As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Construction.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use website and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it simply functioned accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your organization … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of more frustrations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology facilities from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of simply several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention managing shed productivity during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The problems began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, managing membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to individuals who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my company. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Construction
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the affordable rate for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core performance. Instantly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Construction.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful interaction. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big mistake. The cons drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle important functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life much easier, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy assistance examines indicate less if extreme concerns imply poor general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can flawlessly meet every unique organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental enhancements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.