As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Roofing Company.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use website and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting client relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly transform your business … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– in addition to managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I encountered.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users that should NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. However the trouble persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, because the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my business. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Roofing Company
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the affordable rate for access to a lot of features. But I swiftly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open prices plunge practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Roofing Company.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only thing I might think that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages significantly outweighed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, yet the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle essential features competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life much easier, not more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Happy assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues imply bad overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can completely fulfill every special service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily need to gain count on via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.