As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my focus Carpet Cleaner GoHighLevel Snapshot.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically eye-catching for businesses wanting to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with very little difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly change your company … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of more irritations led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of just several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also dealing with lost performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The concerns began piling up swiftly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to individuals that should NOT have received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “server problems” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely undesirable and simply really did not work for my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in completely various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing Carpet Cleaner GoHighLevel Snapshot
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the economical cost for access to numerous features. Yet I quickly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. Instantly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending methods or attempted every fixing technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Carpet Cleaner GoHighLevel Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible engagement. The only point I can think that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive blunder. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software program is ideal, however the large quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software application typically covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not more complex and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins depend on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines suggest much less if too much issues suggest inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be extra doubtful of “too excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund through openness and performance, not slick advertising.