As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel HTML.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream happened on paper. That would not want a single option that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it managed everything I needed– 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 including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially eye-catching for organizations wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your service … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a few even more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big mistake. The issues started accumulating promptly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … till all of a sudden it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary emails had been sent out to customers that need to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were to blame. But this description really did not make any sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel HTML
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical rate for access to numerous features. But I rapidly learned this cheap base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core performance. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every repairing technique, I might barely push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel HTML.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful engagement. The only point I can think that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is perfect, but the large quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life simpler, not much more complex and messy.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek honest reviews. Delighted assistance assesses suggest much less if extreme concerns imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely fulfill every special service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should earn trust via openness and performance, not slick advertising.