As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Vs Systeme.io.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can learn from my painful blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for organizations looking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your company … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech infrastructure from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency throughout the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge mistake. The problems started piling up rapidly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion reminders, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless emails had been sent out to users that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any feeling, because the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Systeme.io
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly rate for access to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I could barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Systeme.io.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is perfect, yet the large volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application typically obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages count on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Happy assistance evaluates mean much less if too much concerns indicate poor overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely fulfill every distinct company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The devices you use daily ought to make count on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.