As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest Do You Need Hosting For GoHighLevel.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, with any luck you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting customer partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The yard typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
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, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also handling shed efficiency during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big error. The issues started piling up promptly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent out to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the small cost tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing Do You Need Hosting For GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the economical cost for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plunge practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every fixing method, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Do You Need Hosting For GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I can think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software application is best, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of critical functions capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software often covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life simpler, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins count on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased support evaluates imply less if too much issues suggest poor total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental renovations normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be much more unconvinced of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you use daily should earn trust through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.