As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest Can You Make a Website with GoHighLevel.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not want a single option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize 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 satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist local business keep their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing customer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your organization … The lawn commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a few more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech framework from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also dealing with lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge blunder. The problems started piling up quickly, until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, taking care of membership expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent to users who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t help my company. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing Can You Make a Website with GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the budget-friendly price for access to so many features. But I promptly discovered this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Can You Make a Website with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only point I might believe that would be creating 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, hidden fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big mistake. The cons significantly surpassed any type of advantages.
No software program is best, however the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital features effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life simpler, not much more challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys trust fund.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied support evaluates mean much less if extreme concerns imply bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely fulfill every distinct business requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental improvements typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I learned to be more cynical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily should earn count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.