As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Create Snapshot.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy 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 prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly eye-catching for services looking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly transform your organization … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may lower friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology framework from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention taking care of shed performance throughout the switch.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big blunder. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely pointless emails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Create Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to many features. Yet I quickly discovered this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open prices plunge practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every repairing method, I could barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Create Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible engagement. The only point I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software program is excellent, yet the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to manage vital features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in knowledge, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life less complicated, not extra complex and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust.
- Seek objective testimonials. Pleased assistance examines suggest much less if too much issues imply poor overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every special business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.