As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel Vs Shopify.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small companies keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for services wanting to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your service … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a couple of even more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of simply several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues started piling up quickly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to users that should NOT have received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t help my service. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Shopify
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the affordable rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices drop virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I could hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Shopify.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I could think that would be causing 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 concerns, hidden fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The cons significantly outweighed any type of benefits.
No software application is best, however the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage essential features effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and messy.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Delighted support examines indicate less if excessive problems suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements typically outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I discovered to be extra cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily should earn trust fund with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.