As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention What Does GoHighLevel Replace.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client connections with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling lost performance during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge error. The problems started piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unimportant emails had actually been sent to customers who should NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing What Does GoHighLevel Replace
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the affordable rate for access to so many features. But I rapidly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plunge virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards What Does GoHighLevel Replace.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only thing I could assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any benefits.
No software program is best, but the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. However in hindsight, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages depend on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased assistance reviews indicate much less if too much problems imply bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly fulfill every unique company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra hesitant of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily ought to gain trust fund with openness and performance, not slick advertising.