As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Vs Zoho One.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can gain from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for businesses looking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will certainly change your business … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big blunder. The concerns began accumulating quickly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I frantically tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Zoho One
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical cost for access to many features. Yet I rapidly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Vs Zoho One.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would certainly be creating 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 horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The cons significantly surpassed any benefits.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital functions competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. But in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around new software application commonly obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life simpler, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied support reviews suggest much less if excessive problems indicate inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely fulfill every special organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more cynical of “too good to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The devices you use daily must make count on with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.