beehiiv vs Keap

beehiiv is a newsletter platform founded by former Morning Brew engineers, including CEO Tyler Denk, to give independent publishers the growth tooling that helped Morning Brew scale. It handles writing, sending, hosting and monetizing a newsletter in one place, and has grown quickly since its public launch in 2022.

Every publication gets a visual editor with polls and surveys, a hosted website with SEO-friendly archives and custom domains, segmentation and analytics. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends. The paid Lite plan, priced by list size, unlocks the features that matter for growth: a referral program, Boosts (paid recommendations from other newsletters), the beehiiv Ad Network, paid subscriptions through Stripe, automations and A/B tests. Pro removes beehiiv branding and adds webinars and advanced analytics, and Enterprise adds dedicated IPs and SLAs.

beehiiv suits media-style newsletters, niche publications and journalists who treat the newsletter as the business. Its referral and ad network features have no real equal among email tools. It is not built for e-commerce lifecycle marketing (Klaviyo), creators selling courses and digital products (Kit), or SaaS product email (Customer.io). Substack is the main alternative for writers who value its network effects more than control over branding and monetization.

Over 2024 and 2025 beehiiv kept expanding beyond email with a richer website builder and AI writing tools, positioning itself as a full publishing platform.

Keap is a small-business CRM and marketing automation platform that combines contacts, email and text campaigns, sales pipelines, appointments, invoices and payments in one account. It started in 2001 in Arizona as Infusionsoft, rebranded as Keap in 2019, and was acquired by Thryv Holdings in 2024. Its core job is automating follow-up for service businesses and coaches.

The visual campaign builder triggers emails, texts, tasks and tags based on forms, purchases, appointments or pipeline stages. Landing pages, multi-page sales funnels, checkout forms with order bumps and promo codes, quotes, invoices and recurring billing cover selling, while lead scoring, custom fields and reporting handle the CRM side. Keap now sells one all-in-one plan at $299 a month, or $2,988 a year, including two users; extra users cost $39 a month and a paid implementation package is required.

Keap fits established small businesses that sell services or digital products and want deep automation without stitching tools together. The price is high for solo founders, US-only texting and native payments limit international users, and the interface feels older than newer rivals. HubSpot offers a free CRM with a smoother path to scale, ActiveCampaign gives stronger email automation for less, and Pipedrive is better for pure sales pipelines.

The 14-day free trial needs no credit card but caps sending at 25 emails and blocks texts and payment processing, so plan a real test with a few internal contacts. Ask about the unlisted implementation fee before committing.