As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus Buy GoHighLevel Snapshots.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can learn from my excruciating errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly appealing for companies looking to consolidate their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or maintenance required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will certainly transform your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a few more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big blunder. The concerns began accumulating promptly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unimportant emails had been sent to customers who must NOT have actually received them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, because the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and just really did not help my company. I have countless contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complex.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in entirely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing Buy GoHighLevel Snapshots
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the budget friendly price for access to many features. But I rapidly learned this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core capability. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Buy GoHighLevel Snapshots.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive error. The cons considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software program is perfect, yet the large volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle essential features effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life less complicated, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages depend on.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy support reviews suggest less if extreme concerns suggest poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly fulfill every unique service need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step improvements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you use daily must make count on with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.