As an agency proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to enhance procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs Kartra.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, with any luck you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for services wanting to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few even more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving 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 significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed performance throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The problems began accumulating swiftly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single 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 out event suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my service. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Kartra
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to so many features. Yet I quickly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Kartra.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential functions capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life much easier, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys count on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Happy assistance examines suggest less if too much concerns suggest bad total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every special organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I learned to be more unconvinced of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily need to earn depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.