As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Data Entry.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses seeking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of more irritations led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of lost productivity during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge mistake. The problems started accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, managing membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Data Entry
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the affordable rate for access to many features. But I swiftly learned this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Data Entry.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden charges, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, but the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with important functions competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life simpler, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied support reviews suggest much less if extreme problems indicate bad total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely fulfill every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “too good to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily need to earn depend on through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.