As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my attention Does GoHighLevel Work in South Africa.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. That would not want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing client relationships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses aiming to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your organization … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of even more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as handling lost productivity throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up rapidly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent out to users that should NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Work in South Africa
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the inexpensive rate for access to a lot of features. But I quickly discovered this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every fixing technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria Does GoHighLevel Work in South Africa.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had awful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge blunder. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle essential features capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it showed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application commonly obscures bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not much more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys trust.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Satisfied assistance reviews imply less if extreme problems suggest poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations normally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more doubtful of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy new things. The devices you make use of daily should earn trust with openness and performance, not slick advertising.