As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Vs Vtiger.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting consumer connections through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for organizations seeking to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly change your organization … The yard often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of even more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech infrastructure from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to managing lost efficiency during the button.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large blunder. The problems began accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the trouble persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally unacceptable and just didn’t help my company. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Vtiger
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the affordable cost for access to a lot of features. But I quickly learned this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Vtiger.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial error. The cons significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life less complicated, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased assistance reviews suggest less if excessive problems suggest poor total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every unique company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be extra cynical of “also great to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you utilize daily must make depend on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.