As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Travel Agency.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will transform your service … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a few more disappointments led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– and also handling shed efficiency throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating quickly, until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, managing membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had actually been sent out to users that need to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server issues” were to blame. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Travel Agency
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget friendly cost for access to so many features. Yet I promptly discovered this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an email with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plunge virtually over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Travel Agency.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had awful involvement. The only thing I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big blunder. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is perfect, yet the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage critical features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life much easier, not much more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Satisfied support reviews mean less if excessive problems indicate poor general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.