As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs Zapier.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, ideally you can gain from my painful mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist local business maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting customer relationships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your business … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing lost productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big error. The problems started piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent to customers that need to NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, considering that the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and just really did not work for my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Zapier
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the economical price for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Zapier.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had horrible involvement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive mistake. The cons substantially surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage vital functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program often covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages count on.
- Look for objective reviews. Happy support assesses mean much less if too much concerns indicate inadequate overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every distinct company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I found out to be more skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily need to gain trust fund with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.