As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Vs Kommo.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for services aiming to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with marginal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will change your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large error. The issues started piling up promptly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely various areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Kommo
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for access to numerous features. But I swiftly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send an email with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every fixing technique, I might hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Kommo.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only thing I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, however the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage crucial features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program typically obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life simpler, not more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Seek honest reviews. Happy assistance evaluates imply less if too much problems indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can completely fulfill every unique service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily should make count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.