As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Ecommerce Snapshot.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire come true on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for companies looking to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed performance throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large blunder. The problems started piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were at fault. However this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, 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 design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Ecommerce Snapshot
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget-friendly price for access to a lot of features. However I quickly discovered this inexpensive base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Ecommerce Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only point I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge error. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software program is best, yet the large volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software program frequently covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life simpler, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys depend on.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy assistance assesses imply much less if extreme problems indicate bad general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every distinct organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be more hesitant of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily ought to gain depend on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.