As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliance.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream come to life theoretically. Who would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing client partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for services looking to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will reinvent your business … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with shed performance throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating swiftly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, handling subscription expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant emails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliance
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the economical rate for access to many features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send an email via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel HIPAA Compliance.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful interaction. The only thing I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage crucial features competently or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program typically obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life simpler, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust fund.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Delighted assistance assesses imply less if excessive problems indicate bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can completely satisfy every unique business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I found out to be extra doubtful of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily must gain trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.