As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Shippo Integration.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this preferred new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered 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 been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting customer relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with marginal hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly change your company … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a few more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing shed performance during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating promptly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that should NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “server issues” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, because the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Shippo Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Shippo Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The cons substantially surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is perfect, however the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage vital features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program frequently obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages depend on.
- Look for honest reviews. Satisfied support examines suggest much less if too much concerns suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can completely fulfill every unique organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements typically surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to make count on via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.