Drip vs Keap
Trying to choose between Drip vs Keap as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
Drip
- 4.4/5 on GetApp
- 4.4/5 on Capterra
- 4.4/5 on G2
Drip is a multi-channel marketing automation tool for e-commerce.
Pricing
Dynamic, depends on the contact list and email volume, starts from $39 for 1–2500 people in the list + unlimited sends
Key features
- Marketing automation
- Intuitive email builder
- Onsite campaigns
- Campaign analytics
- Smart segmentation
Support
Email and live chat, designated schedule, the availability of these channels depends on your pricing plan
Keap
- 2.6/5 on Trustpilot
- 4.1/5 on Capterra
- 4.2/5 on G2
A sales and marketing automation platform catered to small businesses. Has CRM and email and text marketing features.
Pricing
Starts at $159 a month for 1,500 contacts (billed yearly)
Key features
- Email automation
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Segmentation
- Reporting and analytics
- Integrations with various services
- CRM
- Virtual phone number
Support
24/7 online chat support, email support, and call-in support for the UK, US, and Australia. US call-in support is available on weekdays from 6 am to 7 pm PST.
Drip was founded in 2012 in Minneapolis, the US, and acquired by Leadpages in 2016. The company’s main goal is empowering small e-commerce businesses.
Keap was founded in 2001 by brothers Scott and Eric Martineau and now CEO Clate Mask. The company headquarters is in Chandler, Arizona.
The main focus of Drip is sales funnel automation, and the automation UI is tricky, which makes the platform less beginner-friendly than its competitors
Although users can create emails and automations without coding or designing, the platform is vast and can be overwhelming to navigate.
Community-focused DTC and e-commerce businesses
Small businesses that need to constantly keep in touch with clients via not only email but also text and phone.
Drip doesn’t offer a free plan but there’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required for registration.
No free plan, only 14 day free trial.
Dynamic pricing depends on list size and sending volume.
$39–89/month: up to 5,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, full functionality, free migration, email support
$99–409/month: up to 30,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, full functionality, free migration, email and chat support
$489–1899/month: up to 170,000 contacts and up to 2,040,000 email sends, full functionality, free migration, email and chat support, dedicated Customer Success manager
Custom pricing: custom number of contacts, up to 120,000,000 email sends, all the product features, support, and a dedicated manager included in the previous tier
Keap has three plans, billed yearly/monthly:
Pro $159 / $199
- 1,500 contacts
- 2 users
- Email marketing
- Marketing, sales & workflow automation
- CRM
- Quotes, invoices & payments
- Landing pages & online sales
- Text marketing (US)
Max $229 / $289
- 2,500 contacts
- 3 users
- Core features
- Dedicated phone line (US & Canada)
- Appointments
- Enhanced landing pages & sales tools
- E-commerce tools (promo codes, order bumps, etc.)
- Advanced reporting
Ultimate $279 / $349
- 2,500 contacts
- 3 users
- Core features
- Premium CRM & sales management
- Advanced marketing & sales tools (round robin, email health report, etc.)
- Permission levels for users
- Affiliate management & collaboration
- Advanced reporting
Other pricing features:
- 14 days free trial with all the features
- All plans require a mandatory one-time onboarding fee of $999
Email support:
- Available for all paying customers
- 9 am to 5 pm CT, Monday through Friday
Live chat support:
- Available for Drip customers on the $99/mo + plans
- 9 am to 5 pm CT, Monday through Friday
24/7 online chat support, email support, and call-in support for the UK, US, and Australia. US call-in support is available on weekdays from 6 am to 7 pm PST.
Customer support managers for each user, access to Keap Academy’s live training events and online learning platform, and Knowledge Base.
- Point-and-click email editor
- Dynamic content in emails
- A/B testing
- Email automation
- Free migration service
- List segmentation and contact tagging
- Pop-ups and signup forms
- Email analytics including conversion rates and revenue
- SMS marketing
- Email and text marketing automation in a drag-and-drop builder
- Segmentation
- Reporting and analytics
- Integrations with various services
- CRM
- A mobile app for iOS and Android for a virtual phone number and leads management
- Forms and landing pages
- Appointments booking and payments
- 51 ecommerce email templates for holidays, promotion, and other occasions
- 4 empty templates with different amount of columns
- 1 plain text email template
18+ templates
Templates for one on one email conversations with clients
Templates for:
- Promo emails
- Online stores
- Flash sale
- Healthcare
- Home decor
- Fitness
150+ integrations with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, CRMs like Zoho CRM, other ESPs like MailerLite, numerous event management tools, sales software including TikTok Lead Generation, social media, SMS marketing tools, and more
29 integrations including Zapier, Jotform, WordPress, Instapage, OptinMonster, and more.
- Web app only but it’s optimized for mobile browsers
- Website
- A mobile app for Android and iOS to use a virtual phone number and manage contacts. Available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, U.K., and New Zealand
- No installable solution.
English
English
39 automation templates from welcome to post-purchase designed for different e-commerce platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce. Drip also allows you to use the API of your custom e-commerce website built from scratch. The “Rules” feature allows users to create custom automation sequences with custom event triggers.
Marketing and sales automations:
- Free consultation
- Deal follow-up
- Reminders
- Yearly birthday greetings
- Review request
- Good tools for list management and targeted campaigns
- All the metrics in one place
- Designed with e-commerce in mind
- Powerful automation
- Helpful automations
- Many features (CRM, email marketing, etc.) in one place
- Customer support
- Integrations
- Complex learning curve for new users
- Expensive compared to other ESPs
- No drag-and-drop automation workflow builder
- Slightly convoluted for one-off or otherwise not behavior-based campaigns
- No A/B testing
- Difficult to cancel and billing issues
- Steep learning curve
- Software is slow
They are constantly improving their tools. It never feels stagnant or lacking in critical features. Their prebuilt workflows make getting started very easy and you can start driving more revenue almost immediately.
Actually, you can set up A/B testing, but you have to hack your way with liquid language. While this is no problem for really advanced users, 90% of the users won’t know how to do this.
I personally prefer to build everything that is automation related inside workflows. Even with simple sequence emails I can do in campaigns, I prefer to do them in workflows. It just depends on how advanced you want to get with automation.
If you want simple email series, without any branching logic (like if the user does this, send this), use campaigns. If you want to go more advanced than this, use workflows.
Pros: Keap Max Classic: It has a lot of features to support businesses that need the room to scale up. It is pretty powerful in what it can do.
Cons: Keap Max Classic: It is convoluted, complex, and confusing. We had to make custom forms and interfaces for our staff because everyone was too confused working directly within Keap. It is also SLOW. Most functions are not snappy. Creating and maintaining campaigns get really confusing really quickly once you graduate from the simplest of campaigns.
What do you dislike about Keap?
Keap is a very robust platform, which means it does have a bit of a learning curve. They provide training and plenty of resources to help you learn, but it takes a little time to understand all its abilities fully.
*This information is current as of 01/20/2025. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
