As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus Why Choose GoHighLevel For Your Business.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use website and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for companies wanting to combine their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your company … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of even more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– and also managing lost performance during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues began accumulating quickly, up until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly 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 registrations, sending out event tips, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, given that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my company. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing Why Choose GoHighLevel For Your Business
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Why Choose GoHighLevel For Your Business.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only point I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons considerably outweighed any advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of important functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Pleased support assesses imply much less if extreme problems indicate inadequate general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can completely meet every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “also good to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily should make depend on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.