As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Desktop App.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to change to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for organizations aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will change your organization … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more stress led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of just some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– and also handling shed efficiency during the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge blunder. The problems began accumulating rapidly, till it reached a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to customers that need to NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, because the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Desktop App
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for access to numerous features. Yet I quickly discovered this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Desktop App.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only thing I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending 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 actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages significantly outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software program is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. But in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins trust fund.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance evaluates mean less if extreme issues indicate inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every distinct business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step renovations generally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be more cynical of “as well great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.