HubSpot vs Keap (formerly Infusionsoft): A 6-point comparison

If you’re a business owner or you run a sales or marketing department – you’ve very likely been approached by several of the big-name providers of sales and marketing automation software. 

While the promise of this technology is big, it takes significant due diligence to narrow down the choices and really sort out the features and functionality that will bring lasting change to your business. 

It’s a tough challenge to stay on top of the rapidly developing marketing technology landscape while running a business. We at IMPACT feel your pain.

Our aim is to lighten your research burden a bit by compiling a highlight reel of sorts so you can look at two softwares side by side in an unbiased fashion.

In this article, we’ll compare HubSpot versus Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) – two of the biggies in the small to medium business marketplace — and offer some guidance on which is right for you.  

But first, what is HubSpot?

HubSpot was founded in 2006, recently passed 100,000 customers with ~5,000 employees and is “Helping millions grow better.”

Starting as marketing automation software way back in 2006, they’ve since evolved to support a business’ full-needs — not just marketing teams. 

Aside from marketing automation, HubSpot offers tools to publish content to a blog, social media, send email marketing, monitor paid ads, create landing pages, and build and manage a website as well as a CRM, making it an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and service software to grow with your company. 

What is Keap?

Keap was founded in 2001 and originally named Infusionsoft. In 2019, they went through a rebrand to accompany an expanded product line and currently have 26,000 customers, 360 employees, and the mission to “help serious entrepreneurs grow without the chaos.”

Why rebrand an already successful company? The company's focus has always been to give small to midsize businesses a product that met all their “advanced CRM, sales and marketing automation needs,” and that hasn’t changed. 

At its core, the tool is an all-in-one sales and marketing automation platform that adds in e-commerce functionality to enable your company to take payments online.

What did change is the advent of the newest product, Keap, which builds on the Infusionsoft foundation to help businesses with smart client management. 

Both Keap and Infusionsoft products now live under the new corporate brand of Keap. 

HubSpot vs Keap

Next, we’re going to go through six areas to give you a holistic view of the platforms. 

1. Functionality
2. Integrations
3. Solution/service partners
4. Training and support
5. Ease of Use
6. Cost 

1. Functionality 

HubSpot and Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) have been in the game for quite a bit at this point. At a quick glance, HubSpot and Keap even seem to be very similar. 

Both offer sales and marketing automation, CRM functionality, customer service options, and reporting. HubSpot and Keap both even offer A/B testing (depending on your account level) and lead scoring, but they’re actually far from identical in a few key areas.

HubSpot functionality

HubSpot’s offering is now broken up into four different Hubs: Marketing, Sales, Service, and CMS, with the goal of giving your company everything you need to be successful, all in one place for efficient management and adoption.

The free CRM functionality can be leveraged across any of these and each has three levels Free to Enterprise with more features for more complex business cases being available in Enterprise.

HubSpot Marketing Hub

This is the marketing automation piece to HubSpot that gives you the functionality needed to run successful marketing campaigns. 

Here you can create content and publish content, post and monitor social media engagement, and send marketing emails. 

🔎 Related Pillar: The Ultimate Guide to HubSpot Marketing for Businesses

You can also create conversion pages via landing pages and calls-to-action, add forms so users can actually give you data and become a lead, implement live chat functionality into your current site so you can engage prospects directly, and automate your marketing follow-ups with workflows. 

Features in Marketing Hub are dependent on your tier but they include:

• Landing pages
• Email marketing
• Marketing automation
• Contact management
• Forms
• Account-Based Marketing
• Live chat
• Blog 
• Ad tracking and management
• Social media management
• Predictive lead scoring

You’ll also have the ability to report on ROI through revenue attribution reporting by leveraging the CRM, with multi-touch revenue attribution available on Enterprise. 

HubSpot Sales Hub

Sales Hub is the advanced CRM functionality for HubSpot that enables your sales team to manage their pipeline. 

🔎 Related: 5 HubSpot Sales Hub enterprise benefits we absolutely adore

With this Hub, your sales team can track all of their sales activities (i.e. emails and call recordings), leverage templates and automation to streamline their productivity, and access everything they need to effectively manage their pipeline and deals. 

Features in Sales Hub include:

• Email templates
• Email tracking
• Call tracking and recording
• Sales automation
• Live chat
• Meeting scheduler
• Quotes
• Analytics and reporting
• Pipeline Management
• Sales management playbooks
• Account-Based Marketing
• Recurring revenue tracking
• Predictive lead scoring

HubSpot Service Hub

Next up, Service Hub enables your company to scale your customer service and support with the ability to have conversations with your customers, create a knowledge base to quickly answer your user’s questions, leverage feedback surveys to gather customer data, and more.

Service Hub gives you the tools you need to delight your customers with real-time communication, answer their questions or concerns, and compile that data in one place so your team can actually leverage it. 

Features in Service Hub include:

• Ticket pipelines
• Live chat
• Conversation routing
• Simple automation
• Knowledge base 
• Feedback surveys
• Help desk automation
• Goals
• Playbooks

HubSpot CMS Hub

CMS Hub enables you to build your entire website on HubSpot so that it lives alongside your sales, marketing, and service efforts all in one platform — minimizing the amount of time logging into different portals to support your clients. 

HubSpot’s CMS Hub offers drag-and-drop functionality so you can easily build and manage your website without needing a developer. Your business needs to evolve to changes in the marketplace, and your website should be able to as well. 

With the availability of pre-built templates and themes, you can get a website created quickly and relatively painlessly.

Features in CMS Hub:

• SEO recommendations
• Website themes
• Multi-language content creation
• Adaptive testing
• Drag-and-drop editor

CMS Hub is offered in two levels: Professional and Enterprise. The main difference being Enterprise has access to more robust and complex features that most SMBs won’t need.

Enterprise features include: Custom Objects which enable you to further personalize your data to your business needs, Serverless functions to build web applications without the need for server-side access, the ability to create Memberships so as to provide tailored content sets for specific user groups, and additional governance options such as Partitioning, Activity logging, Single sign-on, and more. 

Keap functionality and history

Keap’s offering is similar to HubSpot but seemingly more simple as they’re focused on the size of your business versus being specifically focused on marketing, sales or service. They offer four options based on your needs:

• Keap Lite: For solopreneurs and businesses

• Keap Pro: For growing businesses with custom needs
• Keap Max: For established businesses and teams
• Max Classic: For advanced e-commerce & sales teams

All of Keap’s plans include:

• CRM 
• Sales and marketing automation
• Email marketing
• Payment functionality
• Lead capture
• Data migration support

Each of the feature sets are organized by their goal, similarly to HubSpot’s Hubs (just not sold separately).

The “Organize leads” section is all about contact management, conversions, segmentation, and scoring your leads. “Get more jobs” has features revolving around quotes, meetings, and your pipeline. “Stay connected” is where you’ll see features like a mobile app, SMS messaging, email marketing, and A/B email testing. 

“Get paid” is, not surprisingly, about payment functionality, checkout forms, and more e-commerce functionality. The “Automate the work” section lists the features around automation, reminders, and integrations. Lastly, the “Reporting, admin, and support” section has all of your back-office features including reporting, user roles, dashboards, and analytics. 

Like HubSpot, the actual feature sets you have access to are limited based on the level you select, but for the purposes of this comparison, I’ll list out all of the features in Lite and then build on them for Pro and Max.

Keap Lite

Keap lite covers all the areas that solopreneurs and small businesses need to be successful. You’ll have the ability to manage and organize your leads, email marketing to those leads and automate some of the activity to make your life easier. 

It’s a simple setup for businesses looking to get started.

Organize Leads

• Contact management
• Contact segmentation
• Saved searches, filters, and contact lists
• Tasks
• Forms
• B2B Management

Get more jobs

• Quotes
• Appointments

Stay connected

• Mobile app*
• SMS messages and phone line **
• Email marketing
• Email sync (Gmail, Outlook)

*Keap App in US, Australia, Canada, UK and New Zealand

**Available for users in the US and Canada only

Get paid

• Invoices
• One-time payments

Automate the work

• Easy automation
• Reminders
• Internal forms
• Limited API (integrations)

Reporting, admin and support

• Default user roles

Keap Pro

Keap Pro builds upon the features in Lite giving growing businesses more functionality needed to succeed.

This level gives you the ability to accept recurring payments, A/B test your email marketing, and the ability to create landing pages to help your lead generation efforts.  On top of that, you also get access to more advanced automation and integrations with better reports and a customizable dashboard.

It’s a more robust feature set for more established businesses. 

Organize Leads

• Everything in Lite
• Landing pages

Get more jobs

• Everything in Lite
• Sales pipeline

Stay connected

• Everything in Lite
• A/B email testing
• Automated SMS messaging (coming soon)
• SMS broadcasts (coming soon)

Get paid

• Everything in Lite
• Recurring payments

Automate the work

• Everything in Lite
• Full API (integrations)
• Advanced automations
• Pipeline automation

Reporting, admin and support

• Everything in Lite
• Reports
• Customizable dashboard

Keap Max

Keap Max opens up many more e-commerce and payment options for businesses.

This is everything Keap has to offer (unless you want that Classic Infusionsoft experience) including lead scoring so you can better predict the value of a contact, more robust sales analytics, checkout forms, and even more sales/e-commerce functionality coming in the future. 

It’s everything an e-commerce focused business needs to thrive on the web. 

Organize Leads

• Everything in Pro
• Lead scoring

Get more jobs

• Everything in Pro

Stay connected

• Everything in Pro

Get paid

• Everything in Pro
• Subscription management
• Checkout forms
• Custom ecommerce pages (coming soon)
• Sales funnels (coming soon)
• One-click upsell and cross-sell (coming soon)
• Shopify integration (coming soon)

Automate the work

• Everything in Pro

Reporting, admin and support

• Everything in Pro
• Analytics
• Custom user roles (coming soon)

Keap Max Classic

Keap Max Classic is the rebranded name for the original Infusionsoft product. That’s right; if you had Infusionsoft and loved it, Max Classic is for you.  

Businesses that need shopping cart functionality along with sales and marketing automation are a great fit for this product. That coupled with a robust CRM make Max Classic a great fit for advanced ecommerce companies. 

Max Classic also has:

• Order forms
• Sales round-robin
• Affiliate management

While some of these features are coming to Keap Max, others such as affiliate management and shopping cart functionality appear to be exclusive to Classic.

2. Integrations

Integrations are a big part of software platforms today as they give you the ability to quickly tie together your various tools; in this case, sales, marketing, and service tools as well as augment the functionality you have access to, all without needing to pay for expensive and complex development.

We’re talking functionality such as enabling your call tracking software data to flow into your marketing data (if they’re going to be two different systems) and other ways to better support your customers and team. 

If it wasn’t for integrations, valuable data and activity would be siloed and seeing the great picture of how everything interacts would be much more difficult.

HubSpot integration capabilities

At the time of this writing, the HubSpot App Partner Program is the main directory of integrations with HubSpot offering over 500 applications. 

The App Partner Program is segmented into five main categories: Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Productivity, and Finance, and within them are subcategories such as SEO, e-commerce, data management, help desk, payroll, CRM and more. Seriously, there’s a lot in there. 

These are built so they can be added to an existing user’s HubSpot platform with the click of a button. A good chunk of the apps are free but others do require a flat fee or subscription to that outside service. HubSpot also has an open Application Programming Interface (API) which allows developers to create their programs within the HubSpot platform.

Keap integration capabilities

Keap’s Marketplace currently shows 254 applications available for users broken down into a variety of categories ranging from Lead Generation and e-commerce to Membership Site and Book Keeping. 

Similar to HubSpot, the Keap applications and integrations are built to be quickly installed and some are free, while others require a subscription. Keap also offers an open API to enable you to build whatever custom integrations you may need. 

3. Solution/service partners

Both HubSpot and Keap leverage a dedicated partner community of businesses that are certified in their products. These partners provide solutions and services based on the product of choice and help you better adopt and leverage the tools.

The partners typically have full teams of experts that are able to help your business grow through HubSpot or Keap. Many will even have experts in specific areas who that can help your team really understand the intricacies of the tools and features. 

Each partner is different and will have their own unique pricing, team, and business structure so it’s important to do your homework before jumping into a partnership. Some will be on doing it for your, while others will be more focused on training your team to fully own the software.

HubSpot Solutions Partners

Over on the HubSpot Solutions Directory, there are over 5,700 providers offering 25+ services ranging from website design and paid advertising to video production and custom API integration.

All of these Solutions Partners, formerly called HubSpot Agency Partners, have met certain criteria and are trusted to help you accomplish your goals using the HubSpot tools. 

 To help you choose between them, HubSpot offers dedicated reviews, ratings on a one to five star scale, and Partner pages with additional information on their company. 

For more information on the top three partners in the HubSpot Solutions Partner Directory, check out our open and honest comparison.

Keap Partner Marketplace

On the Keap side of things, their Marketplace currently listed 504 Certified Companies that offer services across nine key areas ranging from Sales/Marketing and Design/Creative to Business Consulting and Lead Gen.

Similar to HubSpot, clicking on a Certified Partner will give you more information into their company, their reviews, and what they offer their customers. 

4. Training and support

We went through how you can leverage a trusted partner to help you succeed with HubSpot and Keap, but what if you want to go-it-alone? 

Both companies have in-house training and technical support and training coming at a cost or in the do-it-yourself model and technical support being chat, phone, or ticket-based (with help articles being a go-to resource). 

Knowing how you’ll get up to speed with the tools and where to turn if the stuff hits the fan is important when you’re making your purchasing decision. 

HubSpot training and technical support

HubSpot’s training and consulting is offered as an add-on for your preferred Hub or Bundle with a few options to choose from:

• Inbound Consulting (Monthly): Up to five hours per month with a sales, marketing, and service consultant for $850 per month.
• Technical Consulting (Ongoing): Up to five hours per month with a technical consultant for $850 per month.
• Inbound Consulting (Ongoing): Up to five hours per month with a sales, marketing, and service consultant for $850 per month.
• Premium Consulting: Up to five hours per month with a technical consultant and an inbound consultant for $1,600 per month.
• Marketing Fundamentals Training: a three-day in-person classroom training for a one-time fee of  $1,000, 

Aside from these options for training and consulting to get you up to speed with the platform and best practices, HubSpot also has a collection of courses, webinars, templates, and more in their Academy. 

Once you’re trained and onboarded, if you need help, HubSpot has a wide range of support options including their detailed Knowledge Base and Partner Community as well as live chat, email, and phone support (only available for Professional and Enterprise).

KEAP training and support

Keap offers a one-on-one coaching service to get you onboarded quickly through daily training sessions and personalized support. The coach will also help you build a “Sales and Marketing Playbook” for $499 (listed as a $1,500 value). 

Similar to HubSpot, Keap has a deep user community, knowledge base, and webinar series dedicated to helping users understand the platform. 

Keap also offers a range of Technical Support options from 24/7 chat support, a deeply resourced help center, and phone support.

5. Ease of use

Now that you know a good chunk about each of the platforms, you’re likely wondering just how easy HubSpot and Keap are to use. 

I have been using HubSpot for many years, but my experience with Keap is very limited so to answer that question, we’ll look at some of the reviews on resources like TrustPilot and G2. 

HubSpot’s ease of use

HubSpot has their reviews setup for each individual hub. Based on the average reviews on G2, they have an Ease of Use score ranging from 8.5 to 8.7 depending on the hub. 

Here’s what some users had to say:

“Fast interface, simple on where to click…It also includes the metrics for other workers in my same field, so this allows for easy comparison of our performance.” - Reviewed on G2 by Neil X.

“My favorite thing about HubSpot is the simplicity of the email marketing UI as well as the ability to create workflows.” - Reviewed on G2 by Jeremiah R.

“It's very easy to use, very intuitive. Their support team is incredibly quick to respond if you need help or if you have questions. It's truly a pleasure to work with this tool and the entire HS team.” Reviewed on G2 by Sebastian C.

Keap’s ease of use

Based on the average reviews on G2, Keap has an Ease of Use score of 6.9. 

Below are a few reviews that made up that score:

“I like the fact that Keap is available on all of my devices and I can very quickly access my calendar/availability real time. Since using Keap, I have not missed meeting appointments and more prospects have reached out to me to schedule meetings. It has completely eliminated phone calls and emails back and forth trying to schedule meetings! Great time saver!” Reviewed on G2 by Caroline L.

“Once you learn how to use the Keap system it is so easy to generate email campaigns. I love the ability to make calls and send texts through the app on my cell phone. This way clients, and future clients, get a phone number that is not your personal cell number but you get the phone calls on your personal cell number.” Reviewed on G2 by Fred N.

“I love the overall ease of use of the whole platform. I enjoy the tagging functionality as well as the ability to create custom fields. Also every time I call every employee is very helpful. I have worked with many different CRM in my working years and I have found Keap to be the most robust and well rounded of all of them.” Reviewed on G2 by Evan K.

6. Cost

Last, but certainly not least, let’s talk about the cost of HubSpot versus Keap. 

HubSpot Hub pricing

HubSpot’s four Hubs each have their own pricing options on monthly or annual plans and they offer special bundles with discounts as well. All of the Hub pricing pages have a handy calculator so you can see what you’re likely to be paying, but here’s the quick rundown.

HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing starts at $50/month for Starter (starts with 1,000 marketing contacts), $890 per month for Professional (starts with 2,000 marketing contacts), and goes up to $3,200 per month for Enterprise (starts with 10,000 marketing contacts) with main differences in pricing being the number of marketing contacts in your database. The more marketing contacts you have, the higher your monthly cost will end up being. 

HubSpot Sales Hub pricing starts at $50 per month for Starter (starts with two paid users), $500 per month for Professional (starts with five paid users), and goes up to $1,200 per month for enterprise (starts with 10 paid users). 

HubSpot Customer Service Hub pricing starts at $50 per month for Starter (starts with  paid users), $400 per month for Professional (starts with five paid users),  and goes up to $1,200/mo for enterprise (starts with 10 paid users). 

HubSpot CMS Hub pricing starts at $300/mo for Professional and goes up to $900/mo for enterprise with the main difference being the lever of features and functionality as I mentioned above.

All four Hubs do have free options that give you a solid base of functionality like I mentioned above. 

HubSpot bundle pricing

HubSpot also offers bundles of all Hubs for a special price.

Starter Growth Suite which includes Starter levels for Sales, Marketing, and Service Hub is $150 per month (currently $50 per month in support of small businesses during the pandemic). 

Professional Growth Suite which includes Professional levels for Sales, Marketing, and Service Hub is currently $1,343 per month.

Enterprise Growth Suite which includes Enterprise levels for Sales, Marketing, and Service Hub is currently $4,200 per month.

Keap pricing and plans

As mentioned above, Keap is offered in three versions Lite, Pro, and Max.

• Keap Lite is currently $79 per month ($49 per month for your first three months) and includes 500 contacts and one user.
• Keap Pro is currently $149 per month ($79 per month for your first three months) and includes 500 contacts and one user.
• Keap Max is currently $199 per month ($100 per month for your first three months) and includes 500 contacts and one user.
• For Keap Max Classic, you’ll need to reach out and talk to sales to get pricing. 

So which is right for you?

When it comes down to it, both HubSpot and Keap are loaded with features intended to automate and optimize the execution of your marketing strategy, enable your sales team to do their best work, and help your company grow effectively and efficiently.  

For folks that need an “all-in-one” solution that can enable their sales, marketing, and service teams to collaborate in one place, HubSpot has a wide range of offerings to support just that. It is a bit pricey compared to Keap, but you get a bit more bang for your buck in each Hub and in the size of your network options.

That being said, if you’re looking for e-commerce or shopping cart functionality then Keap is your better option. Keap delivers that functionality on top of the ability to automate your marketing and sales, while HubSpot relies on third-parties. 

Overall, while it doesn’t have the depth of features in separate “hubs,” Keap does offer a more budget-friendly option that is packed with the exact right amount of functionality for your business size. 

It’s important to make sure you do your own due diligence when selecting your platform of choice. To help you even more, we have an up-to-date, in-depth review of the Hubspot CRM.