As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Hiring.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can gain from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use website and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting consumer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially appealing for companies wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply worked dependably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting service for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users that ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server problems” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, because the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not help my business. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Hiring
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget friendly cost for access to so many features. Yet I rapidly learned this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an email through their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every repairing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Hiring.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful engagement. The only thing I could assume that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The cons substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle essential functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life simpler, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages count on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Satisfied support examines suggest less if too much problems imply bad overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly meet every unique business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily should make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.