As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Vs Clixlo.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting customer connections through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly attractive for companies wanting to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will transform your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of lost efficiency during the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to customers that must NOT have gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my service. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Clixlo
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for access to numerous features. However I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs Clixlo.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of essential features competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software program frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life simpler, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Happy assistance examines imply less if excessive problems suggest bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily must gain depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.