As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel For Ecommerce.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, hopefully you can gain from my unpleasant errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially appealing for companies aiming to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your organization … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower friction factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– in addition to handling shed performance throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge blunder. The concerns started piling up promptly, till it reached a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … till instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically tried repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were responsible. However this description really did not make any type of sense, because the errors continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed 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 concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Ecommerce
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core functionality. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every repairing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Ecommerce.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial mistake. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software usually covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life less complicated, not more difficult and untidy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins depend on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Delighted assistance assesses suggest much less if too much issues indicate bad total functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every unique organization need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I found out to be more cynical of “too excellent to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new objects. The devices you use daily need to make count on via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.