As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Certification Program.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can pick up from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest 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 alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for companies looking to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly transform your service … The lawn frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of even more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing shed efficiency throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge mistake. The problems began accumulating swiftly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers that need to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t help my company. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Certification Program
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the budget friendly cost for access to numerous features. Yet I swiftly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core capability. Suddenly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending methods or tried every repairing method, I can barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Certification Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had awful involvement. The only thing I can think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The cons significantly surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins depend on.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance reviews suggest much less if extreme problems indicate inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly fulfill every unique company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In short, I learned to be more cynical of “too good to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new objects. The devices you utilize daily should earn depend on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.