GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – A Detailed Comparison of Top CRMs 2024

CRMs have been a massive addition to successful businesses’ toolkits. It’s hard to imagine operating without them. 

It’s an asset for keeping client details in one place and seamlessly reaching out to them. Yet, having too many choices of which platform to use can be daunting for marketing teams and business owners.

In this light, we’ll closely look at two well-known CRM platforms – Salesforce and GoHighLevel. 

Salesforce is a go-to for large corporations, while GoHighLevel often resonates more with marketing agency owners and smaller businesses.

What Is GoHighLevel?

GoHighLevel has quickly become famous for providing a comprehensive, unified user experience. HighLevel is more than just building customer relationships; it lets you handle various business tasks.

This includes sales and marketing, payment collection, and even white labeling, both desktop and mobile apps.

GoHighLevel offers all the necessary tools for acquiring leads, guiding them through your marketing funnel, and ultimately, converting and keeping them as clients.

In a field full of CRM and marketing automation tools, GoHighLevel is perhaps the most complete solution, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses.

GoHighLevel Key Features

Alright, let’s break down GoHighLevel’s features, focusing on how they’ll practically benefit you:

• CRM. This tool is a real asset for keeping tabs on how you deal with customers and what’s happening in your sales pipeline. It’s super helpful in organizing customer info and ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
• Marketing Automation. GoHighLevel has these neat automation features. Automated workflows take care of the routine stuff like automated responses, emails, and social posts. This means you have more time to put into your marketing efforts creative and strategic parts.
• Sales Funnel Builder. With this, you’re crafting paths that lead potential customers to purchase. It’s a key player in turning those maybe-customers into definite ones.
• Website and Landing Page Builder. Not a tech expert? No problem. This beginner-friendly website builder lets you set up awesome websites and landing pages. It’s all about boosting your visibility online.
• Appointment Scheduling. This feature, including the native calendar, makes organizing and handling appointments simple, especially if you often chat with clients.
• Reputation Management. Here, you can watch and react to what clients say about you online. It is suitable for keeping your online image positive and trustworthy.
• SMS, Email, Phone, and Social Media Marketing are tools for contacting clients and potential leads directly. They add a personal flavor to your interactions. The GoHighLevel power dialer is especially useful for sales teams..
• Courses, Memberships, and Communities. Great for pulling in leads or giving customers extra value through educational content or exclusive groups.

What Is Salesforce?

Salesforce is not just popular in the CRM world. Even those outside the circle are likely to have heard of it.

Known as one of the pioneers of the SaaS model, Salesforce has become synonymous with comprehensive customer relationship management.

It has been a mainstay for corporations and businesses for over two decades. And it has broadened its horizons to serve small and medium-sized enterprises.

As a leader in innovation, Salesforce uses AI to offer a unified view of managing customer data across various departments, including sales, service, marketing, and commerce. This capability makes it one of the leading CRM solutions in the market.

Salesforce Key Features

Here’s a summary of Salesforce’s core features:

• Marketing Cloud. This offers digital marketing automation features, enabling engaging customer experiences across various channels like email and mobile.
• Salesforce Sales Cloud. It focuses on managing sales, customer information, and leads, streamlining how you manage customer data and sales interactions.
• Commerce Cloud. This cloud supports e-commerce functions, from creating online stores to managing customer shopping experiences and orders.
• Service Cloud. Service Cloud specializes in customer service processes. It offers tools for efficient case tracking and real-time support.
• Integration Cloud. Aids in integrating Salesforce with other systems, ensuring effective data management across different platforms.
• Small Business Cloud. Ideal for smaller businesses, simplifying CRM, sales, and marketing processes to make them more accessible.

GoHighLevel and Salesforce – Similarities

Although these platforms target different market segments, they have much in common.

Both are cloud-based platforms operating on a subscription model. They offer easy access anywhere with an internet connection and flexible subscription options.

They aim to simplify lead and customer relationship management so you don’t lose them due to data mismanagement.

Additionally, both provide marketing tools like email marketing and targeted advertising, along with features to track and manage sales processes. This helps in effectively managing and nurturing customer relationships.

GoHighLevel and Salesforce offer customization and integration capabilities. However, the latter provides more advanced personalization options.

Lastly, these two platforms enable insights into your customer behaviors and marketing efforts. You can understand the effectiveness of your marketing strategies and determine your next course of action.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Differences

Now, let’s see the apparent differences between the two.

• Target Market. GoHighLevel is ideal for marketing agencies, small and medium-sized businesses, and freelancers. Salesforce, on the other hand, is for large enterprises.
• Complexity and Customization. Salesforce stands out for its advanced customization and integration capabilities. GoHighLevel is more straightforward and more user-friendly, aimed at those who prefer an integrated package.
• Pricing Structure. GoHighLevel is more affordable and has a more straightforward pricing structure. Salesforce starts at a meager price, but its pricing is more complicated and can become very expensive.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Pros and Cons

GoHighLevel Pros

• All-in-One Solution. It integrates various tools like CRM, marketing automation, sales funnel builder, and more into one platform, reducing the need for multiple software solutions.
• User-Friendly Interface. The platform is known for its intuitive and easy-to-use tools and dashboard. It offers templates and drag-and-drop editors to simplify the design and content creation process.
• Has More Content Marketing Features. Besides sending campaigns through emails and SMS, it provides tools to build websites and landing pages, publish blogs, schedule social media posts, and more.
• Generous Usage Limits. Allows unlimited contacts and team members, even on the most affordable plan.
• Reselling Ability. You can white-label GoHighLevel and sell under your brand. The platform also allows you to offer WordPress and Yext listings to your clients and make money from them.

GoHighLevel Cons

• Fewer Integrations. While GoHighLevel aims to be an all-in-one solution, it may not offer as many integrations. This limitation might affect users who rely heavily on specific third-party tools.
• Limited Scalability for Much Larger Enterprises. GoHighLevel is excellent for helping marketing agencies grow and manage more business accounts. However, it may not be as well-suited for large or industry-specific organizations with specialized needs, such as hospitals or schools.

See more HighLevel pros and cons here.

Salesforce Pros

• Advanced CRM Features. Salesforce excels in managing customer relationships and offers more advanced tools than GoHighLevel.
• High Customizability. It’s tailored to provide solutions across various industries, allowing extensive personalization to meet diverse business needs.
• Global Community and Support Network. Salesforce boasts a large global community and offers comprehensive support, with ample customer service hotlines, resources, and training available.

Salesforce Cons

• Complexity and Learning Curve. Salesforce’s complex features and customization options may initially make learning difficult.
• Higher Cost. The platform can become costly, especially when incorporating multiple modules, customizations, and additional users, which might be a constraint for smaller businesses.
• Time-Intensive Customization. Adapting Salesforce to your specific needs requires significant time investment. You might need to hire a Salesforce expert or work closely with their team for effective customization.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Pricing

GoHighLevel offers simple pricing plans with three main options, each catering to different business needs. You can choose monthly or annual payment, with a discount for the yearly option.

1. Agency Starter ($97/month): Ideal for small agencies or individuals focusing on growing their business. It includes website and sales funnel features, 2-way SMS and email communication, customer relationship management, and other essential tools.
2. Agency Unlimited ($297/month): Suitable for businesses with sales and marketing teams managing more clients. It offers all the features from the Agency Starter plus unlimited sub-accounts, team members, and a white-labeled desktop app, allowing you to add as many clients as needed.
3. Agency SaaS ($497/month): This plan allows agencies to establish a strong market presence by selling the platform under their brand and includes advanced features like A/B testing, detailed reporting, and an AI conversational bot.

GoHighLevel also provides add-ons like white-labeled mobile apps, priority support, and HIPAA compliance, which are accessible after signing up for a free trial.

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Meanwhile, Salesforce offers its clouds and products separately. You’ll need to look at each to determine which plan suits your needs. Diving into its pricing structure in detail could take a while. Moreover, all plans are only payable annually.

So, to give you an example, I’ll show the plans under the Sales Cloud.

• Starter Suite ($25/user/month). This plan is best for beginners. It provides the basics for managing leads and opportunities, with simplified setup and onboarding to get you going fast.
• Professional Plan ($80/user/month). This might be your plan if you need more forecasting and reporting features to manage a growing client list. It helps with detailed insights into your sales trends.
• Enterprise Plan ($165/user/month). This plan offers advanced features like API access and detailed pipeline management, essential for scaling your operations.
• Unlimited Plan ($330/user/month). This is Salesforce’s most extensive plan, offering everything in the Enterprise plan plus more sales automation and support. It’s designed for businesses that need the utmost customization and support.
• Unlimited+ Plan ($500/user/month). For those who need the best sales support, with performance management and even more advanced features.

This isn’t the default pricing structure for all products. It changes depending on the tool you need from Salesforce.

I suggest asking their team for expert advice on playing with, mixing, and matching their plans based on your business requirements.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Ease of Use and Interface

Ease of use is as important as its features when choosing a platform.

GoHighLevel is generally easier to use. While it has a learning curve, it’s still more navigable than Salesforce. All the features you need are in one place, and they’re all accessible inside your dashboard.

If you have experience with a SaaS platform, you’ll find it effortless to move around GoHighLevel.

In addition, even their features are easy to use. You can survive by clicking icons, providing information, and using templates—no need for in-depth customization.

If you can’t afford to spend much time on setup, GoHighLevel can be particularly appealing.

Meanwhile, Salesforce also looks user-friendly at first glance. Everything about its dashboard is organized and responsive. I enjoyed exploring it.

The platform also offers pop-up guides to start using the feature you want. However, due to its advanced customization, setting everything up and ready for your business can take some time and know-how.

This can be a hurdle, especially if you’re new to such detailed systems. It’s worth noting, too, that you might need extra help from IT experts or their team for the more complex customization that Salesforce allows.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – CRM Features

In both GoHighLevel and Salesforce, you’ll find essential customer relationship management tools.

They help you monitor customers’ info, record chats and emails, and watch how customer relationships grow. These tools ensure you know who your customers are and what they need.

However, Salesforce has earned its reputation as the top CRM platform for a reason. Its clouds are centered on CRM functionality. Plus, it has a product called Customer 360, an AI-enhanced CRM.

This powerful tool combines all customer interactions and data across different departments, like marketing and sales, providing a complete view of each customer.

It ensures that all customer touchpoints are connected, creating a unified profile that helps businesses better understand and serve their customers.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Sales and Marketing Tools

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Website, Landing Pages, and Blogs

Although Salesforce has the Einstein 1 Platform, which allows you to create websites and landing pages, they aren’t as user-friendly as GoHighLevel. You’ll also need to pay for it as an add-on to your plan.

Furthermore, unlike GoHighLevel, these Salesforce products don’t come with pre-made templates. This means you need to learn some coding or hire a developer to set up your website and landing pages exactly how you want them.

With GoHighLevel, these features are within your reach regardless of your plan. It also uses a drag-and-drop editor for websites and landing pages, so you can easily create pages without the headache.

HighLevel’s blog tool also offers a user-friendly interface that helps you quickly draft and publish your content online. To top this off, you can create as many web pages, sites, and posts as you want inside GoHighLevel.

Related Reading:

• GoHighLevel Forms
• GoHighLevel Suveys

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Telemarketing and Email Marketing

GoHighLevel and Salesforce offer SMS, calls, and email marketing features.

These platforms enable 2-way texting, auto-replies, trigger message creation, and contact segmentation, which are crucial for targeted and efficient client communication.

Their automation features also let you build multiple email campaigns and schedule follow-ups directly from the software.

For telemarketing, GoHighLevel uses LeadConnector (Twilio and Mailgun are other options, but they are less popular among users in 2024). You pay for the phone number and text messages, which is often more affordable than other apps. It also allows integration with WhatsApp at no extra cost.

Conversely, Salesforce requires a monthly fee for Heymarket (starting at $19/month), excluding the cost of MMS and SMS messaging.

Integrating with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp on Salesforce also incurs a higher fee ($39/month), making it a pricier option.

Related Reading:

• GoHighLevel Email Marketing Overview
• GoHighLevel SMS Overview

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Online Courses and Membership Sites

GoHighLevel and Salesforce let you create online courses. But doing it in Salesforce is more complicated.

With GoHighLevel, you can access this feature and the membership and community tools across all plans. You can easily create unlimited online courses and use them as lead magnets, training resources, or a digital product you can sell to your clients.

Moreover, the course builder inside the platform is intuitive and straightforward. You can make a full-length course in just a few hours.

In contrast, you have to subscribe to the Education Cloud to get this feature on Salesforce. This cloud is basically for schools and academic institutions, so the thought of paying extra to get this feature might not be attractive to businesses outside the same industry.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – E-Commerce

GoHighLevel provides essential e-commerce tools for its users. You can receive payments through Stripe, provide invoices, and build your online store inside the platform.

In addition, GoHighLevel lets you integrate with QuickBooks to streamline the creation of sales receipts and sync your invoices for accounting purposes.

On the other hand, Salesforce has its own Commerce Cloud that offers the best tools for online store success.

It gives you features such as order management for smoother and faster delivery, an innovative merchant dashboard to track and monitor your business, and an AI-powered shopping assistant.

GoHighLevel vs Salesforce – Customer Support and Training

GoHighLevel and Salesforce both offer telephone support and web chat. They also have blogs, video tutorials, and help centers to get you started.

However, since Salesforce has been a much bigger company in the industry for over a decade, it provides better customer service and resources. For instance, it has multiple phone support languages so communication won’t be a barrier.

Salesforce also has an online learning platform called Trailhead. It’s useful for those who want to learn and master the platform without paying anything.

The only thing that needs improvement is that both platforms’ help centers aren’t updated and don’t discuss some features in detail.

FAQs

Which Is a More Powerful CRM Platform? Salesforce or GoHighLevel?

Salesforce is the top pick if you want more advanced and innovative software for customer relationship management.

Which Offers a More User-Friendly Interface? GoHighLevel or Salesforce?

They both have a clean and navigable dashboard. But GoHighLevel has a less steep learning curve than Salesforce. 

Which Has Better Sales and Marketing Features, GoHighLevel or Salesforce?

GoHighLevel has better marketing features, allowing you to connect with multi-channel marketing tools, offering a drag-and-drop editor and customizable templates for your web pages. It’s also more affordable and easier to use. However, if you want more advanced sales features, Salesforce has specific products.

Does Salesforce Offer Product Bundles?

Yes. Salesforce has product bundles, but they are offered by industries. You can check the pricing models under the Industries tab on its home page.

Is GoHighLevel Suitable for Large Enterprises?

GoHighLevel is ideal for small to medium businesses and marketing agencies. Larger enterprises might find Salesforce more fitting due to its scalability.

Can I Migrate Data from Another CRM to GoHighLevel or Salesforce?

Both platforms allow data migration from other CRMs. However, GoHighLevel might require manual importing. As for Salesforce, you’ll need to install other apps like Salesforce Data Import Wizard.

Conclusion

So, when you decide between GoHighLevel and Salesforce for your business, remember to choose what platform will help you the most.

GoHighLevel is a fantastic fit for smaller businesses or marketing agencies. It offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use platform at a cost-effective price, making it a great all-in-one tool.

Salesforce, meanwhile, caters to a broader range, including large corporations. It’s the go-to for businesses needing advanced CRM capabilities and customization.

Ultimately, your choice depends on the scale of your business and the depth of CRM features you’re looking for.

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