As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my interest Does GoHighLevel Integrate with HubSpot.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses keep their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for businesses wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with marginal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your business … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole technology framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed productivity during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to individuals who should NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any type of feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not work for my company. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Integrate with HubSpot
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the economical price for access to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices drop almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every repairing method, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Does GoHighLevel Integrate with HubSpot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons considerably outweighed any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software program commonly obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews mean much less if too much problems imply inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be extra skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily should gain depend on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.