As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs SamCart.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant errors and pumped up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it managed everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer relationships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for businesses looking to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it simply functioned accurately with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will change your service … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech framework from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers that should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, private, and item 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 somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs SamCart
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the affordable price for accessibility to many features. But I rapidly discovered this cheap base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending methods or tried every repairing technique, I might hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs SamCart.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant mistake. The disadvantages significantly outweighed any type of benefits.
No software program is best, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life much easier, not a lot more challenging and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Delighted support evaluates suggest less if extreme concerns suggest inadequate general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can flawlessly fulfill every special service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I learned to be more cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily ought to make trust fund via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.