GoHighLevel vs Keap (2026): Which Small Business CRM Costs Less?

GoHighLevel vs Keap comes up whenever a small business wants a CRM with automation and payments in one place. Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) has served that market for years. GoHighLevel (HighLevel) offers a similar feature set at a lower starting price. Here is how the official plans compare.

GoHighLevel vs Keap: the short comparison

What GoHighLevel is built for

GoHighLevel (the company calls itself HighLevel) is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform made for agencies. One account gives you a CRM with pipelines, a unified inbox for email, SMS, calls and social messages, a website and funnel builder, booking calendars, courses and communities, reputation management, payments and visual workflows.

Agencies create a sub-account for each client, copy proven setups between them with snapshots and brand the desktop app as their own. Agency Pro adds SaaS mode, so you can resell the platform at your own price.

What Keap is built for

Keap is a CRM and automation platform for small service businesses. It combines contact management, tags and lead scoring with email marketing, landing pages, forms, quotes, invoices, recurring payments and appointment scheduling. Text marketing is available for US numbers.

Keap now sells one plan that starts at $299 a month billed monthly, or $249 a month billed yearly, with two users included and extra users at $39 a month. Its pricing page also lists a required implementation service, priced separately, and a $299 early-termination fee on annual contracts.

GoHighLevel vs Keap: pricing compared

GoHighLevel charges a flat monthly fee. Keap uses a different model, so the cheapest plan is not always the cheapest choice. These are the list prices on each official pricing page.

What this costs in a real setup

A four-person team on Keap pays $299 plus 2 x $39 for extra users, $377 a month billed monthly, before the implementation fee. On GoHighLevel Starter the same team pays $97 a month, or $297 on Unlimited, plus email and SMS usage.

Payments and invoicing compared

Keap’s payment tools are a big part of its appeal for service businesses. You can send quotes, turn them into invoices, take card payments through checkout forms and set up recurring payments for retainers or memberships, all tied to the contact record and its automations.

GoHighLevel offers a similar toolkit: products, order forms in funnels, invoices, recurring payments and text-to-pay, connected to payment providers such as Stripe. Payments can trigger workflows, for example a thank-you SMS and a booking link after a purchase.

For most small businesses both tools cover payments well. The difference is cost and scope: Keap starts at $299 a month with two users and a required implementation service, while GoHighLevel starts at $97 a month and adds websites, funnels and courses.

Features compared

The usage costs on top of GoHighLevel

GoHighLevel prices its plans as a flat monthly fee with unlimited contacts and users, but email, SMS and phone calls are billed from a prepaid wallet that recharges your card automatically. These are the US and Canada rates from HighLevel’s own phone pricing guide and email documentation:

• Email (LC Email): $0.675 per 1,000 emails on every plan. Every recipient counts, including CC and BCC.
• SMS: $0.00747 per segment, sent or received. MMS costs $0.022 outbound.
• Calls: $0.0166 per minute outbound and $0.01165 per minute inbound, rounded up to the full minute.
• Phone numbers: $1.15 a month for a local number, $2.15 for toll-free, plus a one-time A2P 10DLC registration fee ($22.50 for low volume) for business texting in the US.

For a four-person service business sending 10,000 emails and 1,500 text segments a month from one local number, that adds about $19.10 a month in usage. Usage is cheap at small volume, but it is not included in the plan price, so budget for it when you compare GoHighLevel with tools that bundle sending into the subscription.

Keap costs to watch

• Required implementation service, not priced on the website.
• Extra users cost $39 a month each.
• Contact tiers raise the plan price as your list grows.
• $299 early-termination fee on annual contracts.

Questions to answer before you decide

Ask for the implementation price before you sign. The pricing page lists a required implementation service without a public price, and it can change the first-year cost a lot.

Count your users. Two are included, and every extra person adds a monthly fee. A growing office team can double the bill without adding a single contact.

Check the contract terms. Annual billing is cheaper per month but comes with an early-termination fee, so make sure the platform fits before you commit for a year.

Who should choose GoHighLevel

• You want unlimited users without per-seat fees.
• You need websites, funnels or courses as well as a CRM.
• You want to avoid setup fees and termination fees.

Who should choose Keap

• You want a mature CRM focused on payments, quotes and invoices.
• You prefer a guided implementation with a vendor team.
• You only need US text marketing and a simple landing page setup.

How to switch from Keap to GoHighLevel

1. Export contacts, tags and custom fields from Keap.
2. Recreate your tags in GoHighLevel and import contacts in batches.
3. Rebuild payment products and invoices, and test a real charge.
4. Rebuild appointment types and connect your calendar.
5. Check your Keap contract end date to avoid the early-termination fee.

Our verdict on GoHighLevel vs Keap

GoHighLevel starts at $97 a month with unlimited users and contacts, adds funnels, websites and white-label accounts, and bills email and SMS by usage. For most small teams GoHighLevel is the cheaper all-in-one.

Whichever you lean towards, start a trial and rebuild one real workflow before you move everything. GoHighLevel offers a 14-day trial on its pricing page; the GoHighLevel links in this article go to HighLevel’s 30-day trial offer page. Check the current Keap offer on its pricing page.

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