As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Custom Objects.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a desire come to life on paper. That would not want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Use site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations seeking to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your service … The turf usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a few more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an introduction of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– not to mention taking care of lost performance during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The concerns started accumulating rapidly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent out to customers that must NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the problem lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any type of sense, considering that the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Custom Objects
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open prices plummet almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I could hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Custom Objects.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is perfect, but the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to handle essential features competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application typically obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Look for honest reviews. Delighted support reviews suggest less if excessive issues suggest inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly meet every special service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn depend on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.