Keelway vs Alvys — both flat-rate. One has AI for the inbox.

The fastest way to read this comparison: figure out where your team loses the most time. If it's the inbox — twelve quote formats a day, manual FMCSA cross-checks, copying rates into the TMS by hand — Keelway closes that exact surface and Alvys leaves it open. If it's shipper EDI plumbing, load tendering at volume, and broad automation across non-email workflows, Alvys has invested more surface area there and it shows.

The second tiebreaker is pricing model. Both are flat-rate with unlimited users — that's the rare common ground. Alvys is cheaper on the base number (~$514 vs $799), but layers a load-volume component on top as you scale, while Keelway stays flat at every volume. The real comparison isn't base vs base — it's Alvys-plus-a-bolt-on-AI-tool vs Keelway-with-AI-included, where Keelway's all-in number closes most of the gap.

Where Alvys wins

We try to be honest on these pages. Alvys is a real product with a real customer base, and it competes hard at the upper edge of the SMB-to-mid-market band. Where it beats Keelway:

• EDI depth. Alvys has invested heavily in EDI 204/214/210/990 plumbing and the operational layer around it. Brokerages with established shipper EDI relationships at scale get more out of the box on Alvys than on Keelway.
• Load-volume automation. If you're running thousands of loads a month and your operational bottleneck is tender acceptance, dispatch automation, and high-frequency recurring lanes, Alvys's automation-first surface area is genuinely competitive. Keelway will get there; Alvys is there now.
• Maturity and breadth. Alvys ships a broader non-email surface than Keelway. If you want a single tool that handles a wider set of non-carrier-email workflows out of the box, Alvys has more checkboxes ticked today.

Where Keelway wins

For an SMB freight brokerage where the daily P&L moves on carrier email and quoting speed, Keelway wins on the things that actually affect the day:

• Pricing model. $799/mo flat, unlimited users, $0 setup, month-to-month, all published. Alvys is cheaper at the ~$514 entry tier, but layers a load-volume component on top as you scale while Keelway stays flat — so the gap narrows at higher volume, and closes entirely once you'd otherwise pay for a separate inbox-AI tool on top of Alvys.
• Native AI carrier-email triage. Twelve quote formats normalized, per-reply FMCSA cross-check, per-reply rate extraction, trust scoring on every reply. Alvys doesn't ship this — your team still reads every carrier email by hand. This is the single biggest functional gap between the two products.
• FMCSA scoring per reply, not per carrier. Most TMSs score carriers at the record level — checked once, cached. Keelway re-checks on every reply, which catches authority changes, insurance lapses, and chameleon-carrier patterns Alvys's record-level model misses.
• Self-serve and reversible. 30-day full-product trial, online signup, month-to-month. Alvys is demo-gated with an annual contract typical. "Try it and see" is structurally easier on Keelway.

The verdict in one paragraph

Two well-built flat-rate broker TMSs aimed at slightly different centers of gravity. If you're an SMB brokerage and the inbox is your biggest bleed, Keelway wins on price and on the AI gap — $799 flat, native carrier-email triage, FMCSA per-reply scoring, 30-day full-product trial to verify before you commit. If you're a higher-volume operation leaning hard on EDI and broad non-email automation, Alvys is competitive at ~$514/month. The honest call: most SMB freight brokers will get more daily P&L lift from Keelway's email AI than from Alvys's extra automation breadth.