As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs Birdeye.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who would not desire a single option that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting client partnerships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses wanting to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it just worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly change your business … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a couple of more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also dealing with shed efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large blunder. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to users that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not help my service. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Birdeye
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to many features. Yet I swiftly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plunge virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Birdeye.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons substantially exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is best, yet the large volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features effectively or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins trust.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Pleased assistance reviews imply much less if extreme problems imply inadequate general use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can perfectly fulfill every special service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be much more cynical of “too great to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily need to make trust fund via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.