As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel User Permissions.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients receive the best messages at the right time. Use site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new tool that will transform your service … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few even more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed performance throughout the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up rapidly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Protection Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, given that the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t help my business. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel User Permissions
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the economical rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I rapidly learned this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plunge almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel User Permissions.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive mistake. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your job life much easier, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust fund.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased support assesses imply less if extreme issues indicate poor general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely satisfy every distinct organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too great to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily should make trust through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.