As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Bonuses.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly eye-catching for services aiming to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will transform your company … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with lost productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. However this description really did not make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Bonuses
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to many features. However I quickly learned this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send an email through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Bonuses.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful engagement. The only thing I could assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital features effectively or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life less complicated, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys trust.
- Look for objective testimonials. Happy assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues suggest poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly fulfill every special service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra doubtful of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the allure of shiny new items. The tools you use daily need to make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.