As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Call Transcriptions.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the best messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big error. The concerns started piling up swiftly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, handling membership expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to users that should NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my company. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Call Transcriptions
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the cost effective cost for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional charges for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing trick, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Call Transcriptions.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive error. The cons significantly surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is perfect, however the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of essential features properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around training course 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 summed up as a costly accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Pleased assistance examines indicate much less if extreme concerns suggest inadequate general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The tools you use daily ought to gain depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.