As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs Webflow.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, with any luck you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client connections through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically attractive for companies wanting to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will revolutionize your service … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The concerns started accumulating swiftly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to customers that need to NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. However this description really did not make any type of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Webflow
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the inexpensive cost for access to many features. But I quickly discovered this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plunge practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every fixing method, I could barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Webflow.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is best, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of important functions competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life much easier, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Satisfied support assesses suggest much less if extreme concerns indicate poor general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly satisfy every unique service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be much more skeptical of “also excellent to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily need to earn count on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.