As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus Keap vs GoHighLevel.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly eye-catching for services wanting to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly transform your service … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire tech framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of just some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost performance throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns began accumulating rapidly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to users who need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not benefit my company. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing Keap vs GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the economical rate for access to so many features. However I swiftly learned this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plunge virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every fixing method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Keap vs GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful engagement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life much easier, not extra complex and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys depend on.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy assistance reviews imply less if excessive problems suggest poor total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every unique organization demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I learned to be a lot more cynical of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny new things. The tools you make use of daily need to gain depend on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.