As an agency owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest Is ClickFunnels Better Than GoHighLevel.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for organizations seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your service … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of just some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large error. The problems started piling up rapidly, until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, handling subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who should NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any sense, considering that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing Is ClickFunnels Better Than GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every fixing method, I could barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Is ClickFunnels Better Than GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial error. The cons drastically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course 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 Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software often covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life easier, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages count on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Satisfied support evaluates mean much less if extreme issues indicate inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly fulfill every special business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “too good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust fund through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.