As a company owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest Does GoHighLevel Have An API.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come true on paper. Who would not desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can learn from my painful mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting customer relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly appealing for services looking to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will transform your company … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may lower friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more aggravations led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an overview of simply some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed productivity throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any kind of feeling, because the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my company. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low cost tag came with costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Have An API
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to many features. But I rapidly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open rates plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every repairing trick, I could barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Have An API.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible involvement. The only thing I can assume that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, however the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust.
- Look for objective testimonials. Pleased support reviews suggest less if extreme concerns suggest bad general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be much more cynical of “too great to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new objects. The tools you make use of daily should earn depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.