⚡ Quick Verdict:
- Pricing: Keap costs $299/month (annually billed). Freshsales CRM starts at $9/user/month.
- Best for: Keap suits small businesses that want sales and marketing automation in one dashboard. Freshsales fits sales teams that want a cheap seat-based CRM.
- Key difference: Keap bundles a landing page builder, invoicing and payment processing, and a business line. Freshsales leans on Freddy AI and omnichannel messaging.
- Our pick: Keap, rated 4.2 against 4.0, because it replaces several tools at once.
Most people comparing these two tools have already outgrown a spreadsheet.
They want one system for customer relationship management and follow-up.
Keap CRM and Freshsales CRM both promise that.
But they are built for different jobs.
Keap is a sales and marketing automation platform with a CRM inside it.
Freshsales is a sales CRM that adds marketing through other Freshworks products.
Overview
This Keap vs Freshsales CRM comparison covers pricing, key features, automation, and ease of use.
Our writer spent hands-on time inside the Keap app directly.
Notes on Freshsales come from vendor documentation and G2 and Capterra reviews.
Every price below comes from our own pricing database, not a vendor landing page.
By the end you will know which one fits your sales process.
What is Keap CRM?
Keap is a CRM and automation platform built for small businesses.
It merges CRM, email marketing, and sales automation into one system.
Customer data, sales campaigns, and billing all live in the same place.
The company was formerly known as Infusionsoft before its rebrand.
Keap offers a visual Campaign Builder for building campaigns without code.
It also includes a dedicated business line for calls and texts.
That keeps work messages out of your personal phone.
🏆 Winner: Keap
One platform for CRM, marketing automation, and invoicing. Keap connects to more than 2,500 third party tools. Setup takes about 20 minutes.
Keap Pricing
Keap plans are priced by contact volume, not by seat.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Keap | $299/month (Annually Billed) | Established small businesses running sales and marketing in one system |
| Free trial | $0 for 14 days | Testing every feature before you commit |
| Expert Coaching (one-time) | $499 | Guided onboarding and custom training |
Pricing verified August 2026.
Free trial: 14 days with access to all features.
Money-back guarantee: Keap does not publish a blanket refund window, so cancel inside the trial if it is not a fit.
📌 Note: Each additional user costs $30 per month. Onboarding includes free migration and a dedicated customer success manager.
⚠️ Pricing conflict: Our database lists Keap at $299/month billed annually. Public sources list three tiers instead: Lite from $79/month, Pro from $169/month, and Max from $199/month, each for 500 contacts. The monthly fee climbs as your contact list grows past each threshold, so confirm your tier at checkout.
Key Benefits of Keap
Here is what makes Keap CRM worth a look:
- Hours back every week: Keap customers who use automation report saving 10 hours per week. They also report a 38% lift in revenue.
- Fewer tools to pay for: CRM, marketing, sales, and project management sit in one dashboard. That cuts the stack you have to manage.
- Invoicing and payment processing: Billing is built in. Several payment gateways connect natively.
- Advanced automations without code: The Campaign Builder uses drag and drop tools. Templates cover the common when-then paths.
- Landing page builder: Build one landing page or connect multiple landing pages to the same campaign. Web form and checkout forms feed straight into the contact record.
- Real onboarding help: Free migration, free on-demand product training, and training webinars come with the plan.
- Deliverability: Keap claims a 99.5% deliverability rate for email campaigns sent through the platform.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer created a new account and ran a small campaign end to end. Here is what stood out from that hands-on time:
Keap Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Automates almost every stage of the sales journey
- Connects with more than 2,500 platforms and tools
- Built-in invoicing and several payment processing integrations
- Free migration and a dedicated customer success manager on every plan
- Setup takes as little as 20 minutes
❌ Cons
- Pricing is high enough to deter brand new small businesses
- The $499 one-time onboarding fee is not optional for most buyers
- Costs jump once your contact count crosses a threshold
- The user community is not very active
What is Freshsales CRM?
Freshsales is a cloud-based CRM software from Freshworks.
It launched in 2016 as the second major product in that suite.
The tool centralizes customer data and every touchpoint on one timeline.
Freddy AI scores leads, flags deal risk, and suggests the next best action.
Phone, email, chat, and SMS all sit inside a unified inbox.
Freshworks reports more than 67,000 customers across its products.
Freshsales CRM
A seat-priced CRM for small and medium sized businesses. Freddy AI handles lead scoring and forecasting. Users rate it 4.5/5 on G2 and Capterra.
Freshsales CRM Pricing
Freshsales charges per user, so cost scales with your sales team.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | $9/user/month | Small teams tracking sales activities for the first time |
| Pro | $39/user/month | Growing sales teams that need sequences and forecasting |
| Enterprise | $59/user/month | Larger teams needing custom fields, audit logs, and governance |
Pricing verified August 2026.
Free trial: 21 days on every tier, no credit card required.
Money-back guarantee: None published. The long trial is meant to cover that gap.
📌 Note: A free plan covers up to 3 users with most features included. Freshsales pricing has fallen over the years and now sits two to three times lower than it once did.
⚠️ Pricing conflict: Our database lists Growth at $9/user/month and Enterprise at $59/user/month. Public sources currently list the entry paid tier at $11/user/month and Enterprise at $71/user/month. Check the live checkout page on the Freshworks website before you buy.
Key Benefits of Freshsales CRM
Here is where Freshsales earns its score:
- Excellent value: Reviewers call it strong value for money, especially for small and medium sized businesses.
- Freddy AI: It can score leads on behavior and profile, which lifts conversion rates on the deals worth chasing.
- Visual sales pipelines: Kanban boards show deal progress and expose bottlenecks fast.
- Omnichannel messaging: Email, phone, WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, and LINE all connect.
- Reporting: About a dozen predefined sales reports ship ready and stay fully customizable.
- Support on every plan: 24/5 phone support, chat, and email, with no tier gating.
- Mobile apps: The iOS and Android apps support offline access and call logging.
What Our Team Noticed
Note: We have not had extended hands-on time with Freshsales CRM yet. The observations here come from Freshworks documentation and public reviews on G2 and Capterra.
Those reviews split along one line. Buyers praise the price and the interface, while a smaller group reports cluttered navigation and slow loading times on heavy pipelines.
Freshsales CRM Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Scores 4.5/5 on review platforms like Capterra and G2
- Free plan for up to 3 users with most features included
- Intuitive interface that is easy to learn
- 21-day free trial on every tier
- Works tightly with Freshdesk, Freshmarketer, and other Freshworks products
❌ Cons
- Cluttered navigation and slow loading times
- Around 385 integrations, fewer than larger competitors
- Limited native connectors outside the Freshworks family
- Lacks some functionality found in HubSpot and Salesforce
Feature Comparison
Both tools cover the CRM basics. The gap shows up in what surrounds the contact record.
| Feature | Keap | Freshsales CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $299/month (annual) | $9/user/month |
| Free Plan | ❌ | ✅ (3 users) |
| Free Trial | ✅ 14 days | ✅ 21 days |
| Landing Page Builder | ✅ | ❌ |
| Invoicing & Payments | ✅ | ❌ |
| Built-in Business Line | ✅ | ✅ (phone, SMS) |
| AI Lead Scoring | ✅ | ✅ Freddy AI |
| Integrations | 2,500+ | ~385 |
| Best For | Sales and marketing automation in one place | Seat-priced CRM for sales teams |
1. Automation Builder
Keap: The Campaign Builder is a visual flowchart for marketing automations. You drag a trigger, attach automated actions, and publish. Advanced automations follow simple when-then logic, so automated tasks like follow-up and tagging run without you.
Freshsales CRM: Sales sequences automate repetitive steps so reps spend more time selling. The logic is lighter than Keap’s and aimed at outreach rather than full marketing automation.
2. Contact and Customer Data Management
Keap: Every customer sits in one record with tags, custom fields, and history. Keeping the whole contact list and process in one system is the point of the product.
Freshsales CRM: You get a 360-degree customer view with a full timeline of interactions. That history then feeds personalized marketing later in the customer journey.
3. Email and Text Messaging
Keap: A dedicated business line handles calls and texts, which separates work from personal. Email follow-ups fire automatically based on customer interactions.
Freshsales CRM: Phone, email, chat, and SMS live in a unified inbox. Email tracking shows who opened what, and reps can respond in the same window.
4. Landing Pages and Web Forms
Keap: The landing page builder ships inside the platform. Publish one landing page or connect multiple landing pages to a single funnel, then push each new lead straight into a campaign.
Freshsales CRM: You get web forms for lead capture, but no landing page builder. For real landing pages you add Freshmarketer alongside it.
⚠️ Warning: If landing pages matter to your business strategy, budget for a second tool with Freshsales. That closes most of the price gap between these two CRM platforms.
5. Sales Pipeline and Deal Tracking
Keap: The sales pipeline is visual and drag and drop. Deals move by stage, and each move can trigger the next automated step in the sales process.
Freshsales CRM: Kanban sales pipelines track deal progress and surface bottlenecks. Freshdesk OMNI pulls support conversations into the same view for teams that own both sides.
6. Lead Management and Lead Scoring
Keap: Lead scoring rates each prospect on engagement, so a rising lead score tells you who to call first. Lead management and tracking sit beside the automation, which is how teams chase more leads without more headcount.
Freshsales CRM: Freddy AI can score leads on behavior and profile. That prioritization is the feature reviewers point to when they say it helps increase conversions.
7. AI Features
Keap: Keap AI drafts email copy and proposes automations from plain language prompts. It writes and builds rather than predicts.
Freshsales CRM: The Freddy AI co-pilot predicts deal risk and recommends the next best action to close. Its strength is forecasting, not content.
8. Email Marketing Campaigns
Keap: Email marketing runs on CRM tags and segments, so email marketing campaigns can target narrow slices of your list. Keap claims 99.5% deliverability on messages sent through the platform.
Freshsales CRM: You can send personalized bulk emails and monitor activity on them. Smart AI agents handle routing, but heavy campaign work belongs in Freshmarketer.
9. Reporting and Integrations
Keap: Pipeline management reporting shows where deals stall against your growth goals. Keap connects to more than 2,500 third party tools, including e commerce and payment add ons.
Freshsales CRM: About a dozen predefined reports cover forecasting and team performance. The marketplace holds roughly 385 apps, with Google, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Zoom among them.
⚠️ Warning: Freshsales integration depth is strongest inside the Freshworks family. Outside it, third party integrations are thinner than what Keap offers.
10. Pricing & Cost
| Tier | Keap | Freshsales CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Free | ❌ | ✅ Up to 3 users |
| Entry | $299/month (annually billed) | Growth: $9/user/month |
| Mid | Included | Pro: $39/user/month |
| Top | Included | Enterprise: $59/user/month |
| Onboarding | $499 one-time Expert Coaching | None required |
| Extra user | $30/month | Per-seat pricing |
Keap: You pay a flat platform fee tied to contacts, not seats. That is expensive for a solo operator and reasonable for an established business replacing four tools.
Freshsales CRM: Seat pricing starts low and grows with the team. Ten reps on Pro land near $390 per month, so the cheap headline shrinks fast.
Different Scenarios
| If You Need… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest entry cost | Freshsales CRM | Free plan plus $9 seats |
| Sales and marketing automation together | Keap | Campaign Builder plus email |
| Invoicing and payment processing | Keap | Billing is built in |
| AI forecasting | Freshsales CRM | Freddy AI deal risk scoring |
| Landing pages inside the CRM | Keap | No second tool needed |
| A large sales team | Freshsales CRM | Cheaper per seat at scale |
💰 Your Budget
Keap’s monthly fee is fixed and steep for a brand new small business. Freshsales starts near zero, then climbs one seat at a time.
🔌 Your Tech Stack
Already on Freshdesk or Freshmarketer? Freshsales slots in with almost no work. If your stack is scattered, Keap’s 2,500 connections will cover more of it.
🛒 Your E Commerce Setup
E commerce businesses get more from Keap, since checkout forms, invoices, and cross sells run from one place. Freshsales has no native e commerce tools.
🎓 Your Experience Level
Keap is user friendly once configured, and a success manager helps you get there. Freshsales is easier to open cold, though navigation gets cluttered as data grows.
🆓 Free Trials and Demos
Keap gives 14 days with every feature unlocked. Freshsales gives 21 days with no credit card required, which is the safer way to test a real pipeline.
🛟 Support Options
Keap runs 24/7 chat, email, and weekday phone support for U.S. customers, plus a knowledge base. Freshsales covers 24/5 across phone, chat, and email on every plan.
Switching Guide
Already on one of these? Here is what changes if you move.
🔄 Switching from Keap to Freshsales CRM?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- A much lower starting price and a free tier for three users
- Freddy AI deal risk scoring and next-best-action prompts
- WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and LINE in the same inbox
❌ What you’ll lose:
- The landing page builder and checkout forms
- Built-in invoicing and payment processing
- Roughly 2,100 integrations you may already rely on
📋 How to switch:
- Export contacts, tags, and custom fields from Keap as CSV
- Start the 21-day Freshsales trial and map fields during import
- Rebuild active campaigns as sequences, then move billing to a separate tool
🔄 Switching from Freshsales CRM to Keap?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- Marketing automation, landing pages, and invoicing in one dashboard
- Free migration and a dedicated customer success manager
- A business line for calls and texts
❌ What you’ll lose:
- Per-seat pricing and the free three-user plan
- Native links to Freshdesk and Freshmarketer
- Freddy AI forecasting inside the pipeline view
📋 How to switch:
- Export your Freshsales contacts, deals, and notes
- Open a Keap trial and hand the file to the free migration team
- Rebuild sequences in the Campaign Builder, then switch your forms over
What Our Review Didn’t Cover
This comparison focused on small businesses and small sales teams. We did not stress-test either CRM at 100,000 contacts, audit their security certifications, or evaluate custom API work. Enterprise contracts and negotiated pricing were also outside scope. If you run a large operation, your shortlist may look different from ours.
Final Verdict
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| 💰 Pricing | Freshsales CRM |
| 🚀 Automation | Keap |
| 📧 Email Marketing | Keap |
| 🤖 AI Features | Freshsales CRM |
| 👶 Ease of Use | Freshsales CRM |
| 🔌 Integrations | Keap |
| 🧾 E Commerce and Billing | Keap |
| 🏆 Overall Winner | Keap |
🏆 WINNER: KEAP
Keap wins 4 of 7 categories and carries the higher rating at 4.2.
Best for: Small businesses automating follow-up, e commerce sellers who invoice inside the CRM, and solopreneurs replacing several tools.
These products answer different questions. Keap asks how much of your sales and marketing you can hand to software. Freshsales asks how cheaply you can give a sales team a clean CRM.
Freshsales is the better buy for a growing sales team on a tight budget, and its 4.5/5 user score is earned. But we recommend Keap CRM for anyone who wants automation, billing, and campaigns under one roof.
That is also why our Keap CRM editor’s rating lands slightly higher, at 4.2 against 4.0.
More of Keap Compared
Our Keap review series lines it up against the other CRM platforms chasing the same small business buyer. These are the three closest matches.
Keap vs GoHighLevel
Keap wins on: Native invoicing, a calmer learning curve, and free migration with a named success manager.
GoHighLevel wins on: Agency sub-accounts, white labeling, and a lower entry price for resellers.
Keap wins on: Built-in checkout and billing, a dedicated business line, and Keap features that cover project work too.
ActiveCampaign wins on: Cheaper entry tiers, deeper email split testing, and finer segmentation logic.
Keap wins on: One flat platform fee, automation aimed at repeat business, and less upsell pressure between hubs.
HubSpot wins on: A genuinely free CRM tier, a larger app marketplace, and stronger reporting at scale.
More of Freshsales CRM Compared
Freshsales sits in a crowded mid-market. Here is how it holds up against three common alternatives.
Freshsales wins on: Cleaner first-run setup, Freddy AI on lower tiers, and 24/5 support without a paid add-on.
Zoho wins on: A wider product family, more custom module depth, and cheaper long-term contracts.
Freshsales CRM vs Pipedrive
Freshsales wins on: Built-in phone and SMS, a free three-user plan, and native ties to Freshdesk.
Pipedrive wins on: Faster page loads, a tighter pipeline-first interface, and a bigger third-party marketplace.
Freshsales wins on: Far lower cost per seat, faster onboarding, and no admin hire required.
Salesforce wins on: Deeper customization, a vast partner network, and reporting that scales past 100 reps.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Keap used for?
It organizes leads, automates follow-up, and handles invoicing for small businesses. Most buyers use it to replace a separate CRM, email tool, and billing app.
Is Keap easy to use?
Basic setup takes about 20 minutes. Deeper automation takes longer, though onboarding checklists, videos, and a success manager help when you have needed assistance.
What is Infusionsoft called now?
Infusionsoft is now Keap. The company rebranded to reflect its focus on small business automation rather than enterprise marketing software.
Is Freshsales a CRM?
Yes. It is the sales CRM inside the Freshworks suite, covering contacts, deals, pipelines, and reporting, with Freddy AI handling scoring and forecasting.
Which is the best CRM for a small business?
Keap, if you want automation and billing together. Freshsales, if you need cheap seats for a sales team and already use Freshworks tools.
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