# Keap Buyer's Checklist: 28 Questions, Four With No Published Answer > What to establish in writing before buying Keap: how contacts are counted and billed, which notice period governs, what the ninety-day guarantee promises, and what your API entitlement actually is. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/keap-buyers-checklist — The Professional's Toolkit · updated 2026-10-07_ --- Keap is the only product in this category where we would write the questions down before the demo rather than after it. Not because the software is weak; it is one of the broadest things you can buy. Because almost everything that will surprise you later is published somewhere other than the pricing page, and because the exit has a procedure. **OUR TAKE:** Work through this list with a sales representative on the telephone, which is where Keap's process puts you anyway, and get the answers in an email you keep. Four of these questions have no published answer at all, which is exactly why they are on the list. **4 of 28** — Questions on this list with no published answer: contacts counted toward billing, downgrade behaviour, the per-plan API entitlement, and the terms of the ninety-day guarantee. - **6 months** — Inactivity after which a contact becomes non-marketable and cannot be reactivated by the customer on any edition. - **10 against 30** — Days of cancellation notice required by Keap's own pages, against the governing agreement. Neither document mentions the other. - **88 against 255** — Applications against experts in the vendor's own marketplace, counted with its own filters. ## Before you look at the product **1. Price the first year, not the month.** The page shows $299 a month. The implementation package the vendor itself calls required is priced on a different page and in the catalogue, between five hundred and three thousand dollars depending which you read[2][7]. Twelve months of the entry plan plus the catalogue's matching package is $4,588. Use that number in every comparison. **2. Confirm which plan you are being quoted.** The pricing page names none of the three. They are Ignite, Grow and Scale, at $299, $399 and $599 a month, and they differ only in contacts, user licences and prebuilt automations[3]. Ask which name is on the order form. **3. Count heads, because the unit is unusual.** Keap prices the account and includes two, three or five licences. Every other CRM in this category prices the seat. For a two-person business Keap is far dearer than the alternatives; past about ten people it stops being dearer. Do that arithmetic with your own headcount before anything else. **3b. Decide whether you want the breadth.** Keap is a CRM plus a marketing automation engine plus an email and text platform plus a checkout plus invoicing, in one account[2]. If you already own three of those and like them, you are paying twice for the ones you will not switch off. If you own none of them and are about to buy four products, the comparison looks very different. Write down which of the five you will actually retire on the day Keap goes live. **3c. Check the three country footprints, because they are not the same.** The dedicated business line and one-to-one texts cover the United States and Canada. Text marketing, meaning automated texts and broadcasts, is United States only. The mobile app covers five countries[2]. A buyer outside those footprints is buying a narrower product than the page describes, at the same price. > 💡 **undefined:** Take the answers by email even though the conversation will be on the telephone. Two of the published figures on this list contradict each other, so the written answer is the one that protects you. ## About your list **4. Ask what counts as a contact.** The vendor defines one as a single person recorded in your account, with no exclusion published for duplicates, unsubscribes or bounces[2]. **5. Ask the question the vendor does not answer anywhere: do unengaged, unsubscribed and hard-bounced contacts count toward the allowance you are billed on?** This matters because of the next two items, and because we could not find it published on any page. **6. Understand automated list management before you import.** A contact with no open, click or form submission for six months is moved to an unengaged, non-marketable status and becomes ineligible to receive broadcast or automation emails[9]. A warning status arrives at four months. It is on by default, and a customer cannot manually reactivate a contact out of that status on any edition. If your business emails people who buy once a year, ask how that interacts with your cycle. **7. Know that the bill moves in one direction by itself.** Exceeding your included contacts does not block anything: the vendor waits for your next billing date, raises the subscription's additional contacts and bills the increase. Deleting contacts does not reverse it; in the vendor's own words, Keap will not remove additional contacts from your subscription automatically[10]. **8. Buy capacity the cheap way.** Included contacts work out at just under twenty cents each per month on the entry plan. The first add-on band is three and a half cents each[3]. Size the plan down and the add-on up, rather than dragging the slider. ## About sending **9. Work out your real email ceiling, which is a ratio.** Overage starts only when you pass both two hundred and fifty thousand emails sent and an average above ten emails per recipient[12]. With five thousand contacts that is fifty thousand emails. Invoices, quotes, reminders and automation emails all count toward it. **10. Resolve the text message contradiction in writing.** The page's footnote and FAQ both say tier one, five hundred messages and a hundred minutes, is included with your subscription. A disclaimer in the same page's payload calls it a three-month trial after which nine dollars a month is billed[2][3]. Ask which it is. **11. Check the country footprints, which are three different ones.** Dedicated line and one-to-one texts cover the United States and Canada. Text marketing is United States only. The mobile app covers five countries[2]. > 💡 **undefined:** Run a test export in month one and open the file. The documented export omits notes and tags, which is where most Keap accounts keep their segmentation. ## About connecting things **12. Count the integrations you actually need.** The marketplace carries 88 applications against 255 experts, counted with the vendor's own filters[16]. Eighty-eight is at the low end of this category. Check your specific tools rather than trusting a marketplace exists. **13. Ask what your API entitlement is.** Published rate limits are generous: fifteen hundred calls a minute and a hundred and fifty thousand a day per key, with a documented spike allowance and a 429 on breach[13]. What is not published anywhere is a per-plan monthly quantity, and the catalogue sells a top-up of five hundred thousand calls a month for two hundred dollars[3]. Ask what it tops up. ## About the people **14. Get the support hours in your own timezone.** Phone support runs Monday to Friday, six in the morning to six in the evening Mountain time, with chat around the clock inside the application[14]. That is twelve hours a day on the phone, which is better than several rivals. **15. Ask whether the Customer Success Manager is contractual.** It appears on the pricing page as an inclusion, and two FAQ answers route capacity changes through that person. We read the governing agreement in full and it contains no success-manager obligation, no response time and no service level[6]. If the role matters to your decision, ask for it in the order form. > ⚠ **undefined:** The Customer Success Manager that two FAQ answers route capacity changes through carries no obligation, response time or service level in the governing agreement. ## About leaving, which is the part people skip **16. Learn the cancellation procedure now.** Cancellations must be initiated verbally through a Keap representative, and emailed cancellation requests are not acceptable in the vendor's own words[4]. There is no self-service route. **17. Establish which notice period governs.** Keap's pages ask for ten days before the billing date. The governing agreement asks for thirty days before the end of the current period[4][6]. Neither document mentions the other. **18. Understand when termination actually takes effect.** The agreement makes it effective on the expiry of your next subscription period after notice is received[6]. Correctly served notice therefore ends the contract one period later than most buyers assume. **19. Ask what the ninety-day money-back guarantee promises.** Keap's legal index names one. The text beside the heading sets out no refund condition and instead expresses confidence in the product. The agreement that same index links allows a full refund only within three days of purchase and says that otherwise no refunds will be provided[6][8]. We could not read the dedicated guarantee page on any route, so we make no claim about its terms. Ask for them. **20. Budget the early termination fee.** The annual contract carries a $299 fee on early cancellation, listed in the catalogue with a billing trigger of contract termination[2][3]. **21. Test the export before you need it.** A free self-service contact export exists. Notes and tags are not included in it, and an account unable to send marketing or transactional email may also be prevented from receiving its export download link[11]. Run one in your first month, while the account is healthy, and look at what came out. **22. Ask what happens on a downgrade.** The vendor's own article on changing editions states that it does not cover downgrading, and we found no page that does[10]. What happens to contacts, automations and history is unpublished. ## About the owner **23. Read the continuity statement as written.** Keap has belonged to Thryv since late 2024. The acquisition FAQ says that for now, all the Keap products and services you know and love will remain the same[15]. The handover is already visible: the terms URL redirects to the acquirer, the help centre redirects to the acquirer's knowledge base front page rather than to the matching article, and the marketplace login runs on the acquirer's domain[5][16]. **24. If you are a long-standing Infusionsoft account, find out what you would lose.** The catalogue carries grandfathered items at no cost: free additional users, free contacts, legacy users and legacy contacts[3]. Those terms are not available to a new buyer, which means a migration to a current plan may cost you more than the price difference suggests. > ⚠ **undefined:** The vendor's own article on changing editions states that it does not cover downgrading, and no other page takes it up. ## About the three ladders above the subscription Most buyers discover only the first of these. There are three separate paid ladders sitting above the software price, and they do different jobs. **25. The one-off implementation ladder.** Items at a thousand, two thousand and three thousand dollars matched by name to the three plans, plus onboarding packages at nine hundred and ninety-nine and two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, plus an accelerator at five thousand[3]. This is the one the vendor calls required. Ask which item is on your order. **26. The ongoing service ladder.** Monthly packages at fifty-four, a hundred and nine and five hundred and forty-nine dollars, then platinum packages at one thousand and ninety-seven, two thousand one hundred and ninety-seven and three thousand two hundred and ninety-seven a month[3]. The top one runs to thirty-nine thousand five hundred and sixty-four dollars a year, which is more than six times the software plan it attaches to. These are optional. Establish that they are optional in writing, because the sales conversation will reach for them. **27. The data services ladder.** Imports at a hundred and ninety-nine, nine hundred and ninety-nine and one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars depending on complexity, hourly data work at a hundred and fifty, and restores at a hundred and fifty or two hundred for an expedited one[3]. If your migration is from anything other than a clean spreadsheet, price this before you sign rather than after the import fails. **28. Ask what the infrastructure add-ons are for.** A dedicated sending address at five hundred dollars a month, a priority database at five hundred, priority hosting at a thousand[3]. The existence of a priority database and priority hosting as purchasable items is worth a question of its own, because it implies a default that someone decided was worth upgrading from. We asked nothing on this and we are not going to speculate; it is simply the question we would put next. ## How to read your answers If the answers come back clear and in writing, Keap is a defensible choice for a business with an established list and a transactional model that wants one system instead of four. The capability is genuinely near the top of this category. If they come back vague, particularly on contacts counted, notice periods and the guarantee, treat that as information. The review evidence says the same thing from the other side: across the hundred reviews we read, cancellation appears in 57% of the one and two-star reviews and in none of the four and five-star ones[17]. Nobody writes a bad review about this product's features. > ⚠ **undefined:** Long-standing Infusionsoft accounts sit on grandfathered catalogue items at no cost. Moving to a current plan may cost more than the headline difference. ## FAQ **What should I ask before buying Keap?** Four things with no published answer: whether unsubscribed, bounced and unengaged contacts count toward the allowance you are billed on, what happens to data on a downgrade, which notice period governs cancellation, and what the ninety-day money-back guarantee promises given a three-day refund window in the terms. **Is Keap hard to cancel?** The procedure is published. Cancellation must be initiated verbally through a Keap representative, emailed requests are not acceptable in the vendor's own words, ten days' notice is required before the billing date, and the annual contract carries a $299 early termination fee. **Does Keap lock you into a contract?** The governing agreement renews automatically, requires thirty days' notice before the end of the current period, makes termination effective at the expiry of the following period, and permits fee increases at any renewal with thirty days' notice. **Can I get my data out of Keap?** Yes. A free self-service contact export is documented. It omits notes and tags, the download link is valid for twenty-four hours, and an account unable to send marketing or transactional email may be prevented from receiving the link. The catalogue separately prices paid exports from ninety-nine dollars upward. ## A decision rule, if you want one Three conditions, and we would want all three before signing. You have an established list rather than a hope of one. The entry plan's 1,500 contacts and a required implementation package make very little sense for a business that is still finding its first hundred customers, and the economics only improve as the list grows. You are retiring at least two other products on the day this goes live. Keap's price is defensible as a replacement for four tools and indefensible as a CRM alone, because a CRM alone is available from four of its competitors for a tenth of the money. You have somebody who owns the configuration. The vendor requires an implementation package and explains in its own FAQ why, which is as clear a signal as a vendor gives that this is not a product you switch on. The marketplace's 255 experts against 88 applications is the same signal from the ecosystem[16]. If all three are true, work the list above, get the answers in writing, and the product will probably repay you. If one of them is false, the honest advice is that the thing which will cost you is not the monthly price. It is the ten-day telephone call eighteen months from now. ## Sources [1] Keap vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://keap.com/pricing (2026-10) [2] Keap product catalogue, read from the pricing page's own data payload — https://keap.com/pricing (2026-10) [3] Keap vendor billing policies FAQ — https://keap.com/legal/billing-policies/faq (2026-10) [4] Keap terms-of-service redirect chain — https://keap.com/legal/terms-of-service (2026-10) [5] Thryv Terms and Conditions, July 2026, the governing agreement — https://assets.thryv.com/prod/pdfs/tc/Thryv-Terms-and-Conditions-July-2026.pdf (2026-10) [6] Keap vendor implementation services page — https://keap.com/resources/implementation-services (2026-10) [7] Keap vendor legal index — https://keap.com/legal (2026-10) [8] Keap vendor documentation on unengaged contacts — https://learn.thryv.com/hc/en-us/articles/41630277888013-Unengaged-Contacts-and-Automated-List-Management-in-Keap-How-It-Works-and-How-to-Configure-It (2026-10) [9] Keap vendor documentation on limits and overages — https://learn.thryv.com/hc/en-us/articles/41295749032333-Limits-Thresholds-and-Overages-with-Keap (2026-10) [10] Keap vendor documentation on exporting contacts — https://learn.thryv.com/hc/en-us/articles/37598018586893-Export-contacts-from-Keap (2026-10) [11] Keap vendor documentation on email usage and overages — https://learn.thryv.com/hc/en-us/articles/37299423089933-Email-usage-and-overages (2026-10) [12] Keap developer documentation on API quotas — https://developer.keap.com/api-token-quota-and-usage-measurements/ (2026-10) [13] Keap vendor contact page — https://keap.com/contact (2026-10) [14] Keap vendor acquisition FAQ — https://keap.com/thryv-faq (2026-10) [15] Keap partner marketplace, counted with its own filters — https://marketplace.keap.com (2026-10) [16] Trustpilot profile and review corpus for keap.com — https://www.trustpilot.com/review/keap.com (2026-10) [17] Gartner Digital Markets review pool for Keap — https://www.capterra.com/p/76390/Infusionsoft/reviews/ (2026-10) [18] TrustRadius rating for Keap — https://www.trustradius.com/products/keap/reviews (2026-10) [19] The product catalogue Keap ships to the browser with that page: 99 priced items, including three named plans, a seventeen-band contact ladder, six monthly service packages and the early termination fee — https://keap.com/pricing (data payload)