As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel Funnel Builder.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for services aiming to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your company … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– not to mention handling shed efficiency during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large mistake. The issues started piling up promptly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Funnel Builder
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical rate for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this low-cost base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core capability. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices drop almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Funnel Builder.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had terrible engagement. The only point I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any advantages.
No software application is ideal, however the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle vital features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life easier, not a lot more challenging and untidy.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys depend on.
- Look for honest testimonials. Satisfied support assesses suggest less if too much problems indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can perfectly satisfy every special company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental enhancements typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I discovered to be extra cynical of “too great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new items. The devices you use daily should gain count on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.