Keap vs Ortto
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
Editorial assessmentKeap compared with Ortto
Ortto brings a customer data platform, real event ingestion, and journey-based automation with a modern interface, from roughly $509 a month on its automation plan. Keap brings twenty years of small-business campaign patterns and the money layer. Ortto is the better choice for any team with product data worth acting on; Keap is the better choice for a service business that will never have one.
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.
Choose Ortto if
Mid-market and scaling B2C or B2B companies that want a customer data platform, multi-channel journeys, and reporting from one vendor and can carry a three-figure monthly bill, particularly teams currently paying separately for a marketing tool, an analytics tool, and a chat widget.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Keap | Ortto |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Automation | Automation |
| Starting price | $299 per month for two users (14 days trial) | Around $237 per month on annual billing at the 10,000-contact band (Starter) (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Single plan priced by contact volume, including two user licences, with a mandatory one-time implementation package and separately metered text marketing tiers. | Contact-based subscription across Starter, Professional, Business, and Enterprise tiers, with prices banded by contact volume, sending included, and month-to-month available on Professional while Business and Enterprise require an annual commitment. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial with no credit card required, limited to a maximum of 25 emails and with payment and text features restricted. | 14 days |
| Best for | 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. | Mid-market and scaling B2C or B2B companies that want a customer data platform, multi-channel journeys, and reporting from one vendor and can carry a three-figure monthly bill, particularly teams currently paying separately for a marketing tool, an analytics tool, and a chat widget. |
| Setup time | 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. | A week to a first journey for a marketing team using the no-code connectors, longer if custom activities need to be instrumented by engineering. The CDP setup is the work; the journey builder is the easy part. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Moderate. The journey canvas is approachable and the reporting is comprehensible, but the platform is wide, and teams routinely use a third of it. Decide up front which of the five channels and which reporting surfaces you are actually adopting, or the tool sprawls. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS and Android apps (United States, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand), REST API, Hosted landing pages and forms | Web app, REST API, Mobile push SDKs, JavaScript tracking and chat widget, Webhooks |
| Compliance | GDPR tooling for consent and data requests, CAN-SPAM and TCPA-aligned messaging controls, PCI-handled payment processing through integrated providers | GDPR, CAN-SPAM, SOC 2 |
| Founded | 2001 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Chandler, Arizona, United States | Sydney, Australia |
| Ownership | Owned by Thryv Holdings (NASDAQ: THRY) since October 2024 | Acquired by Canva in April 2026; previously venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
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.
Ortto
Strengths
- Genuine breadth for one subscription: CDP, journeys, five messaging channels, forms and surveys, live chat, a knowledge base, and a real reporting layer.
- The journey builder is a direct descendant of Autopilot's, which was one of the most legible visual canvases the category ever produced, and it still reads well.
- Because the data platform and the messaging platform are the same product, audiences and reports are computed from one dataset instead of two that disagree.
- Extensive no-code integrations, so a marketing team without engineering support can connect Salesforce, Shopify, Google Ads, Facebook, and Zendesk themselves.
Limitations
- Expensive for what a small team typically uses. At entry volumes Ortto costs several times Drip, Vero, or Encharge for what many buyers will use as an email automation tool.
- Mobile push, transactional email and SMS, dedicated IPs, landing pages, lead scoring, and NPS are all locked behind Professional, roughly doubling the price.
- Contact-count billing means dormant records cost money, which is the standard trap of profile-metered platforms and rewards ruthless list hygiene.
- The Canva acquisition introduces genuine roadmap uncertainty; Ortto now exists to strengthen Canva Grow, and standalone customers are no longer the only constituency.
Pricing compared
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.
Ortto
Contact-based subscription across Starter, Professional, Business, and Enterprise tiers, with prices banded by contact volume, sending included, and month-to-month available on Professional while Business and Enterprise require an annual commitment.
- Starter~$237
- Professional~$509 annually, ~$599 month-to-month
- Business~$999
- EnterpriseCustom
Ortto's value case is consolidation, and it only works if you actually use the breadth. If Ortto replaces a marketing automation tool, a chat widget, a form builder, and an analytics dashboard, then a few hundred dollars a month for one unified contact record is straightforwardly good economics and the reporting quality alone justifies part of it. If you use it as an email tool with a journey builder, you are paying several times what Drip, Vero, or Encharge charge for the same outcome. The Professional gate is the sharpest edge: mobile push and transactional sending sit behind roughly a doubling of price, and OneSignal gives away push entirely. Judge Ortto on how many other subscriptions it cancels, and be honest about that number before signing anything annual.
Editorial verdict on each
Keap
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 profileOrtto
Ortto is a consolidation play and should be judged as one. Buy it when you are cancelling a marketing automation tool, a chat widget, a form builder, and an analytics dashboard at the same time, because one contact record feeding journeys, five channels, and real reporting is genuinely worth a few hundred dollars a month. Do not buy it as an email tool: at that job it costs several times Drip, Vero, or Encharge and you will use a third of what you pay for. The Professional gate is the practical sting, since mobile push and transactional sending sit behind roughly a doubling of price, and contact-count billing means dormant records cost money forever. The Canva acquisition in April 2026 removes the survival question and adds a roadmap one, so prefer month-to-month over an annual commitment while the new owner's intentions become clear. For a five-person startup, this is not the first lifecycle tool to buy. For a thirty-person marketing team drowning in disconnected subscriptions, it is one of the more convincing single-vendor answers available.
Read the full Ortto profileKeap profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Ortto last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.