As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to simplify procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs inTandem.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service demands, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients obtain the best messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for services aiming to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will reinvent your company … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
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 brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were to blame. However this description really did not make any kind of sense, because the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person 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 prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs inTandem
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the inexpensive price for access to a lot of features. But I swiftly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs inTandem.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only point I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed charges, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant blunder. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential functions competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software often obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your work life much easier, not extra complex and messy.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins count on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support reviews suggest much less if excessive concerns imply bad general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly fulfill every distinct business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be more unconvinced of “too great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily need to gain trust through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.