As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my interest Can You Sell Physical Products on GoHighLevel.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a dream come true on paper. That would not want a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist local business keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a couple of even more stress led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing lost performance throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues started piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent to users who should NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my company. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing Can You Sell Physical Products on GoHighLevel
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this affordable base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing method, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks Can You Sell Physical Products on GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had horrible engagement. The only point I might think that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial error. The cons drastically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with important features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life less complicated, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Delighted support examines mean less if too much concerns imply poor total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every special business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental renovations typically exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily ought to earn trust fund through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.