As a firm owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Inbound Caller ID.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist local business maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just worked accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will transform your company … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a few more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– in addition to taking care of shed productivity throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The concerns began piling up quickly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “server concerns” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Inbound Caller ID
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly price for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly discovered this economical base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic fees for core functionality. Instantly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing method, I might barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Inbound Caller ID.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible involvement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any benefits.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial features properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program usually covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Delighted assistance evaluates imply less if excessive concerns suggest poor general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can completely meet every distinct company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “also great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The devices you utilize daily need to gain depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.