As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel For Electricians.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for services wanting to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of shed efficiency during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a huge error. The problems began accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent out to users who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t help my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Electricians
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable rate for access to a lot of features. However I promptly discovered this cheap base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Electricians.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could assume that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, busted features, and awful interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is best, however the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around new software application commonly obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life simpler, not much more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages trust.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy assistance reviews indicate much less if too much issues imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can flawlessly satisfy every unique company requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily must earn trust fund through openness and performance, not slick advertising.