro-startup owners who don’t require advanced feature sets designed for large teams.
- Businesses with little room in the budget for upfront fees.
