As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest Does GoHighLevel Integrate with Shopify.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly appealing for companies looking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your business … The lawn typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few even more frustrations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just several of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– as well as managing lost performance during the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The issues started piling up swiftly, up until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent out to users who ought to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly asserted “server issues” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was totally inappropriate and simply really did not help my service. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Integrate with Shopify
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the economical price for accessibility to so many features. However I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core performance. Instantly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Integrate with Shopify.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had horrible engagement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to deal with essential functions capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software often covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life easier, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek honest reviews. Satisfied support examines mean much less if excessive problems suggest poor general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly meet every unique service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I discovered to be more skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you make use of daily need to gain count on with openness and performance, not slick advertising.