As a firm owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention Does GoHighLevel Use WordPress.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come true on paper. That would not want a single option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the right messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for organizations seeking to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked reliably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will change your organization … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of even more aggravations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech framework from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– and also managing lost efficiency throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from square one. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t work for my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low cost tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing Does GoHighLevel Use WordPress
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to many features. But I quickly learned this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core functionality. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an email with their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards Does GoHighLevel Use WordPress.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, broken features, and horrible interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is best, however the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life easier, not extra complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages trust.
- Seek objective testimonials. Pleased support reviews imply much less if extreme problems indicate bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can completely fulfill every distinct company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements usually outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more unconvinced of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily should gain trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.