As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel HVAC Snapshot.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it felt like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single option that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, with any luck you can pick up from my painful mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it handled 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 created to aid small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive client partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for businesses aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new device that will change your company … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few even more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large error. The concerns started piling up swiftly, up until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any sense, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not work for my business. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like editing workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed 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 imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel HVAC Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the cost effective price for accessibility to numerous features. However I promptly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I could barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel HVAC Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the large volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage critical functions effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
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 showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life much easier, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages depend on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Satisfied assistance examines indicate less if extreme issues indicate bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly fulfill every special service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be much more unconvinced of “also good to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily need to make trust fund with openness and performance, not slick advertising.