As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Vs Zoho.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Use site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations looking to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your business … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few even more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed performance throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a big blunder. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to customers that should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not work for my company. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Vs Zoho
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however simply not practical 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 prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Vs Zoho.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only point I might think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge mistake. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life less complicated, not more difficult and untidy.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased assistance reviews imply less if excessive issues imply inadequate total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily must earn depend on through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.