As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Bootcamp.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting consumer connections with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses seeking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will change your organization … The lawn typically looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more aggravations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big mistake. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be functioning fine … until all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately attempted fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, private, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Bootcamp
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the economical cost for access to so many features. However I promptly discovered this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Bootcamp.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, but the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not more complex and messy.
- Transparency develops depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates imply much less if excessive concerns indicate bad total functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can completely fulfill every special organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental renovations generally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “too great to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily should gain trust through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.