GetResponse vs Keap
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedGetResponse compared with Keap
Keap costs $299 a month plus a mandatory implementation package of around $500 and gives you quoting, invoicing, payments, and a business phone number that GetResponse has no equivalent for. GetResponse costs a fifteenth of that and does the nurture email far better. If you sell your time and need to get paid inside the same system, Keap. If you need to market to a list, GetResponse, and it is not close on price.
Keap compared with GetResponse
GetResponse is a marketing platform, not a business platform: better email, better deliverability, webinars, and a $19-a-month entry price with no implementation fee, but no invoicing, no pipelines worth the name, and no business phone number. If you need to nurture a list, GetResponse costs a fifteenth of Keap and does it better. If you need to run the whole customer lifecycle including getting paid, GetResponse cannot.
Choose GetResponse if
Small businesses, creators, coaches, and small ecommerce operators who want serious list-driven email automation with unlimited sends, plus landing pages, funnels, webinars, and course tools in one subscription, at a price bracketed by list size rather than by seat.
Choose Keap if
Established small service businesses doing between roughly $250,000 and $5 million a year, coaches, consultants, agencies, clinics, franchises, and home-services operators, who need lead capture, nurture, booking, invoicing, and payment collection in one system and can afford a real four-figure setup.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | GetResponse | Keap |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Automation | Automation |
| Starting price | $19 per month at 1,000 contacts (Starter) (free plan available) | $299 per month for two users (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Subscription bracketed by contact list size across 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000 contacts, with unlimited monthly sends and included user seats. Two billing periods, monthly or twelve-month prepay at an 18 percent discount. | Single plan priced by contact volume, including two user licences, with a mandatory one-time implementation package and separately metered text marketing tiers. |
| Free plan | A free account persists after the 14-day trial with the GetResponse badge on messages, landing pages capped at 1,000 unique visitors a month, webinars limited to 10 people, unlimited courses for up to 250 students, and restricted marketing automation. | No |
| Free trial | 14 days with full access to premium features and no credit card required. | 14-day free trial with no credit card required, limited to a maximum of 25 emails and with payment and text features restricted. |
| Best for | Small businesses, creators, coaches, and small ecommerce operators who want serious list-driven email automation with unlimited sends, plus landing pages, funnels, webinars, and course tools in one subscription, at a price bracketed by list size rather than by seat. | Established small service businesses doing between roughly $250,000 and $5 million a year, coaches, consultants, agencies, clinics, franchises, and home-services operators, who need lead capture, nurture, booking, invoicing, and payment collection in one system and can afford a real four-figure setup. |
| Setup time | A few hours to import a list, authenticate a domain, and send a first campaign. A week to migrate existing autoresponders and rebuild two or three workflows properly. | Two to six weeks realistically, and the mandatory implementation package exists precisely because self-directed Keap setups historically stalled. Data import, domain authentication, and the first campaign are the bulk of it. |
| Learning curve | Low to moderate. The email side is immediately familiar, and the workflow canvas is one of the more approachable in the category. The main friction is the breadth: webinars, funnels, courses, and the website builder each have their own logic, and new users often wander through modules they will never use. | Moderate to steep. The goal-and-sequence model is powerful but genuinely unfamiliar if you have only used linear drip builders, and tag hygiene becomes a discipline you either establish early or regret. This is the main reason a certified partner ecosystem exists. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS and Android apps, REST API, Hosted landing pages, funnels, websites, and webinar rooms | Web application, iOS and Android apps (United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand), REST API, Hosted landing pages and forms |
| Compliance | GDPR with EU-based processing, CAN-SPAM compliant unsubscribe handling, Double opt-in and consent field tooling, ISO 27001 certified operations | GDPR tooling for consent and data requests, CAN-SPAM and TCPA-aligned messaging controls, PCI-handled payment processing through integrated providers |
| Founded | 1998 | 2001 |
| Headquarters | Gdansk, Poland | Chandler, Arizona, United States |
| Ownership | Bootstrapped and founder-run | Owned by Thryv Holdings (NASDAQ: THRY) since October 2024 |
Strengths and limitations
GetResponse
Strengths
- Unlimited monthly email sends on every paid plan, with list size as the only meter, which removes the send-volume anxiety that shapes behaviour on metered competitors.
- User seats are included rather than charged, so a five-person team pays the same as a solo operator on the Marketer plan.
- Native webinars, course creation, paid newsletters, and a website builder mean the Creator plan genuinely replaces three or four separate subscriptions.
- Twenty-eight years of deliverability operations and a long-standing European compliance posture, from a vendor that has never had to cut corners for an investor timeline.
Limitations
- No product event stream, no real-time recomputing segments, and no warehouse or reverse ETL connector, which rules it out for product-led SaaS lifecycle messaging.
- The Starter plan's one-workflow limit makes the advertised $19 entry price misleading for anyone shopping for automation.
- No sales CRM worth the name: contact management exists but there are no pipelines, deals, or sales activity tracking.
- Pricing localises by region and the vendor does not publish a single canonical currency table, so cross-border buyers have to check their own figure.
Keap
Strengths
- The goal-based campaign canvas remains one of the best automation models for small businesses, handling branching, re-entry, and goal exits more gracefully than most step-list builders.
- Quotes, invoices, subscriptions, and payment collection are native, so revenue is a first-class automation trigger rather than something you infer from a webhook.
- Appointment booking and a dedicated business phone number are included, removing two subscriptions most small businesses otherwise carry.
- Twenty-plus years of accumulated campaign templates, a large app marketplace, and a certified partner ecosystem that can build the thing for you.
Limitations
- Mandatory implementation services with an unpublished price undermine the self-serve promise and put the true entry cost close to four figures.
- No product event stream, no real-time segmentation engine, and no warehouse or reverse ETL connector, so this is a dead end for product-led lifecycle messaging.
- The email and landing page builders are dated, and output quality is well behind Ortto, Drip, or Bento.
- Business texting is United States only, which quietly removes a headline feature for international buyers.
Pricing compared
GetResponse
Subscription bracketed by contact list size across 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000 contacts, with unlimited monthly sends and included user seats. Two billing periods, monthly or twelve-month prepay at an 18 percent discount.
- Starter$19
- Marketer$59
- Creator$69
- EnterpriseCustom
Modelled at 5,000 contacts, Marketer sits in the low hundreds per month with unlimited sends, five users, unlimited workflows, tagging, scoring, cart recovery, funnels, and web push. Nothing else in this category bundles that at that price without either a per-seat multiplier or a send meter. At 50,000 contacts the bill climbs but still compares favourably against HubSpot Professional with contact blocks or EngageBay Pro across multiple seats. The Creator plan at ten dollars above Marketer, including a webinar platform and a course host, is the single best-value line item in the small-business marketing tool market. The counterweight is architectural rather than commercial: you are buying a very good list-driven platform, and no amount of value changes the fact that it cannot act on product events.
Keap
Single plan priced by contact volume, including two user licences, with a mandatory one-time implementation package and separately metered text marketing tiers.
- Keap$299
- Additional users$39
- Implementation (mandatory)From about $500
Judged as marketing automation alone, Keap is expensive: $299 a month plus a mandatory implementation package buys you a list-driven campaign builder that EngageBay approximates for $65 a seat and that Ortto beats on data capability. Judged as the operating system for a service business, the arithmetic changes, because Keap also replaces the scheduler, the quoting tool, the invoicing tool, and the payment follow-up spreadsheet, and the goal-based campaign model is genuinely better than most competitors at handling the branching a real sales process produces. The mandatory implementation fee is the part most buyers resent and the part that most reliably determines whether the subscription gets used. If you are going to buy Keap, buy it because you want the money side too. If you only want emails, this is the wrong invoice.
Editorial verdict on each
GetResponse
GetResponse is the most quietly sensible platform in this category. Twenty-eight years old, bootstrapped, founder-run, EU-hosted, with unlimited sends, included seats, and a genuinely capable list-driven automation builder for around $59 a month at a thousand contacts. The Creator plan bundling native webinars, a course builder, and paid newsletters for ten dollars more than Marketer is the best value on offer to anyone monetising an audience. Two caveats decide whether it is right for you. The $19 Starter plan allows exactly one automation workflow, so the honest entry price is the Marketer tier. And the architecture is list-driven with no product event stream, no real-time segment engine, and no warehouse sync, which permanently rules it out as the lifecycle engine for a product-led SaaS company. Within its shape, it is excellent and underrated. Outside it, no discount helps.
Read the full GetResponse profileKeap
Keap is a serious product with an unfriendly front door. The goal-based campaign builder is still one of the best small-business automation models ever shipped, the native quoting, invoicing, and payment layer is something no event-driven lifecycle platform will ever match, and the partner ecosystem means you can hire someone who has built this exact campaign forty times. Against that: $299 a month, a mandatory implementation package with an unpublished price, a $299 early termination fee, dated builders, US-only texting, and zero capability to act on product events. Buy Keap if you run a service business where the money and the marketing should live in one system and you are prepared to invest properly in setup. Do not buy it as an email tool, and do not buy it for a SaaS product, because in both cases you would be paying a premium for the parts you cannot use.
Read the full Keap profileGetResponse profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Keap last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.