As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Hardware Support For POS.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting client partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for businesses looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly change your service … The yard typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of even more aggravations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of simply several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– as well as handling lost efficiency during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The issues began piling up promptly, up until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who need to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server problems” were to blame. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Hardware Support For POS
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. But I promptly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out practices or tried every repairing technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Hardware Support For POS.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had horrible interaction. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons substantially surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software application is best, however the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application usually covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life simpler, not much more difficult and messy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Happy assistance assesses mean much less if excessive problems imply bad general functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I learned to be much more doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily must gain count on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.