Keelavs
Bloomerang
Bloomerang: Stronger donor retention analytics and a larger US integration ecosystem, if CRA receipting is irrelevant to you
Keela
Nonprofit CRM and fundraising platform with Canadian tax receipting built in
As of 31 August 2026, Keela's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. Donor CRM aimed at small and mid-sized charities that want fundraising, email and reporting in one subscription. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. Keela is made by Keela, part of Aplos Software, available on Web.
Overview
What Keela does
Keela is a donor management system covering contact records, gift processing, segmentation, email campaigns, forms and donation pages, and board level reporting. It was founded in Vancouver in 2015 and sells mainly to charities with one to ten fundraising staff, the band that finds Salesforce too heavy and a spreadsheet too thin. The distinguishing capability is regional rather than functional. Keela generates CRA compliant tax receipts, handles the bilingual English and French communications many Canadian charities are obliged to send, and processes in Canadian dollars without a currency workaround. A US built CRM can be forced into CRA receipting with custom templates and manual numbering, but the audit trail is then the charity's problem rather than the vendor's. That single fact decides most Canadian shortlists. The ownership matters commercially. Aplos, the California fund accounting vendor, acquired Keela in 2023, and the two products are being drawn together so that gifts recorded in Keela post into Aplos fund accounting. If you already run Aplos, that is the argument for buying Keela. If you run QuickBooks or Xero and have no intention of changing, you are buying a product whose roadmap is now partly set by an accounting suite you do not use.
What people use it for
- A Canadian registered charity that must issue CRA compliant receipts without building templates itself
- A development team of two to five people replacing spreadsheets and a mailing tool
- An organisation already running Aplos fund accounting that wants gifts to post through automatically
- A bilingual charity sending French and English donor communications from one contact list
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Keela.
- Pricing scales with contact count, so a charity that keeps twenty years of lapsed donors pays every month for records it never contacts, and the only fix is deleting history it may need for reporting.
- The email marketing tools are adequate for donor appeals but weaker than a dedicated platform, so organisations with heavy newsletter programmes end up paying for a second tool and syncing lists.
- Custom reporting is limited to the fields and filters Keela exposes, so questions the product did not anticipate require exporting to a spreadsheet.
- The integration list is short next to Salesforce or Blackbaud, so a charity running an unusual event, membership or advocacy tool will be moving data by CSV.
- Since the 2023 Aplos acquisition the roadmap serves a combined accounting and fundraising suite, so investment favours the accounting join rather than standalone CRM depth.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Keela
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- KeelavsLittle Green Light
Little Green Light: Cheaper for very small US organisations that need records and receipts without automation
- KeelavsVirtuous
Virtuous: Better fit when you want responsive fundraising automation and have the staff to run it
Pricing
What Keela costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Keela
On request
- Published tiers priced by number of contacts held, not by user seat
- Higher tiers unlock automation, custom fields and additional reporting
- Card processing is charged separately by the payment processor
- Annual commitment discounts the monthly rate
Capabilities
Features
Donor records and segmentation
Contact profiles with giving history, engagement scoring and saved segments
CRA and IRS receipting
Generates numbered tax receipts to Canadian and US rules, in batch or per gift
Donation forms and pages
Hosted giving pages with recurring gifts and donor covered fee options
Email and automation
Campaign sends and drip sequences driven by segment membership
Grant and pledge tracking
Records committed but unreceived income against reporting deadlines
Reporting dashboards
Retention, lapsed donor and campaign performance views for board packs
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Does Keela issue CRA compliant tax receipts?
Yes, receipt numbering, required wording and batch issuance are built in, which is the main reason Canadian charities choose it over US products.
Who owns Keela?
Aplos Software, a US fund accounting vendor, acquired it in 2023. Keela is still sold as its own product but shares a roadmap with Aplos.
Is pricing per user?
No, it is by contact count. Adding staff does not raise the bill, growing the mailing list does.
Can it replace a fund accounting system?
No. It records income and pledges but does not do fund accounting, so you still need Aplos, QuickBooks or an equivalent.
Keep looking
Where to go from Keela
- Keela alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Keela pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Keela badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
Compare Keela with
- Little Green Light
- Virtuous
- Bloomerang
- CharityEngine
- Sumac
- CiviCRM
- Blackbaud Raiser's Edge
- Bonterra
- GrantStation
- Give Lively
- Kindful
- Wild Apricot
- TechSoup
- Tendenci
- Trello for Nonprofits
- VolunteerHub
- Zeffy
- Sumac
Other Nonprofits software
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Open source12 researched notesThe rolled-up parent of EveryAction, Apricot, CyberGrants and Network for Good, sold as three product lines
Pricing on request13 researched notesA low-cost grant opportunity database sold on annual membership, usually at a heavy standing discount
From $199/yr11 researched notesFundraising software given free to nonprofits, funded by its founders rather than by fees
Free plan12 researched notesModular nonprofit CRM that pairs donor management with client case management
Pricing on request12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Keela, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Keela
Keela alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Keela pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Keela
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Keela badge
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