As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs Formaloo.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my painful errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over 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 actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your organization … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also managing lost efficiency during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began accumulating rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to users who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t help my business. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Formaloo
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to so many features. But I promptly learned this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core performance. Instantly my charge card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly hit 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.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Formaloo.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The cons considerably outweighed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital functions effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Delighted support evaluates mean much less if extreme concerns indicate poor total use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every unique company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements commonly exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be much more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to make trust with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.