As a firm proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Affiliate Commander Program.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. Who would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for organizations aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your company … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a few more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention dealing with shed productivity throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The issues started piling up promptly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously 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 event pointers, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant emails had actually been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they slightly asserted “server issues” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not help my company. I have countless get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Affiliate Commander Program
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the inexpensive cost for access to many features. However I swiftly learned this inexpensive base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plummet almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement constantly 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 rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Affiliate Commander Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I can assume that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons drastically exceeded any benefits.
No software application is best, yet the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with important functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software commonly covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life less complicated, not extra difficult and messy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins count on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Pleased support evaluates imply much less if extreme problems indicate poor general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can completely fulfill every special business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements usually surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In short, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “also great to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily need to earn trust via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.