As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest How Many People Use GoHighLevel.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Use website and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and supporting client connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for services looking to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your service … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech framework from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The issues started accumulating swiftly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my organization. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing How Many People Use GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical rate for access to so many features. Yet I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every fixing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria How Many People Use GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only point I might think that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a significant error. The cons drastically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is best, but the large volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage important functions effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys depend on.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied assistance evaluates mean much less if too much problems indicate bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every special service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step renovations generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “also great to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should earn depend on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.