As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention Can You Send Invoices with GoHighLevel.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular 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 gain from my painful errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it handled everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage site and social media kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will transform your organization … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction points that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an introduction of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– in addition to handling lost productivity throughout the button.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up rapidly, till it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to users that must NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. However the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Can You Send Invoices with GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget friendly cost for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every repairing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Can You Send Invoices with GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is best, however the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of critical functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. But in knowledge, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life easier, not much more challenging and messy.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Satisfied support reviews mean less if too much issues indicate inadequate total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly meet every distinct service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Step-by-step enhancements typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “also good to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily ought to earn depend on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.