As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest Can You Make Money with GoHighLevel.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for companies seeking to combine their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly transform your service … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing lost productivity during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The issues started accumulating promptly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I ran into.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, handling membership expiries and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had been sent to customers who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the problem continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Can You Make Money with GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the cost effective price for access to numerous features. Yet I quickly learned this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plunge practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every repairing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks Can You Make Money with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software application is perfect, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle vital features capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest reviews. Happy assistance examines imply much less if extreme issues suggest poor total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can completely satisfy every unique service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I learned to be much more hesitant of “also good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the attraction of shiny new items. The tools you use daily must gain count on through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.