As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Assessments and Quizzes.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client connections through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services aiming to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your business … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of even more stress led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm 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 substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed performance throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The issues started piling up quickly, up until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to users that must NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my service. I have thousands of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Assessments and Quizzes
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to many features. However I quickly learned this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing method, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Assessments and Quizzes.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had awful involvement. The only thing I might assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive blunder. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any benefits.
No software is best, but the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it showed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application commonly covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys count on.
- Seek objective testimonials. Happy support examines imply less if extreme problems suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can perfectly fulfill every unique service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations typically surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “too great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should gain depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.