As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Vs LinkTree.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for services seeking to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– as well as handling lost performance during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big mistake. The problems began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who need to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server issues” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any feeling, considering that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely unacceptable and just really did not help my company. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs LinkTree
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective rate for accessibility to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core performance. Instantly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs LinkTree.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software is perfect, but the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential features capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
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 working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software program usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life easier, not much more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys count on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy assistance evaluates mean much less if extreme issues suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly meet every special service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations commonly exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to make depend on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.