As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs ActiveCampaign.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for organizations aiming to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will change your service … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a few even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost performance throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The problems started piling up swiftly, till it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs ActiveCampaign
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the cost effective price for access to many features. However I rapidly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs ActiveCampaign.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons considerably outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software application is best, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle critical functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not extra difficult and messy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys count on.
- Seek objective testimonials. Delighted assistance evaluates suggest much less if too much concerns suggest inadequate total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements usually exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “too good to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn count on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.