As a company proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest What Can You Do with GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend 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 trying to find a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for companies looking to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your organization … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed productivity during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to users who must NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any feeling, since the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing What Can You Do with GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I promptly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plunge practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria What Can You Do with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had horrible involvement. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around new software application frequently covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life much easier, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys trust fund.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased support evaluates imply much less if excessive issues indicate bad general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can perfectly fulfill every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I found out to be extra hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to make trust fund via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.