Keelway vs Revenova

Keelway vs Revenova — purpose-built vs Salesforce-stack.

Last updated May 12, 2026

Both claim "broker TMS." They are not the same product. Keelway is a purpose-built, standalone freight brokerage TMS at $400/month flat with freight-native AI. Revenova is a managed package that lives inside Salesforce — powerful if you already run Salesforce, heavy and expensive if you don't. Here's the honest head-to-head, including the full license-stack math.

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The fastest way to read this comparison: ask whether you already run Salesforce. If sales, marketing, and customer success already live on Salesforce, you have an admin on staff, and freight is one more workload on a platform you'd pay for anyway — Revenova is the natural fit and the combined cost is marginal. If you're a freight brokerage with no existing Salesforce footprint, you're looking at spinning up an entire CRM platform just to run a TMS, with two vendor relationships, two license stacks, and a Salesforce admin most SMB brokers don't have.

The second tiebreaker is where AI does work. Revenova inherits Salesforce Einstein — general-purpose CRM AI for lead scoring, opportunity insights, and email drafting. Useful, broad, not freight-specific. Keelway's AI is the opposite: narrow, freight-native, aimed at the carrier-email problem brokers actually lose hours to every day — twelve quote formats normalized, FMCSA cross-checks per reply, per-reply rate extraction, trust scoring. Two different shapes of AI for two different jobs.

Side by side

Feature	Keelway	Revenova
Built for	Freight brokerages (purpose-built TMS)	Brokerages already on Salesforce (managed package)
Underlying platform	Standalone — no CRM platform required	Runs on Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce license required	No	Yes — ~$150–$300/user/month per Salesforce seat
Pricing	$400/month flat, unlimited users	~$150–$200/user/month Revenova + Salesforce seat
10-user monthly cost (typical)	$400 flat	$3,000–$5,000+ combined
Pricing transparency	Published, month-to-month	Quote-based, two-vendor stack
Setup fee	$0	Salesforce + Revenova implementation
AI scope	Freight-native — carrier-email triage, FMCSA, rate extraction	Salesforce Einstein — general-purpose CRM AI
Carrier-email triage	Native — twelve quote formats normalized	Not native — Einstein drafts, no freight triage
Admin overhead	None — opinionated, preconfigured	Salesforce admin typically required
Implementation time	Under 2 weeks	6–12 weeks typical (Salesforce + Revenova)
Free trial	30 days, full product	Demo only, no public trial

Where Revenova wins

Revenova has a real customer base for real reasons — and on these pages we try to name them honestly. Where Revenova beats Keelway:

Existing Salesforce shops. If your brokerage is already on Salesforce — sales pipeline, marketing automation, customer success, all running on the platform — Revenova lets freight share that data model and reporting layer instead of duplicating it. The Salesforce license you're paying for anyway does double duty.
Multi-product CRM stacks. Brokerages that sell adjacent services (3PL, warehousing, brokerage, drayage) on the same customer base benefit from a unified CRM where every line of business sees the same accounts, opportunities, and contacts. Revenova plus Salesforce delivers that natively; Keelway does not.
Deep Salesforce admin teams. If you have a certified Salesforce admin (or team), you can customize Revenova to your specific brokerage almost without limit — custom objects, Flows, Apex, AppExchange integrations. That ceiling is much higher than Keelway's opinionated workflow.

Where Keelway wins

For a freight brokerage that doesn't already run Salesforce — which is most SMB brokers — Keelway wins on the things that matter most to the daily P&L:

Cost. $400/month flat, unlimited users, no Salesforce license, no setup fee. A 10-user brokerage on Revenova is realistically $3,000–$5,000/month combined; on Keelway it's $400. That is a 7–12x delta that compounds every month.
No second vendor, no admin layer. One product, one invoice, one login. No Salesforce admin, no AppExchange license management, no edition-upgrade conversation. The brokerage day is already complicated; the software stack shouldn't add to it.
Freight-native AI. Carrier-email triage across twelve quote formats, per-reply FMCSA cross-check, per-reply rate extraction, trust scoring on every reply. Einstein is general CRM AI; Keelway's AI is built specifically for the surface where brokers lose the most time.
Self-serve and reversible. 30-day full-product trial, month-to-month, online signup. Revenova's onboarding — two-vendor procurement, Salesforce edition selection, multi-week implementation — structurally rules out "try it and see."

The verdict in one paragraph

If you already run Salesforce at scale across sales, marketing, and customer success, and you have an admin who can own the platform, Revenova is the natural extension and the marginal cost of freight is manageable. If you're a freight brokerage that doesn't already own a Salesforce footprint, Revenova means standing up an entire CRM platform — two licenses, two vendors, a Salesforce admin — just to run a TMS. Keelway is purpose-built for that brokerage: $400/month flat, no Salesforce, freight-native AI, 30-day trial. The right answer depends on which side of that line you're already standing on.

Frequently asked questions

What's the main difference between Keelway and Revenova?+

Stack shape. Revenova is a freight broker TMS built on top of Salesforce — it's a managed package that runs inside a Salesforce org, so you're operating two products at once (Salesforce Sales Cloud plus the Revenova layer). Keelway is purpose-built for freight brokerage, standalone, with no CRM platform underneath it. Revenova's strength is everything you inherit from Salesforce — reports, automation, AppExchange, Einstein. Its cost is everything you inherit from Salesforce — license stack, admin overhead, and a general-purpose CRM data model bent into freight shape.

What does Revenova actually cost once you add Salesforce?+

Two licenses, not one. Salesforce Sales Cloud typically runs $150–$300/user/month depending on edition (Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited), and Revenova's own per-user fee adds roughly $150–$200/user/month on top. Combined, expect $300–$500/user/month before implementation, admin time, and AppExchange add-ons. A 10-user brokerage is realistically $3,000–$5,000/month for the stack. Keelway is $400/month flat with unlimited users — at 10 seats that's a 7–12x cost difference.

Do I need a Salesforce license to run Revenova?+

Yes. Revenova is a managed package that lives inside a Salesforce org, so every user who logs into Revenova consumes a Salesforce Sales Cloud (or higher) seat in addition to the Revenova seat. There's no way to run Revenova without paying Salesforce. Keelway is the opposite — there's no underlying CRM platform fee. You pay Keelway $400/month and that's the full software cost.

How does the AI compare?+

Different scope. Revenova inherits Salesforce Einstein, which is general-purpose CRM AI — lead scoring, opportunity insights, generative email drafts, Einstein Copilot. Powerful and broad, but not freight-specific. Keelway's AI is narrow and freight-native: carrier-email triage across twelve quote formats, per-reply rate extraction, FMCSA cross-check on every reply, trust scoring. Einstein doesn't read carrier email; Keelway does nothing else. For the specific job of clearing a broker's inbox, Keelway's AI is the closer fit.

What's the switching cost from Revenova to Keelway?+

Lower than it looks, because Keelway is month-to-month with a 30-day full-product trial — you can run them in parallel and migrate at your own pace. The honest caveat: if your brokerage has invested heavily in custom Salesforce flows, AppExchange integrations, or shared Salesforce data with sales or marketing teams, you're not just leaving Revenova, you're leaving Salesforce, and that's a bigger decision. For a brokerage where Salesforce is only there because Revenova required it, the switch is straightforward.

Can I migrate carriers, loads, and history to Keelway?+

Yes. Salesforce data exports cleanly — carriers, contacts, loads, custom objects all come out as CSVs or via the Salesforce API. Keelway's onboarding covers the import. The longer item is your custom fields and workflow logic; we map standard freight objects directly and document any custom Salesforce-only fields that don't have a Keelway equivalent. Plan two to three weeks to be fully cut over, with both systems running side by side during the bridge.

When does Revenova actually win?+

When your brokerage is already a Salesforce shop at scale. If sales, marketing, and customer success already live in Salesforce, your team is fluent in the platform, you have a dedicated Salesforce admin, and you want freight to share that data model — Revenova is the natural fit. The combined cost is real but it's marginal on top of a Salesforce footprint you'd pay for anyway. For brokerages without an existing Salesforce investment, that math inverts and Keelway becomes dramatically simpler.

Is Keelway as customizable as Revenova on Salesforce?+

No, and that's intentional. Revenova inherits the full Salesforce platform — custom objects, Flows, Apex, AppExchange — which is enormous flexibility and enormous surface area to maintain. Keelway is opinionated about how freight brokerage works, so we ship the standard objects and workflows preconfigured and you don't customize the data model. For SMB brokers, that's a feature; for enterprises with a dedicated Salesforce admin team and unique processes, Revenova's flexibility is the right tradeoff.

Side-by-side decision?