As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software and automation to improve procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus Can GoHighLevel Create Funnels.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream come true theoretically. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting client partnerships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for services wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will transform your business … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a couple of even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention handling lost efficiency throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The concerns began piling up promptly, until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, managing membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely undesirable and just really did not help my company. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing Can GoHighLevel Create Funnels
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. However I rapidly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards Can GoHighLevel Create Funnels.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life much easier, not more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins count on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Happy assistance evaluates suggest much less if too much issues suggest poor overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely meet every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step improvements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of glossy new items. The devices you use daily ought to gain depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.