As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my attention GoHighLevel Vs ConvertKit.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting consumer relationships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially appealing for companies aiming to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your service … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had been sent out to users that must NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and simply really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs ConvertKit
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs ConvertKit.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is best, yet the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life simpler, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek objective reviews. Happy support assesses mean much less if excessive issues imply bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be more skeptical of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily must make trust through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.