As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest Recorded Calls of All Sessions GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for services aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly change your organization … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– in addition to managing shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began piling up promptly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent to users that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly claimed “web server issues” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my company. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, individual, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Recorded Calls of All Sessions GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical rate for accessibility to many features. But I promptly discovered this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Recorded Calls of All Sessions GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of important features properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not extra difficult and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages depend on.
- Seek honest testimonials. Satisfied assistance examines mean much less if too much concerns suggest bad total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can perfectly fulfill every unique organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I learned to be more cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you utilize daily ought to make count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.