As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software application and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Helpdesk.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing 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 been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially appealing for companies seeking to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will change your organization … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of just several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– in addition to managing lost performance during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a huge mistake. The issues started piling up promptly, until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned 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 series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to users that ought to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the affordable price tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Helpdesk
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical rate for access to numerous features. But I swiftly learned this inexpensive base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core capability. Suddenly my charge card statements had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing technique, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Helpdesk.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I can assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is excellent, yet the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. But in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not a lot more challenging and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Satisfied assistance assesses imply much less if extreme problems imply bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every distinct business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more hesitant of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny new objects. The tools you make use of daily need to earn count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.