As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my attention Can You Build Websites with GoHighLevel.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. Who would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing 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 depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for companies wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little hassle or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your organization … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to handling shed productivity during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large error. The problems started piling up quickly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any feeling, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of overall, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the low cost tag featured pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing Can You Build Websites with GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the affordable cost for access to numerous features. Yet I rapidly learned this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an email through their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet 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 very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every repairing trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Can You Build Websites with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful involvement. The only thing I might assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden charges, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons drastically exceeded any benefits.
No software is perfect, but the sheer quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle essential features effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins depend on.
- Seek objective evaluations. Satisfied support evaluates imply much less if excessive concerns suggest bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every unique service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be extra skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.