As an agency proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Loyalty Program.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, hopefully you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations seeking to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your service … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire tech framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of lost efficiency during the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge error. The problems began accumulating swiftly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Security Issues & Numerous 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 consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Loyalty Program
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. However I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Loyalty Program.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful engagement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is best, however the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life less complicated, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust.
- Look for honest testimonials. Pleased assistance assesses indicate much less if too much concerns suggest inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can flawlessly fulfill every unique organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be extra skeptical of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you use daily ought to earn trust through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.