As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Vs Instantly.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. Who would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered 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 actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing client relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations wanting to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will reinvent your organization … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized changing platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– as well as managing lost productivity throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The problems started piling up rapidly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to customers who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “server problems” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t help my organization. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Instantly
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the affordable rate for access to many features. But I rapidly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs Instantly.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only point I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, busted features, and terrible interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any benefits.
No software application is excellent, yet the large volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with crucial features properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult 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 gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software program usually covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Satisfied support examines suggest much less if extreme problems indicate poor overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I found out to be more unconvinced of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily must earn depend on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.