As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs Podium.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. That would not desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, hopefully you can gain from my unpleasant errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for services seeking to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new device that will reinvent your organization … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a few more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed productivity during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The problems started accumulating rapidly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to users that must NOT have received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Podium
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this cheap base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs Podium.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had terrible involvement. The only point I can believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The cons substantially exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of important functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life much easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Delighted assistance assesses mean less if excessive problems imply bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely satisfy every special organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily must earn trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.