As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention How Do I Promote GoHighLevel.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting client relationships via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly attractive for services looking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing shed performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating swiftly, up until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, managing membership expiries and far more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the trouble continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server issues” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally undesirable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing How Do I Promote GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the budget-friendly price for access to a lot of features. But I promptly discovered this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plunge almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria How Do I Promote GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle vital functions effectively or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life easier, not a lot more difficult and messy.
- Transparency builds trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys depend on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy assistance reviews imply less if excessive issues imply poor total usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can flawlessly satisfy every special company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental improvements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more hesitant of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily should make depend on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.