As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs GreenRope.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, hopefully you can gain from my unpleasant blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your service … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a few more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole tech facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost efficiency during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns began accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to users who must NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my business. I have countless calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs GreenRope
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to many features. But I quickly learned this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs GreenRope.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any advantages.
No software application is perfect, but the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of critical functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Happy assistance examines imply much less if extreme issues indicate inadequate general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can completely satisfy every distinct service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I found out to be much more unconvinced of “also good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.