Choosing the right CRM can transform how you attract, engage, and delight customers, but with so many options on the market, it’s hard to know which platform truly delivers.

HubSpot is often seen as one of the premier choices for growing B2B businesses thanks to its all-in-one suites, intuitive interface, and powerful automation tools.

But how does it stack up against Keap?

In this comparison, we’ll break down the key differences between HubSpot and Zoho, looking at everything from features and flexibility to pricing to technical details, such as integrations, which will help you decide which platform fits your business best.

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A slight caveat before we get into the meat of this article - we’re a HubSpot Solutions Partner. We’re well-versed in working with the platform, and we think it’s a brilliant fit for most B2B businesses. However, we would never recommend it if it doesn’t fit your specific business requirements.

Throughout this article, we will give an impartial comparison between HubSpot and Keap to help you make the correct decision for your circumstance.

1. Ease of Use and Onboarding

Starting with HubSpot, there are numerous ways to get onboarded and started within the system. You can start with:

A DIY implementation - This requires you to set it up yourself. If you need support, then steal our HubSpot Implementation playbook to give you a head start.
HubSpot’s Onboarding Programme - HubSpot offers an onboarding product which helps you set up the essentials within your portal.
Partner-led Onboarding - This is where you employ an agency to help you get set up on the platform, working with outsourced experts to mould your processes around your portal.

Either one of the three is effective in getting you started and helping you set up your portal in the correct way. And once you’re set up, you can take advantage of the numerous products that HubSpot offers.

Whilst, like all other CRMs, there may be an initial learning curve, HubSpot's user-friendly design supports businesses in effectively leveraging the platform's capabilities to drive growth and improve customer engagement. One user on G2 commented by saying:

Hubspot is very helpful, offering a robust way to learn and manage service, sales, and marketing. Its built-in help resources and user-friendly tools have made it much easier to understand and implement key business strategies.

With its wide array of tools and features across its three tiers, Starter, Professional and Enterprise (including a stripped-back, free version too), HubSpot is known for combining sales, marketing, service, operations and, most recently, eCommerce functionality within its suite. This makes it ideal for those B2B businesses looking to scale their business without the investment into a wide tech stack that needs external integrations to merge with your CRM.

Similarly, Keap is designed for small businesses wanting an all-in-one solution that combines CRM, marketing automation, and sales tools. It offers a user-friendly interface designed to streamline client management and automate repetitive tasks.

Keap provides extensive learning and training resources, including access to in-house experts, coaching sessions and onboarding training. These resources are instrumental in helping new users adopt the software quickly and understand Keap’s capabilities.

However, some users have noted challenges with the initial setup. For instance, a G2 comparison indicates that Keap's Ease of Setup score is 6.6, suggesting that new users may encounter a steeper learning curve compared to some competitors, like HubSpot.

It’s important to note, though, that any CRM setup will involve a steep learning curve - especially if you don’t have a CRM currently.

2. Customisation and Flexibility

HubSpot’s flexibility is one of the key reasons businesses continue to scale with - and use - the platform. With the ability to create custom properties, objects, workflows, and dashboards, teams can shape the system around their exact processes rather than adapting their processes to fit the tool.

Whether it’s segmenting contacts with bespoke criteria, building out tailored sales pipelines, or automating marketing workflows based on specific behaviours, HubSpot’s customisation options and flexibility enable users to design a system that mirrors their real-world operations. As one G2 reviewer puts it:

Adapt quickly with a flexible system that allows you to architect your business exactly as it appears in the real world... without months of custom dev work.

This level of adaptability means that even as your business evolves, HubSpot evolves with you, without the need for expensive development work or third-party tools.

Meanwhile, Keap CRM offers a range of customisation options tailored for small businesses to help align and streamline sales and marketing activities. Like its competitors, it allows you to create custom fields, design unique pipelines, and set up automated workflows to align with your specific business needs. One user noted:

Infusionsoft [Keap] is HIGHLY configurable application. Changes are made to support our business weekly.

However, as mentioned in the previous section, the learning curve to adopt Keap is said to be steep due to the robust customisation capabilities. A Capterra reviewer said:

The one problem with the software is that it is a beast of features and I can easily get lost in the minefield.

To summarise, Keap offers powerful customisation and flexibility for businesses looking to tailor their CRM to specific needs. However, organisations prioritising a more out-the-box experience might find alternatives like HubSpot more aligned with their requirements.

3. Features and Product Ecosystem

This will be no surprise, but HubSpot’s main standout strength is its unified system across all business departments.

From marketing automation and sales pipelines to customer service, CMS, and operations, every tool is designed to work together on a single platform. This native integration removes the friction of jumping between disconnected systems and gives teams a clearer, shared view of the customer journey. It also connects up to your CRM, which enables your users to have a single-view of the customer.

What really sets HubSpot apart, though, is the balance between depth and usability.

Each Hub is feature-rich in its own right, with a level of practicality that you would usually assume to be reserved for specialist, independent tools. Having all these tools under a single umbrella enables businesses to take advantage without the need to patch together a load of third-party apps. As one reviewer puts it:

HubSpot is more than just a CRM – it's an ecosystem of powerful tools that seamlessly integrate to help you grow.

Likewise to HubSpot, Keap is primarily built as an all-in-one marketing and sales suite to integrate with your CRM. Its core features include contact management, email marketing, sales pipeline automation, appointment scheduling, invoicing, and payment processing. This consolidation aims to streamline business operations by reducing the need for multiple disparate tools and reduce the cost of a growing tech stack for small businesses. A G2 reviewer commented:

Keap provides all of the features you’ll need from the start.

Despite offering these tools, some users have said that Keap doesn’t offer the depth of features or sophistication that tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce offer. For instance, a reviewer on Capterra mentioned challenges with the platform's complexity:

We overdid it because we got very little guidance on the best practices for setting up for our business so we turned on every bell and whistle and created an operational nightmare.

However, if you’re a small business, it would be well worth understanding if you need the complexity of products that an alternative offers. Keap offers a much more competitive price than the competitors mentioned and, if you don’t need the level of depth those tools offer, Keap could be a really good choice to align your sales and marketing efforts.

4. Pricing

This is where HubSpot can get tricky, as it’s not exactly a cheap option if you want all the bells and whistles.

HubSpot offers a free CRM option, but only allows you to store up to 1,000 non-marketing contacts within this tier. From there, if you want the customer platform (which is the bundle which encompasses all ‘Hubs’), it comes priced at:

Starter: £45 per month (£41 per month if you want to pay £492 on an annual basis)
Professional: £1,932 per month (£1,738 per month if you want to pay £20,856 on an annual basis)
Enterprise: £5,151 per month

However, what HubSpot does allow you to do is scale your tiers as you grow and adopt new features within ALL tiers if you choose the customer platform option. However, if you don’t you can also pick and choose what tier of each suite and make your own, personalised bundle - something that other CRM providers don’t often allow.

As mentioned earlier, Keap is a much more affordable option if you want all the bells and whistles without a large price tag. As mentioned on their pricing page, Keap says ‘goodbye to feature-based plans’ and offers the ‘entire Keap software platform starting at one low price’.

This means that Keap is priced at £221.84 per month for 2 users and 1,500 contacts, and £184.74 per month for the same, if you pay annually (£2,216.88 annual fee).

This goes up depending on the amount of contacts you need within your CRM and how many users you expect to be using the software. However, if you’re a small business, this can be kept pretty low due to a smaller number of marketing and sales professionals using the software.

5. Integration and Extensibility

The final comparison point is regarding integrations and how easy it is to connect multiple apps to the CRM.

Firstly, HubSpot offers an extensive integrations ecosystem, featuring over 1,500 native integrations through its App Marketplace. This allows users to connect their CRM with a wide array of tools, including, for example, QuickBooks, Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other ERP & CRM tools.

This connectivity ensures that data flows smoothly between platforms, including HubSpot’s CRM, which reduces manual input and enhances operational efficiency. A Capterra user highlighted the value of HubSpot’s integration abilities by saying:

The integrations of HubSpot are unmatched, big reason they charge big is those ecosystem integrations.

This flexibility ensures that, as your business evolves and introduces more systems into your tech stack, HubSpot can adapt with you without needing substantial change.

Finally, Keap CRM offers a range of integration options with over 5,000 applications being able to connect to the system. These can be connected via Zapier, enabling users to automate workflows across various tools. Additionally, Keap provides native integrations with popular services like QuickBooks, Gmail, and Outlook, facilitating seamless data synchronisation.

The obvious pitfall here is the need to connect via another technology system, Zapier. This increases the price of your overall tech stack with needed subscriptions to other vendors to be able to seamlessly pass data between two systems. Another challenge noted by users is that Keap has noted limitations in the depth of certain integrations.

For instance, while Keap connects with many tools, the functionality may not be as comprehensive as that offered by other platforms. A Capterra reviewer mentioned:

The integrations are helpful, but sometimes they don't offer all the features we need, requiring additional workarounds.

It’s fair to say that Keap provides a solid foundation for integrations and extensibility, enabling users to pair up applications through a third-party. However, organisations requiring more robust and comprehensive integration capabilities might find alternatives like HubSpot more aligned with their needs.

In Summary...

Choosing the right CRM comes down to your team’s needs, technical capabilities, and growth ambitions. While Keap may offer strong features in certain areas, HubSpot stands out for its ease of use, unified ecosystem, and scalability, particularly for growing B2B businesses.

If you're leaning towards HubSpot and want to get implementation right from day one, download our 5 Stages of HubSpot Implementation guide. It walks you through each phase of a successful rollout, helping you avoid common pitfalls and maximise ROI from the get-go.