As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Vs Teachable.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can gain from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for organizations aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The problems started accumulating swiftly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers that should NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were responsible. However this description really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
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 product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the affordable price tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Teachable
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to a lot of features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices drop practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every repairing technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Vs Teachable.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only point I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons dramatically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, however the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of vital functions capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software frequently obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life less complicated, not more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues imply inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be much more hesitant of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you use daily must gain count on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.