As an agency owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest Can You Sell Courses on GoHighLevel.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies maintain their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the best messages at the right time. Usage website and social media kinds to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client relationships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly change your company … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of just some of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of shed performance throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big error. The concerns started accumulating promptly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … up until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent out to users who must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server issues” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my company. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Can You Sell Courses on GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet just not realistic 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 overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards Can You Sell Courses on GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only thing I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive error. The disadvantages significantly surpassed any type of benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing substantial time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust.
- Seek honest reviews. Pleased assistance examines imply less if extreme issues suggest poor total usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can completely satisfy every special company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “also great to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you use daily need to gain trust with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.