Crafting a Self-Service Strategy for Customer Satisfaction
- 13 Min read
What do you need to grow a successful online business? A good business idea, a solid business plan, and of course, the right tool. Among the tools that can make your life easier as an online entrepreneur, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms seem to be the most important.
While GoHighLevel has long been considered to be a leader among online business tools for marketing automation, it’s important to understand that it may not be the ideal choice for every other business.
In this article, we will explore the best GoHighLevel alternatives available in the market today. We will look at their features, analyze user reviews and compare their pricing plans. This way, you’ll have all the necessary information to choose the right tool for your business. So, fasten your seatbelts and let’s go.
GoHighLevel is a ninja in the world of customer relationship management solutions. It is a subscription-based, all-in-one marketing automation platform that allows businesses, digital agencies and solo professionals to create marketing and sales materials, develop fully-featured websites and landing pages, and organize online sales processes. It has everything needed to organize a customer journey through sales funnels right to the purchase.
However, nothing is perfect and GoHighLevel has its drawbacks too. Users complain about a somewhat steep learning curve, limited customization options and pricing that is not affordable for smaller companies. Additionally, some users have reported the platform templates lack creativity and feel outdated.
We have compiled a comparison table of solutions that can be used as alternatives to GoHighLevel. Further in the article, we will explore each solution in more detail.
CRM tool | Starting price | Trial | Core features | Best for | |
1 | FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) | Paid pricing plans starting at $99 Free plan is available | Free trial is available | Customer portal Knowledge base Integrations Content creation Collaboration and communication Interactive dashboards | Client-oriented businesses across industries like IT services, advertising and marketing agencies, etc. |
2 | ClickFunnels 2.0 | The pricing starts at $147 per month or $127 for those who choose an annual plan. | 14-day free trial is available | Sales funnel builder Templates for landing pages A/B testing Membership sites Email marketing campaigns Affiliate management | Individuals and businesses engaged in the sale of online courses. |
3 | Close | The pricing for paid plans starts at $49 per month. | 14-day free trial is available | Contact and lead management Deep email integration Sales automation Sales pipeline management Lead scoring | Startups and small to mid-sized businesses. |
4 | ThriveCart | The pricing for the Standard plan with basic features begins with a one-time fee of $495. | Free trial is unavailable | Sales funnel builder Instant affiliate payments Membership integration Customer hub Link tracking Webhooks | Individuals and businesses involved in selling project-based services or subscription-based services. |
5 | Kartra | The Starter plan costs $119 per month. | 30-day free trial is available | Sales funnel builder Membership sites Video hosting Help desk Lead generation Affiliate management system | Creators, coaches, and experts to monetize their knowledge and services online. |
6 | ActiveCampaign | Starts at $29 per month when billed annually, or $39 per month when billed on a monthly basis No free plan | Free trial is available | Customer experience automation Email marketing Lead scoring Site tracking A/B testing E-commerce integration Marketing tools | Small and medium sized businesses seeking to grow through better customer relationships. |
7 | ConvertKit | Starts at $9 per month for up to 300 subscribers Free plan is available | Free trial is available | Audience tagging and segmentation Marketing automation Unlimited pages RSS feature Rich integrations ConvertKit Commerce | Solo creators who aim to grow and monetize their audience with ease. |
8 | Vendasta | Paid plans start at $97 per month No free plan | Free trial is available | Social media management and monitoring Reputation management Analytics and reporting Client portal White-labeling Marketing tools | Digital agencies looking to provide value to clients at scale. |
9 | GetResponse | plans start at $19 per month Free plan is available | Free trial is unavailable | Landing pages Marketing automation Analytics and reporting Audience segmentation One-click integrations Paid ads Webinars | Small to medium-sized businesses, content creators, and bloggers. |
10 | Pipedrive | Paid plans start at $19 per month No free plan | Free trial is available | Sales pipeline management Lead and contact management Sales automation Deal and activity | Small businesses and sales teams looking for an affordable solution. |
FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) ranks number one on our list of best GoHighLevel alternatives—and for good reasons. FuseBase is an all-in-one client collaboration platform developed for agencies, professional services businesses and small companies that focus on building fruitful relationships with their customers.
Key features
This is perhaps the most valued feature of the FuseBase platform. Client portals are compact, no-code websites that allow you to add any necessary information with just a few clicks. FuseBase makes it simple to create super-efficient customer portals with a friendly user interface that enables customers not only to access content but also to actively interact with it. Also, customer portals are super great for building customer relationships. They ensure that all project stakeholders are always on the same page and significantly reduce the client onboarding time.
FuseBase will undoubtedly transform the way you work by enabling you to manage projects in real time without dedicating all your time and effort to them. Clients can assign tasks to the team via the task list and then monitor their progress without having to ask about the task status every time. This way they can concentrate on crucial tasks while everything runs smoothly, just like a Swiss watch, because all tasks, to-dos, timelines and approvals are consolidated into clear project boards.
FuseBase’s AI can automatically generate follow-ups for your clients by analyzing the information on the page. This saves time and effort as users do not have to dig into the entire context to get an overall understanding of the content.
Why knowledge bases? No matter how surprising it may seem, this is an excellent tool for building customer relationships and delivering exceptional customer experience. On one hand, your customers have instant access to all the important information on their own. On the other, it costs you almost nothing—with a convenient drag-and-drop editor, you can quickly and easily create data banks, FAQs, information repositories and any content you need. Additionally, FuseBase allows you to create customer databases containing important customer data, which helps to better control and personalize client communication.
Capterra rating: 4.7 (167 reviews).
ClickFunnels started as just funnel building, but it’s now a powerful all-in-one marketing and sales automation platform. ClickFunnels 2.0 was designed as a marketing platform with a focus on sales funnels and generating leads. Users value this solution for its user-friendly approach to building and optimizing sales processes online.
Key features
One of the most valued features of ClickFunnels 2.0 is its intuitive drag-and-drop funnel builder, using which you can create effective sales funnels, landing pages and websites without any coding knowledge. It is perhaps the best sales funnel builder among other GoHighLevel alternatives.
ClickFunnels 2.0 comes with a bundle of professionally designed templates for different types of funnels, including lead generation, sales, webinar registration and more. Users have the ability to customize these templates further to meet their specific marketing needs.
With Clickfunnels 2.0, you can A/B test different elements of your sales funnels such as headlines, images, calls-to-action, etc. Then, based on the data received, you can optimize your content to improve conversion rates.
Capterra rating: 4.5 (645 reviews).
Number three on our list of the best GoHighLevel alternatives is Close, a CRM software solution designed for managing marketing activities. With its help, your sales team can input customer contact information into the system and then use it to send customized messages or make phone calls. Among the marketing automation features of Close, one should also mention customizable templates, push notifications and multi-step email marketing campaigns.
Key features
The Close marketing and sales platform has all the tools necessary for lead generation, monitoring and managing. Converting potential customers or leads into paying customers becomes an easy task with Close.
Close allows businesses to create special sales pipelines customized to specific products, customer segments, demographics, or sales representatives.
As its name implies, with the marketing automation features of Close CRM, you can reduce the amount of manual work required for routine marketing and sales tasks. Additionally, Close allows its users to expand their sales outreach and engage with their leads via multiple communication channels.
Capterra rating: 4.7 (157 reviews).
Our next GoHighLevel alternative is ThriveCart. It is a shopping cart and marketing platform with a powerful affiliate management system. ThriveCart comes with all the necessary tools for creating effective sales funnels. Additionally, users report they appreciate the capability to process payments and improve conversion rates on this comprehensive platform.
Key features
Customer hub is a dedicated portal where your customers can view their purchase history and monthly payments, manage their subscriptions, update their personal and billing details, etc.
ThriveCart allows users to create multi-step cart pages sales funnels with upsells, downsells and order bumps to maximize their revenue.
ThriveCart comes with powerful affiliate management software to help its users create an affiliate program around their products and automate affiliate payouts. With just a few clicks, you can activate product commissions, obtain a registration URL and have affiliates sign up and start promoting your products.
Capterra rating: 4.8 (23 reviews).
The next solution on our list of GoHighLevel alternatives is Kartra. It is an all-in-one platform for marketing automation that offers robust customer relationship management tools coupled with advanced features for hosting online courses, automating comprehensive email sequences, managing affiliate programs and creating membership sites.
Key features
High-converting sales funnels without much effort may sound like a dream, but it’s a reality with Kartra. This all-in-one solution allows businesses to segment and tag customers while they are moving through the sales funnel and this way to increase sales and improve customer experience.
Kartra allows its users, whether they are online businesses, digital marketing agencies or solo professionals selling online courses, to manage all their client accounts and customer data from a single dashboard. This saves tons of time and allows for easy scaling in the future.
A membership site is a website or online platform that offers members-only content or services to registered users on a paying basis. This can be used by online courses, bloggers, clubs, etc. With Kartra’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, users can build their membership site without much effort or technical knowledge.
Capterra rating: 4.5 (116 reviews).
Our next GoHighLevel alternative is ActiveCampaign. It is a powerful marketing automation platform that aims to help businesses build strong relationships with their customers. It has many advanced features, including but not limited to marketing automation tools, analytics and detailed reporting, lead generation and scoring, A/B testing and much more.
Key features
ActiveCampaign comes with a powerful email marketing system, which businesses can use to easily create, launch and automate email campaigns. As a result, a brand gets an opportunity to continuously acquire new leads and then translate them to more clients and more sales.
With ActiveCampaign, you can generate leads and assign scores to them based on how they interact with your brand. Lead scoring helps determine who your best prospects are and thus close deals quicker.
ActiveCampaign’s list of integrations with e-commerce platforms is quite impressive. Such features as abandoned cart reminders, cross-sell emails, product catalogs, coupons and discounts will definitely help you sell more.
Capterra rating: 4.6 (2337 reviews).
Let’s consider ConvertKit as our next GoHighLevel alternative. It is a popular email marketing platform designed primarily for content creators, bloggers and small online businesses. The ConvertKit platform enables users to grow their audience and engage with subscribers effectively.
Key features
ConvertKit offers easy-to-customize templates for landing pages, enabling you to create compelling messaging and visuals within minutes, no coding required. You can even host these landing pages with ConvertKit and get shareable URLs for seamless promotion across social platforms or email marketing campaigns.
ConvertKit boasts a robust email marketing automation software that allows for great flexibility. For example, you can set up automation rules to create automated workflows that can be triggered by new subscriptions, completed courses, new purchases or any other events.
Tags in ConvertKit serve as a straightforward method to maintain organization among your subscribers. Essentially, tags are like labels that can be applied manually or via ConvertKit’s automation triggers. The smart tagging system greatly simplifies managing subscribers and allows for audience segmentation.
Capterra rating: 4.7 (196 reviews).
As we continue exploring our list of best GoHighLevel alternatives, Vendasta emerges as our next option. It is an all-in-one marketing platform that provides users with white-label marketing, marketing and sales automation, CRM features and project management solutions. Vendasta’s core mission is to help businesses build and take control of their online reputation.
Key features
With Vendasts, users can monitor and manage online reviews and ratings across multiple channels and platforms. Keeping a finger on the pulse, businesses and solo professionals can promptly respond to customer feedback and take actions to improve their online reputation.
Vendasta allows digital marketers to schedule content publishing on social media platforms, engage with audiences and track social performance. More than that, Vendasta offers a content library with a variety of pre-designed and customizable social media posts and templates.
Vendasta users can build and customize responsive websites or landing pages for their clients using templates and a user-friendly website builder. The drag-and-drop editor and responsive design let users, even those without technical backgrounds, cope with website creation easily.
Capterra rating: 4.5 (156 reviews).
Our next GoHighlevel alternative is GetResponse, a robust set of email marketing tools designed to help businesses engage with their audience, deliver customized offers to clients, generate leads and drive conversions. This marketing automation platform can be used by companies of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.
Key features
With GetResponse, you can be active on multiple channels and platforms and engage with your audience where it is most responsive. GetResponse has all the features necessary: web push notifications, SMS marketing and pop-up forms.
GetResponse aims to help its users build profitable online businesses. Users value such features as a drag-and-drop sales funnel builder and more than 30 professional templates most.
Capterra rating: 4.3 (479 reviews).
And the last but not least GoHighlevel alternative on our list is Pipedrive, a customer experience management tool specifically focusing on sales. The big advantage of Pipedrive is that it offers its users one central space to build sales funnels, manage leads and automate the entire sales process.
Key features
With Pipedrive, you can instantly see how many deals are in your sales pipeline and make use of interactive dashboards for sales forecasting.
Pipedrive offers advanced reporting and analytics tools, including comprehensive CRM analysis and customizable dashboards.
Pipedrive comes with a user-friendly content editor designed to help you create appealing content for your marketing efforts. This content can be later used to create email campaigns, newsletters or templates.
Capterra rating: 4.5 (2923 reviews).
We are living in post-COVID times when more and more companies move online. The pandemic forced society to learn how to shop for products and services via the internet and taught companies to run marketing campaigns online and accept digital contactless payments. Supply is created by demand, so it’s no surprise that in such an environment, lots of tools have appeared designed to help companies and individuals do business online.
In this article, we have reviewed ten customer relationship and marketing solutions that can be used as an alternative to GoHighLevel—the CRM solution that has long been considered an industry leader.
‘So, who is the winner?’, you might ask. The optimal choice, to our mind, is FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) as it has all the features you need to run your online business, including but not limited to client portals, knowledge bases, project management utilities, content creation tools, collaboration and communication features.
Who is it best for? Small businesses, large enterprises, marketing and sales teams, marketing agency owners, online course creators and solo professionals can all derive value from this platform.
Ready to take your marketing campaigns to a whole new level with FuseBase?
DISCLAIMER
Parties other than FuseBase may provide products, services, recommendations, or views on FuseBase site (“Third Party Materials”). FuseBase is not responsible for examining or evaluating such Third Party Materials, and does not provide any warranties relating to the Third Party Materials. Links to such Third Party Materials are for your convenience and do not constitute an endorsement of such Third Party Materials.
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