As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software application and automation to improve procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs Close.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream come true on paper. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for organizations seeking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will change your business … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more frustrations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost performance during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big error. The concerns started piling up rapidly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … till instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the issue continued.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Close
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the economical rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plummet almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every fixing technique, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Close.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only thing I can think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The cons substantially outweighed any benefits.
No software is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle crucial functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life easier, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Happy assistance assesses imply less if extreme issues indicate bad total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can perfectly fulfill every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be a lot more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny new things. The tools you use daily should make trust through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.