Ontraport vs. Keap CRM

Ontraport vs. Keap CRM

Years ago, I was asked to make a comparison of Office Autopilot vs. Infusionsoft (now Ontraport vs. Keap CRM).

Back then I created this page by comparing what Ontraport said they offered on their own site and by contacting them directly for demos and via chat to get their recommendations directly from the "horse's mouth."

But that wasn't enough so in order to really give it to you straight I plopped down a couple thousand bucks and spent a week at the Ontraport headquarters in Santa Barbara to get certified on their platform.

What follows is a compilation of what I created:

• Originally in 2013
• Update following my Nov 2014 certification in Ontraport
•  March 2016 after speaking at Ontrapalooza 2015 and attending ICON 2016.
• After Keap being acquired by Thryv and me speaking at their Partner Conference April 2025

Stay tuned for additional updates and feature comparisons moving forward.

Culture/Personality:

This may sound like a weird place to start, but when you are choosing an all-in-one platform to automate your entire business, you better like the people you are about to give hundreds of dollars a month to for many years to come.

I can (now) speak from personal experience that the culture and desire at both Ontraport and Keap is to help business owners grow and succeed, but their approaches are different.

While Keap has gone the venture funding route and has raised over $109 million to grow, Ontraport is totally boot-strapped. There are pros and cons to both.

With the VC approach, you can grow faster, but fast growth is not synonymous with quality.

Back in 2016, Keap had grown to nearly 800 employees, and their sales were through the roof, but they slowed down their pace of innovation and let the competition catch up, which is why they were acquired in 2024 by Thryv.

Ontraport, on the other hand, has around 92 employees and must be more cautious about its growth since it funds it from its revenue.

Having now met the CEO and founder of Ontraport, Landon Ray, I can say he has a lot in common with Clate Mask, the former CEO of Keap, and Joe Walsh, the CEO of Thryv.

Both are near the same age (late 40s) and have a strong entrepreneurial drive. One big difference, though, is that while Joe Walsh has been with Thryv for a while, he is not a founder of the company.

Ontraport is Landon Ray's baby and he is steering that company. Keap/Thryv is much bigger and is more heavily influenced by boards and investors.

*Back in 2014, I rated Ontraport vs. Keap as a tie on Culture & Personality.

However, after hanging out with the Ontraport peeps at Traffic & Conversion 2016 in San Diego, getting a bit of a weird vibe at ICON16 (and seeing an alarming number of longtime/key personnel leave Keap over the last six months), I think Ontraport now gets the nod on Culture and personality.

Ontraport has that energetic, underdog eye of the tiger, whereas Keap seems a bit punch-drunk as of late (from 2014-2024), and I get it.

While they are still a big company with a good story and software that helps entrepreneurs, they're no longer the high-flying darling they once were. They're more of the incumbent who got complacent and now they're reorganizing and trying to rediscover the passion and energy they once had.

Since 2009, I have attended Keap's annual conference, now known as ICON (formerly Infusioncon), as well as all of their Partner conferences held for their certified partners since November 2012. I've also participated in most of the Infusionsoft Implementation Accelerations they've invited me to participate in, their Customer Success Tours, and more.

Now that I'm certified in Ontraport, have attended their annual Ontrapalooza, and am working more closely with them on similar client launches, I can say that Ontraport is an offering entrepreneurs, speakers, and coaches must consider for their sales and marketing automation platform.

*Looks like the writing was on the wall a decade ago since Keap was acquired by Thryv at the end of 2024. Thryv has good energy, and the CEO is involved and personable, but it's a big company, so we'll see how it evolves.

Ontraport vs. Keap CRM

Let's now jump into another (maybe) weird feature/functionality of this Ontraport vs Keap review, the CRM.

There are great misnomers out there in the entrepreneurial world (am I the only one that has a hard time spelling that word?) that Keap is just

• an online marketer platform.
• for internet marketers.
• for people selling digital products or membership sites or virtual content.

Fact: Somewhere just north of 50% of new Keap clients for more than a year are traditional brick and mortar companies that are looking for/needing and/or leaving a traditional CRM tool.

You read that right. Despite the proliferation of the internet and smartphones and social media, people still like to speak with and actually meet with a salesperson before they spend their hard-earned, highly-taxed money.

From an avid Ontraport user/reseller:

"One more thing… if your organization is very salesperson heavy, Ontraport lacks traditional sales features such as Opportunities and Pipelines. You’ll need something like Salesforce.com for that sort of thing..."

This whole selling-online-in-your-pajamas-while-working-four-hours-a-week-while-virtual-assistants-in-far-away-lands-toil-for-seven-cents-an-hour-developing-killer-products-that-sell-out-faster-than-iPhone-releases-and-deposit-funds-in-offshore-bank-accounts story may sell some books and e-courses and make those authors rich, but it's not reality for the vast majority of entrepreneurs in the world today.

When you sell products or services that cost a few bucks, you are usually involved in what's known as a "complex sale," which means it requires multiple conversations and/or meetings with more than one person. When that happens you need to...

• track Opportunities,
• coordinate with internal staff and external partners or contractors,
• assign resources,
• update quotes,
• respond to RFPs and RFQs
• and generally keep an eye on these big deals that take more than a cute 5-minute Jing video posted on YouTube to close.

Keap's CRM is fully-integrated with every other component so you can add a New Contact or Company or Referral Partner, track Visitors, create and track Opportunity Stages, set Triggers to automate your follow-up as Prospects move to different Opportunity Stages, generate quotes and invoices, send "Buy Now" links right from the Opportunity, collect payment, show communication history, Notes and more all from inside your Keap application.

You can then run Reports on all of the above, including Custom Fields you created to personalize your workflow.

After using—and still consulting on—Salesforce.com since 2004, I have to say Keap has some room to improve the GUI and workflow and Reports of the CRM piece compared to Salesforce.

But being a static CRM, a.k.a. "Rolodex in the sky," is ALL Salesforce does, so they better be good at it. (If Salesforce only did email marketing, e-commerce, affiliate marketing, sales and marketing automation, web forms, landing pages, list segmentation and unlimited free support and let me pay monthly instead of one, honking-big annual lump sum I would DEFINITELY SWITCH to them. Ha!)

However, since Salesforce does nothing else and since Ontraport doesn't offer a CRM I'll give Keap a "relative A-" and I'll give Ontraport a "relative B".

I say "relative" for both because anything compared to nothing is infinitely better.

However, in absolute terms, if you ONLY wanted a CRM with no automation, no triggers, no workflow, etc. (in other words, you wanted to be chained to your desk), neither Ontraport nor Keap's CRM would be ideal.

I give Ontraport a "B-" because tracking and managing Pipelines via Opportunity Stages is important if you have a sales team and/or you are making a "complex sale," meaning you are selling to more than one person and it takes more than one meeting to make the sale.

While both are solid, functional, searchable and actionable with room for Notes, Tasks, History, Contact Info, Custom Fields and more, their CRMs function more as "necessary evils" to store contact information so their automation can work their magic. (And automation is the name of the game, so both Ontraport and Keap got that right!)

Both Ontraport and Keap limit the number of Custom Fields you can add and both CRMs are Contact-centric, whereas most CRMs are Company-centric.

It's not a huge deal, but it is a different approach that may take a day or so to get used to.

Along those same lines, adding Companies to the Keap Classic CRM is "cludgy" (to use a technical term) and while you can add Contacts to a Company record to show who all works there, you cannot add a hierarchy or subsidiary companies like you can (in the much-more-expensive) Salesforce CRM.

Ontraport vs. Keap E-commerce

While Keap does offer a shopping cart/storefront, it is somewhat basic and can only be configured for one storefront.

While that doesn't sound like a big deal, if you are a typical entrepreneur and have your fingers in multiple pies and are selling multiple products and programs under various entities/brands, you would have to buy separate installations of Keap at $299 to $379/mo or just offer custom Order Forms with limited functionality to your customers.

That being said, after using Keap since 2008, I've rarely sent people to my storefront. 99% of the time, I direct people to a Buy Now link that takes them right to the checkout page or a custom order form. (I'll do over half a million in gross revenue in 2014 while working from home with no full-time employees, so I guess this model can work.)

And Keap readily admits that they are not providing you with an "Amazon-type" shopping cart. It's built for small businesses with limited products and categories and it is more than adequate for those types of businesses.

So if you have a simple, online-only business where you sell a handful of standalone products as either a one-time sale and/or adding a subscription to it, Ontraport is a solid choice.

However, if you are running any other type of business where you take orders over the phone and/or want to offer your customers more online buying options, you need to see if Keap's shopping cart will meet your needs, which it may or may not.

That's why both Ontraport and Keap integrate with other shopping cart options such as WooCommerce, UltraCart, 1ShoppingCart, Magento, etc.

We have done integrations with all of those shopping carts so please contact me to discuss which is best for you if you.

For apples-to-apples Ecommerce abilities I'll give Keap an "A-" and give Ontraport a "B+" since Keap has a shopping cart and Ontraport does not. 

However, if you only sell a handful of products and aren't trying to become the next Amazon, Ontraports order forms and Ecommerce is easy to setup, easy to use, is mobile responsive and for those reasons I'll give them an A+.  

Also, Keap has put little effort or energy into their Ecommerce platform in years and have expressely stated it will not be a focus of theirs for the foreseeable future. 

That is why I work with other developers to bring you the best recommendations for connectors, plugins, and API integrations to help you get the exact configuration you need to grow your business without growing staff.

Ontraport vs. Keap Support

• Monday thru Thursday - 6:00am – 12:00am PST (Keap, please take note of later phone support!)
• Friday - 6:00am – 9:00pm PST (Keap, please take note of later phone support!)
• Saturday & Sunday - 9:00am – 9:00pm PST. (Keap, please take note of weekend phone support!)
• Ontraport also offers chat support during the same hours as phone support.

Keap support offers:

• Phone: Monday thru Friday - 7:00 am - 5:00 pm Arizona (I call as early as 6:00 AM and reach support so I think Keap is ramping up their support hours and will be officially expanding them soon.)
• Chat: 24/7 but they seem to get flooded from time to time and go offline.

I'll give Ontraport support an "A" because they have better phone support as well as chat. (I'd give them an A+ if they had 24/7 chat.) I'll give Keap support an "A" because they have 24/7 chat. (I'd give them an "A+" if they offered greater hours of phone support.

However, compared to fat cats like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, which charge extra for support, Keap and Ontraport are rock stars in the area of support.

Having chat support is a dream for me.

I use it all the time.

It sometimes takes a little longer during peak hours for Keap to answer the chat support but when I don't have a life-or-death question I can open the chat window, post my question, get the answer when they get to it and move on.

Ontraport vs. Keap Pricing

To compare avocados to avocados (apples are too simple), let's look at Keap's streamlined pricing (as of April 2015) and Ontraport's four levels.

• Setup^
  • Keap - $599 - My team of Keap Consultants and I spend more time helping new users create and/or document a sales and marketing process as we do showing them how to use the Keap software during the Kickstart. That type of marketing, sales, technology and business advice, support and assistance is not free and one does not develop it cheaply. (When you order Keap through me I add in a couple of extra hours of setup and support. You also get to participate in my weekly "Keap Mastermind" call at no extra charge so that's 4 hours of extra, live, free support and Keap training the very first month alone.)
  • Ontraport - $0 Setup - Includes two hours of private setup and support at no charge! If you are a die-hard do-it-your-selfer and like to change your own oil, mow your own grass, clean your own kitchen and hand wash your own car, having nobody help you get started and not being charged for nobody helping you get started is a good deal.
  • By requiring an up-front investment and a commitment from you to dive in and automate your business, I feel like Keap is doing you a favor. We all focus on whatever we invest our hard-earned dollars into.

Who gets the nod on pricing? 

• If money is tight and you don't need a full-blown CRM or a more robust shopping cart, Ontraport is great.
• If you need to send a ton of emails and just need the email sequence automation, Ontraport is great.
• If you need a CRM and don't want to juggle and pay for an email marketing tool and a CRM, Keap is great.
• If you need professional coaching and assistance to transition from your current platform(s) into your new sales and marketing automation engine, Keap is great.

Overall it has to be Ontraport. Not only do they now have their Basic edition for smaller businesses or new entrepreneurs, they also have a non-profit pricing model as well as overall higher limits on emails, contacts and even users when you take into consideration that you can have multiple concurrent logins simultaneously in your Ontraport account.

How To Decide Ontraport vs. Keap

I pay not-a-little-bit of money for continuing education, mastermind memberships and private consulting for myself.

Motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs know the power of leveraging the brains, experience and motivation of experts.

That being said, not all Ontraport or Keap Consultants are created equally, so choose wisely how and from whom you purchase your application. My team consists of multiple Keap Certified Consultants, a former Keap Success Coach who now does the initial training and setup for new clients, two API developers for advanced integration and "supercharging" your Keap application, two copywriters, two Wordpress website developers, two graphics designers and an assistant.

When you order your Ontraport or Keap application through me you will have access to my entire team as needed.

I cover strategy and mapping your best course of action. Phly does the initial training to help you accelerate down the path we created together. Daniel steps in for "Ninja tricks" and API coding if needed. Hugo will create new banner ads, logos, and/or graphics as needed. I'll assist with scripts, website, landing page, and/or email content creation as part of your normal $999 to $2,999 setup.

We can then support you on a retainer for as long as you desire to make sure you are growing as quickly as possible.

 We have been using databases and CRMs since the mid-90s.

I've used Salesforce since 2004 and was certified at Dell to help them deploy it to their 3,000 North American sales staff from 2007 to 2008. I've used marketing automation software since 2006.

So feel free to contact me if you still have questions on which to buy: Ontraport vs. Keap, and I'll help you make the best decision for you and your business.