Keap vs HubSpot: One Hides the Cost in the Ladder, the Other in the Catalogue

These two products are more alike than their prices suggest, and the resemblance is the useful part. Both sell a CRM welded to a marketing engine. Both charge for onboarding that is not optional. Both have a cheap-looking number on the page and a much larger number on the invoice. Where they part company is in which direction the surprise runs.

OUR TAKE: HubSpot hides the cost in the ladder; Keap hides it in the catalogue. HubSpot's entry tier is genuinely cheap and genuinely limited, and the jump to the tier where the product becomes itself is thirteen times the price. Keap's entry tier is expensive and complete, and the jump to the top tier buys only capacity. If you have fewer than four people, HubSpot. If you have more than ten and are replacing four tools, Keap. Between those, the deciding question is not price but whether you want to be configured.

## The prices, with the unit made explicit

Keap prices the account. HubSpot prices the seat. Any table that does not fix a headcount is comparing two different things, so here is one that does.

Monthly cost in dollars, annual billing	Keap entry plan	HubSpot Starter	HubSpot Professional
2 users	249	14	180
5 users	345	35	450
10 users	505	70	900
20 users	825	140	1,800

Keap's figures are the entry plan at $249 a month on annual billing plus licences beyond the two included at three hundred and eighty-four dollars a year, which is thirty-two a month^[2]. HubSpot's are $7 and $90 per seat per month on annual billing^[16].

Two readings come out of that table. Against HubSpot's starter tier, Keap is never cheaper at any headcount a small business will have. Against HubSpot's professional tier, Keap is dearer at two and three users and cheaper from four upward, and the gap widens the whole way.

## The two ladders are shaped differently, and that is the real comparison

HubSpot's problem is the step. We measured the free tier and the starter tier carrying the same five quotas, which means the seven dollars buys the removal of HubSpot branding rather than any additional capacity^[16]. Then the step from starter to professional is thirteen times the price, and it is the step where marketing automation, custom reporting and the things people buy HubSpot for actually arrive.

Keap has no step, because it has no feature tiers at all. Its three plans carry 1,500, 2,500 and 5,000 contacts, two, three and five user licences, and five, ten and fifteen prebuilt automations, and they are otherwise identical^[2]. The vendor states this on the page in its own words, about saying goodbye to feature-based plans, and the catalogue bears it out line by line.

So the question a buyer faces is genuinely different in each case. With HubSpot you are asking which tier you will end up on, because the honest answer is usually professional and the entry price is not the price. With Keap you are asking how many contacts and people you have, because that is the only question the plans answer.

Onboarding, which both of them charge for

This is the cost most comparisons omit, and both vendors have it.

HubSpot's professional tier carries mandatory onboarding, at fifteen hundred dollars for professional and thirty-five hundred for enterprise^[16]. Keap requires an implementation package on every plan, priced at a thousand, two thousand and three thousand dollars in the catalogue and shown as a single promotional five hundred on the implementation page^[2][3].

First year, five users, in dollars	Subscription	Onboarding or implementation	Total
Keap entry plan, annual billing	4,140	1,000	5,140
HubSpot Starter, annual billing	420	nothing published	420
HubSpot Professional, annual billing	5,400	1,500	6,900

At five users and a first-year view, Keap lands between HubSpot's two tiers and closer to the upper one. That is the comparison worth having, because HubSpot's starter tier and Keap's entry plan are not substitutes for each other in any real sense.

## What each one actually gives you

HubSpot at the professional tier is a better marketing platform: stronger reporting, a far larger integration surface, and a product most marketers already know how to use. Keap is a wider operational system: it invoices, it takes payments through its own processor, it runs a checkout with order bumps and promotion codes, it books appointments and it sends text messages, all without a second vendor^[2].

If your business collects money on the internet and wants the money and the CRM in the same place, Keap does something HubSpot does not do natively. If your business needs to report on a funnel to somebody who asks hard questions, HubSpot does something Keap does not do well.

Integrations, where the gap is not close

HubSpot's marketplace is one of the largest in software. Keap's, counted with the vendor's own tab filters, carries 88 applications against 255 experts^[13]. Eighty-eight is at the low end of this category, and the ratio tells you what kind of ecosystem has grown here: nearly three consultants for every integration.

Keap's programmable surface is better than the marketplace implies. Published limits are 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^[10]. What is not published is any per-plan monthly entitlement, while the catalogue sells five hundred thousand calls a month for two hundred dollars, topping up a base quantity that appears nowhere.

## What you cannot buy later

This is the structural difference most buyers miss, and it runs both ways.

With HubSpot, the thing you cannot buy on the entry tier is capability, and you can buy it later by moving up. Expensively, but it exists. With Keap, there is no later. The three plans carry the same features, so a capability absent at $299 is absent at $599 and absent at any number you care to offer. What you buy later is contacts.

That makes the evaluation different in kind. A HubSpot trial tells you whether you like the product; it does not tell you what you will pay in two years, because that depends on which tier you end up needing. A Keap trial tells you exactly what you will have forever, and the pricing question is only about volume. Neither arrangement is better. They fail at opposite moments.

One asymmetry does favour Keap here, and it deserves saying. Nobody on a Keap plan is looking at a feature they cannot use. In this category that is unusual enough to count.

Two operational rules on the Keap side with no HubSpot equivalent

Both of these are published, and neither has a counterpart in HubSpot's terms that we have found.

The contact allowance is a ratchet. Exceeding it does not block anything: the vendor waits for your next billing date, raises your subscription's additional contacts and bills the increase^[8]. Deleting contacts does not reverse it. The vendor's own words are that Keap will not remove additional contacts from your subscription automatically.

The second rule is about who you may email. A contact with no open, click or form submission for six months is moved to an unengaged, non-marketable status, becomes ineligible for broadcast and automation email, and cannot be reactivated by the customer on any edition^[7]. A warning status arrives at four months. It is on by default. Whether such contacts still count toward the allowance you are billed on is not published anywhere we could find, which is why it is the first question we would put in writing.

If your business sells on a long cycle, read those two paragraphs together before you compare anything else.

## Support and documentation, where the comparison is closer than expected

Keap publishes phone support Monday to Friday, six in the morning to six in the evening Mountain time, with chat around the clock inside the application and a named Customer Success Manager on every plan including the entry one^[11]. That is a stronger published offer than most of this category, and our review reading backs it up: support is the dominant theme of Keap's positive reviews.

Two qualifications. The success manager carries no obligation, no response time and no service level anywhere in the governing agreement; it is a feature bullet rather than a contractual term^[6]. And Keap's knowledge base has been moved onto the acquirer's domain, where every help.keap.com address now redirects to the new site's front page rather than to the matching article, so years of links from the vendor's own pages and its community land in the wrong place.

HubSpot's documentation and academy are the better of the two, and are not going anywhere.

Ownership, which is a live question on one side only

Keap has belonged to Thryv since late 2024, and the handover is visible in the vendor's own properties: the terms address redirects to the acquirer, the help centre redirects to the acquirer's knowledge base, the support FAQ offers the acquirer's training academy, and the marketplace login runs on the acquirer's domain^[5][12][13]. The acquisition FAQ puts continuity carefully: for now, all the Keap products and services you know and love will remain the same.

We would read that as written. HubSpot carries no equivalent uncertainty.

## Getting out, which is where they stop resembling each other

HubSpot's annual terms are ordinary for the category. Keap's are not, and this is the single strongest reason to prefer the alternative if you are undecided.

Keap's own billing policy requires cancellation to be initiated verbally through a representative, states that emailed cancellation requests are not acceptable, and asks for ten days' notice before the billing date^[4]. The governing agreement, which Keap's terms address redirects to, asks for thirty days instead, makes termination effective at the expiry of the following period, limits refunds to three days from purchase, and permits a fee increase at any renewal^[5][6]. The annual contract carries a $299 early termination fee.

None of that is secret. All of it is published, and it is why the review platforms disagree about this product by three points while agreeing about HubSpot.

What the reviewers say, and about what

Across a hundred Keap reviews we read in full, cancellation appears in 57% of the one and two-star reviews and in none of the four and five-star ones; support runs the other way, appearing in 63% of the positive reviews^[14]. Interface and complexity together account for under five per cent at either end. People do not dislike this software. They dislike the contract.

Keap scores 2.74 on our scale against HubSpot's 3.67. The whole of that gap sits in two axes: value for money, where Keap takes the lowest mark we have given in the category, and integrations. Capability and support both favour Keap.

Choose Keap if

You have ten or more people, an established list, and at least two other products you intend to retire on the day it goes live. You collect payments and want them in the CRM. You have somebody who owns the configuration, because the vendor requires an implementation package and explains in its own FAQ why.

Choose HubSpot if

You have fewer than five people. You need reporting that stands up to scrutiny. You expect to integrate with many other systems. Or you simply want the ability to stop paying for software by clicking something, rather than by telephoning somebody ten days before a billing date.

## Four questions that settle it faster than a demo

Ask both vendors the same four things and compare the answers side by side.

Which tier will I actually be on in year two, and what does it cost? HubSpot's honest answer is usually the professional tier, not the starter one, so price that. Keap's honest answer is the entry plan with more contacts, because nothing above it adds capability.

What does onboarding cost and is it optional? HubSpot's professional onboarding is mandatory at fifteen hundred dollars. Keap's implementation package is required on every plan and priced between five hundred and three thousand depending which vendor page you read^[3]. Get the figure that will appear on your order form.

How do I cancel, in writing? HubSpot will describe a written process. Keap's published answer is that it cannot be done in writing at all^[4]. That difference is not a detail; across a hundred Keap reviews, cancellation is the single theme that separates the unhappy from the happy, at 57% against zero^[14].

What happens to my list if I stop sending to part of it? Only one of these vendors meters your contacts, and only one makes a contact non-marketable after six months of silence without letting you undo it^[7]. If you sell annually rather than monthly, ask this one first.