As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Vs Nimble CRM.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then 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 need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically attractive for companies wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will reinvent your service … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a couple of even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention taking care of lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up rapidly, up until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers who should NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried fixing and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally undesirable and simply really did not help my service. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Simple tasks like editing workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Nimble CRM
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core capability. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Nimble CRM.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big error. The cons considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage important features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not extra complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Satisfied support reviews mean much less if too much issues suggest bad overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can completely meet every special business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I learned to be much more hesitant of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.