Ontraport vs. Keap CRM

Both Keap and Ontraport provide their mobile apps free of charge.

Both Keap and Ontraport give you the power to dang-near run your entire business via their mobile apps, but with the new updates from Keap...

I'll give Keap/Infusionsoft an "A" and give Ontraport an "A-."

GUI/User Interface

While clicking around either platform is similar, the Keap Campaign Builder was a game-changer for them. In fact, if Keap had not deployed it back around 2012, they'd be a shadow of what they are today. 

The drag-and-drop functionality of the Campaign Builder is super-easy to use and it's where you'll spend the bulk of your time as you build out your marketing automation in Keap.

Ontraport, before their 5.0 release in 2017, felt a lot like Infusionsoft's "Legacy" platform before the Campaign Builder was released.

Now they both have an easy-to-use Campaign Builder to build out your marketing automation so I have to give Keap an A+ in this area and Ontraport now gets an A+ as well. 

The Ontraport Campaign Builder Is NICE in 2021!

Support

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

Keap one-on-one customer support offers:

• Phone: Monday thru Friday - 6:00 am - 7:00 pm MST
• Chat: 24/7, which I use all the time

I'll give Ontraport support an "A" because they have better phone support. (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 support. (I'd give them an "A+" if they offered greater hours of phone support.)

However, compared to fat cats like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics who 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.

Social Media Integration

There are two ways to look at Social Media Integration with your sales and marketing automation tool:

1. Social media publishing and monitoring.
2. Advanced "hooks" or tools to grow with social media.

Neither Keap nor Ontraport provides any real tools for social media management like a Hootsuite or MeetEdgar or even HubSpot. 

Sure, both will let you share an email to a couple of social media profiles or embed a social share set of icons in the landing page, but whoop-te-do.

So when it comes to social media publishing and monitoring I'll give both Keap and Ontraport an N/A.

However, when it comes to tapping in and pulling out information from the likes of Twitter and Facebook, now we have something to discuss.

Ontraport is leading the way here with its Facebook integration.

Ontraport vs. Keap Pricing

Keap/Infusionsoft has finally chilled out on their crazy price changes while Ontraport has been Steady Eddie in their pricing for years with the following offerings:

Keap, on the other hand, continues to experiment and test their pricing for various features such as Contacts, Emails, Users, E-Commerce, and Pipeline Automation, they've also toyed around with their setup fees, much to the chagrin of their certified partners.

• Contacts & Emails Per Month
  • Since at least 2014, Ontraport has had much more generous limits for monthly emails but going into 2023, Ontraport seems to be a little more expensive.
  • If you need 25,000 Contacts, E-Commerce, three users, Sales Pipeline with Keap, you'll pay $479/mo vs. $681 with Ontraport. 
• Setup
  • Keap: optional $499 - 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 are 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 access to the Sales Growth Program at no extra charge, so that's more hours of live, private support, and Keap training the very first month alone.)
    
    
  • Ontraport - $897 Setup - Includes two hours of private setup and support at no charge and you can buy a recommended additional two-hour block from Ontraport for $500. 
• My Take on the Setup: If you go with Keap or Ontraport, invest your money in getting professional setup service and assistance—preferably with me.
  
  And I'm not being solely self-serving here. The type of help you get from me is the type of help only entrepreneurs "in the wild" can provide.
  
  When you want to learn self-defense, do you want to learn from an instructor who has only taught at his gym for 10 years or from an MMA fighter who has won many competitions and maybe even won the title?
  
  Nothing beats the insight and wisdom of real-world experience.
  
  When you order Keap from me here you can actually save a little money off of Infusionsoft's normal Kickstart.
  
  When you use this link to order Ontraport, leverage the two free hours they provide then invest in a half-day block of time with us.
  
  Sure, it'll be a little more than what Ontraport charges but you're paying for wisdom and experience, not just point-and-click instructions, and that's worth your money and time.

Who gets the nod on pricing? 

• If money is tight and you don't need a full-blown shopping cart, Ontraport is great.
• If you need to send a lot of emails to a lot of Contacts, Ontraport is great.
• If you will use the direct mail, SMS, and Facebook custom audiences feature that comes standard with Ontraport, then you'll save money by going with Ontraport.
• If you need a membership site and need:
  • To save money by running it on WordPress on your own server, go with Ontraport.
  • To have unlimited file storage, bandwidth, and members, spend more and go with Keap + CustomerHub.
• If you need a capable CRM right out of the box with limited customization and/or you need the features of a shopping cart, Keap is great.

On Pricing overall, Ontraport is more affordable.

Not only do they now have their Basic edition for smaller businesses and 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 Partners, a former Infusionsoft Success Coach that now does the initial training and setup for new clients, API developers for advanced integration and "supercharging" your Infusionsoft application, copywriters, website developers, graphic designers, and assistant.

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

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 & Bob step in for "Ninja tricks" and API coding if needed, and Jeff's team will create new banner ads, logos and/or graphics as needed, and I'll assist with content, website, landing page and/or email content creation as part of your normal $99 to $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.