Keap vs Salesforce: The Honest Comparison Neither Vendor Wants You to Read

You just Googled "keap vs salesforce" and got ten results - nine of them written by a vendor trying to sell you something. Keap's comparison page says Salesforce is too expensive. Salesforce's ecosystem says Keap is too small. Neither mentions that Keap was acquired by a company with a 2.5-star Trustpilot rating, or that Salesforce's "small business" tier caps you at 20,000 records with zero automation.

Here's the comparison both vendors would rather you didn't read.

30-Second Verdict

Choose Keap if you're a service-based business with 10-20 people that needs text marketing, invoicing, and automation in one platform - and you're comfortable with Thryv's uncertain product roadmap.

Choose Salesforce if you have 50+ people, a dedicated admin (or budget for one at $1K-$3K/month), and need enterprise-grade customization. Don't buy Starter Suite expecting it to scale cheaply. The jump to Pro Suite is a 4x price increase.

Skip both if you're a small team under 15 people. HubSpot Starter or Pipedrive will cost a fraction and do the job.

Keap vs Salesforce at a Glance

The Trustpilot scores are brutal for both. Those aren't typos - we'll dig into why in the user sentiment section.

The Elephant in the Room: Keap Was Acquired by Thryv

If you're reading other comparisons from 2024 or early 2025, they're missing the single biggest development in Keap's history.

In October 2024, Thryv Holdings acquired Keap for $80 million in cash. That's roughly 0.94x Keap's trailing twelve-month revenue of ~$85 million - not exactly a premium valuation. The combined entity now runs 100,000+ SaaS subscriptions with total SaaS revenue exceeding $400 million. Keap co-founder Clate Mask framed it optimistically: "Our shared vision for empowering small businesses will allow us to accelerate innovation." The product continues operating, and existing users keep their features and services. Integration between Thryv's Marketing Center and Keap is underway.

Thryv itself carries a 2.5/5 Trustpilot rating across 365 reviews. One reviewer captured the mood: "I'm hoping now that Keap is apart [sic] of Tryst [sic] things will get better."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

What does this mean if you're signing up today? Three risks. First, the product roadmap is uncertain - Thryv's three-center architecture (Command, Marketing, Business) is being merged with Keap's platform, and nobody outside the company knows what the final product looks like. Second, pricing could change at any time during integration. Third, Keap's already-documented support problems could get worse during a messy corporate merger.

I'm not saying don't buy Keap. I'm saying go in with your eyes open.

Pricing Breakdown: What You'll Actually Pay in 2026

Every comparison site shows you sticker prices. Here's what you'll actually spend.

Keap Pricing (2026)

Keap simplified to a single plan. If you're seeing old Pro/Max/Ultimate tiers on other comparison sites, those numbers are outdated.

No free plan. That $500 implementation fee isn't optional - it covers strategy consulting, data migration (up to 15 hours), and up to two third-party integrations. With only 29 native integrations, you'll feel that limitation fast if your tech stack extends beyond the basics.

Salesforce Pricing Tiers (2026)

Here's where the sticker-shock math gets interesting.

Look at that jump from Starter to Pro Suite. $25 to $100 - a 4x increase - the moment you need automation, API access, or AppExchange apps. One reviewer called Starter "CRM training wheels," designed to get you comfortable before the real bill arrives.

Free Suite launched in late 2025 as Salesforce's newest attempt to attract small businesses. It's fine for two people tracking contacts in a spreadsheet-replacement. It's not a CRM.

The Real Math: 5-Person Team, Year One

This is where the comparison gets honest.

Keap: $249/mo base + 3 extra users x $39 = $366/mo = $4,392/year + $500 implementation = ~$4,900 first year.

Salesforce Starter: $25 x 5 = $125/mo = $1,500/year. Looks cheap. But you've got no automation, no API, and a 20,000-record cap. You'll outgrow it in months.

Salesforce Pro Suite (realistic): $100 x 5 = $6,000 licensing + ~$20,000 implementation + ~$2,500 training = ~$28,500 first year.

Read that again. $28,500 for a five-person team's first year on Salesforce Pro Suite. Implementation costs for small businesses run $15,000-$50,000, and that's before AppExchange apps ($5-$25/user/month), premium support, or Marketing Cloud ($1,250-$15,000/month).

As one practitioner put it: the real cost "isn't the subscription... it's been my team's time, my time, my patience, consultant fees, and the opportunity cost."

Keap's $4,900 looks downright reasonable by comparison - until you factor in the Thryv uncertainty and the Trustpilot horror stories.

Feature Comparison: What Actually Matters

Automation

This is the single biggest functional gap between the two platforms at their entry tiers.

Keap includes its visual automation builder in the base $249/mo plan. For simple if/then workflows - lead comes in, welcome email fires, task gets assigned - you can have something running in minutes. Keap's own survey found users save 10 hours per week on automation, and while that number is vendor-sourced, the automation builder genuinely is fast for basic sequences.

Salesforce? Automation requires Pro Suite at $100/user/month. Starter Suite has zero automation capability. Sales consultant Wes Schaeffer (17+ years in the CRM space) put it bluntly: Salesforce lets you "kind of" capture web leads and "kind of" send mass emails, but it's "REALLY limited" without bolt-ons. Each add-on runs $20-$500+/month.

For a small team that needs lead capture, welcome email, and task assignment without stitching together three tools, Keap wins this category outright.

Email Marketing & Text

Keap bundles native email marketing, SMS (150-250 credits/month), and landing pages into the base plan. Extra texts cost $0.015 each - US only.

Salesforce includes basic email in Starter, but anything resembling real campaign management requires Marketing Cloud, which starts at $1,250/month and scales to $15,000/month depending on contact volume. Text messaging? Third-party software required.

The gap here is enormous. If you need email + SMS + landing pages in one tool, Keap delivers it out of the box. Salesforce makes you buy three separate products.

Ease of Use vs Customization

Here's where the tradeoff crystallizes. Aggregated data across 24,000+ reviews tells the story:

Keap is easier to use and has better support ratings. Salesforce crushes it on customization and reporting. Workflow capability is essentially a tie.

Time to proficiency tells the real story: Keap takes 1-2 weeks of self-guided learning. Salesforce takes 1-3 months with training and often a consultant. One Reddit user described Salesforce's architecture as "archaic" and "counterintuitive" - "feels like they took an enterprise product from the 1990s and slapped a new label on it."

If you don't have a dedicated admin, Salesforce will eat your time alive.

The Trustpilot Problem: What Real Users Say

Both platforms have curated review scores on G2 and Capterra that look respectable (4.1-4.4 range). Trustpilot, where anyone can leave a review without vendor verification, paints a very different picture.

Keap: 1.2/5 on Trustpilot

That's not a typo. Some comparison sites report Keap at 2.6/5 - that number is outdated. The current score is 1.2 out of 5.

The patterns are consistent and damning:

• Unauthorized upgrades: "Canceling their service is extremely hard and they continuously upgrade your package without asking, just billing your card."
• Price gouging long-term customers: "We have been with Keap over 20 years, and they have become non-functional. They are constantly raising prices and lowering service."
• Cancellation nightmare: No self-serve cancel button. You fill out a contact form and wait for a callback that, according to multiple reviewers, never comes. One practitioner documented a client who "repeatedly tried to contact Keap to cancel - NOBODY has called or replied or done anything." The client had to block credit card charges to stop billing.

Keap replied to only 46% of negative reviews. That's not a company prioritizing customer retention.

Salesforce: 1.4/5 on Trustpilot

The most detailed horror story comes from a small brick-and-mortar retailer on r/salesforce. They couldn't construct basic customer segments - support escalated for months, then admitted they didn't have the right add-ons. They paid $6,000+ to a third-party consultant who couldn't fix the issues and eventually ghosted them. Salesforce's resolution? A $50 Starbucks gift card.

The post's title: "Salesforce: Sold as 'Small Business Friendly,' Delivered as a Time-Sucking Nightmare."

For context, HighLevel holds a 4.9/5 Trustpilot rating across 13,000 reviews. That's what good user satisfaction looks like. Neither Keap nor Salesforce is in the same universe.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Keap If...

You're a service-based business with 10-20 people. You need invoicing, text marketing, and automation in one platform without stitching together five tools. You're comfortable with the Thryv acquisition uncertainty. Your budget is ~$5K/year. You don't need enterprise-grade reporting or deep customization. And you're prepared to fight if you ever need to cancel.

Choose Salesforce If...

You have 50+ people and a dedicated CRM admin (or budget for one at $1K-$3K/month). You need enterprise customization, advanced reporting, and an app ecosystem with 3,000+ integrations. Your first-year budget is $25K+ including implementation. You're thinking in 3-5 year time horizons, not 90-day trials.

Understand that Starter Suite is a demo, not a product.

Choose Neither If...

You're under 15 people. You don't have a dedicated CRM admin. You're budget-conscious and need to be operational in days, not months. You want transparent pricing without implementation fees that cost more than the software.

Most small businesses fall into this third bucket. And that's fine.

Here's the thing: The Keap vs Salesforce debate is a false binary that the CRM industry loves because it keeps you choosing between "too simple" and "too complex." If your deals average under $15K, you almost certainly don't need either platform. A $20/month HubSpot Starter seat paired with a good B2B data provider will outperform a $28,500 Salesforce deployment every single time.

Better Alternatives for Most Small Businesses

Neither Keap nor Salesforce is the default small-business CRM recommendation on Reddit, in practitioner communities, or among the RevOps teams we've talked to. Here's what people actually use.

HubSpot: The Strongest All-Rounder

Free CRM to get started, Starter at $20/seat/month for basic automation, Professional Platform at $1,300/month for five seats when you need the full stack. HubSpot is Reddit's most-recommended CRM for small teams, and for good reason - the free tier is genuinely useful, not a lead-gen trap.

The caveat: HubSpot's price creep at higher tiers is real. Professional pricing can exceed Keap's, and enterprise HubSpot contracts rival Salesforce. Start on Starter and resist the upsell until you've genuinely outgrown it.

Pipedrive: The Deal Tracker That Stays in Its Lane

Use this if you need pure sales pipeline management and nothing else. Clean UI, fast setup, $14/seat/month on annual billing. Pipedrive doesn't try to be an all-in-one platform - it's a deal tracker that works.

Skip this if you need marketing automation, email campaigns, or invoicing built in. Pipedrive is a CRM, not a marketing platform.

ActiveCampaign: Best-in-Class Email Automation

If your primary need is email sequences and nurture campaigns rather than deal management, ActiveCampaign does it better and cheaper than Keap. Pair it with Pipedrive or HubSpot for the CRM piece.

HighLevel: The Agency Favorite

Starting at $97/month (unlimited contacts), HighLevel bundles CRM, funnels, SMS, email, reputation management, and appointment booking into one platform. Its 4.9/5 Trustpilot rating across 13,000 reviews makes it the highest-rated platform in this entire comparison by a wide margin. Built primarily for marketing agencies and service businesses, it's worth a serious look if you're in that world.

Zoho CRM: The Budget Play

Budget-friendly all-rounder from $14/user/month that scales without price shocks. Zoho won't win any design awards, but it covers CRM, email, automation, and reporting at a fraction of what Keap or Salesforce charges.

The Data Problem Neither CRM Solves

Your CRM is a container. The quality of what goes into it matters more than which container you pick.

Neither Keap nor Salesforce includes built-in data verification. You import contacts, those contacts decay at roughly 30% per year, and your automation starts firing emails into the void. Bounced emails tank your sender reputation. Bad phone numbers waste your reps' time. We've seen teams spend $28K on Salesforce and then feed it a purchased list with a 35% bounce rate - that's not a CRM problem, it's a data problem.

Tools like Prospeo solve this layer. With 300M+ professional profiles, 98% email accuracy, and a 7-day data refresh cycle (vs the 6-week industry average), it keeps your CRM data clean regardless of which platform you're running. Native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and major outreach tools mean verified contacts flow directly into your workflow. Start free with 75 email verifications per month - no contracts, no sales calls.

If you want the mechanics, start with how to keep CRM data clean and a simple email verification workflow before every import.

FAQ

Is Keap the same as Infusionsoft?

Yes. Keap rebranded from Infusionsoft in 2019 - same platform, same codebase, now owned by Thryv Holdings as of October 2024. If you see "Infusionsoft" in older reviews or forum posts, they're talking about the same product.

Can Salesforce actually work for a team under 10 people?

Technically yes with Free Suite or Starter, but realistically no beyond basic contact tracking. Automation requires Pro Suite at $100/user/month, and implementation typically runs $15,000-$50,000 for small businesses. Without a dedicated admin, you'll spend more time configuring Salesforce than selling.

Why are both Keap and Salesforce Trustpilot scores so low?

Both platforms have documented patterns of billing disputes, support failures, and cancellation friction. Curated review sites like G2 show higher scores (4.1-4.4) because vendors manage their presence and reviewers are verified differently. Trustpilot is open to anyone, surfacing complaints that curated platforms filter out.

What's the cheapest CRM with built-in marketing automation?

ActiveCampaign starts at $15/month for automation, and HubSpot Starter at $20/seat/month includes basic workflows. Both are dramatically cheaper than Keap ($249/mo) or Salesforce Pro Suite ($100/user/mo). For pure deal tracking without automation, Pipedrive at $14/seat/month is hard to beat.

How do I keep my CRM data accurate over time?

Use a dedicated verification tool that checks emails and phone numbers before they enter your CRM. Contact data decays ~30% annually, so without ongoing verification you're sending automation into the void - regardless of whether you chose Keap, Salesforce, or anything else.