As a firm proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to streamline operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs Keap.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly appealing for services wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your organization … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing shed performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to customers that ought to NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I anxiously tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any feeling, considering that the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Basic jobs like editing workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Keap
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the affordable price for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Keap.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software application is best, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle critical features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life much easier, not more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Happy support examines suggest much less if too much concerns indicate inadequate general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly meet every special service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be more hesitant of “too good to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The tools you use daily need to gain trust through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.