As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Vs Zendesk.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for services looking to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with shed productivity during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems began piling up rapidly, up until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and 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 out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to individuals that should NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not help my service. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Zendesk
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the inexpensive price for access to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plunge practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Zendesk.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and awful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive error. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage essential features properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Happy support evaluates indicate less if too much issues indicate bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be extra hesitant of “also good to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily ought to gain trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.