As an agency proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus Does GoHighLevel Work with Google Ads.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for companies seeking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with marginal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your company … The yard often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, yet a few more aggravations led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a summary of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large blunder. The problems began piling up promptly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to users who ought to NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and just really did not work for my business. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing Does GoHighLevel Work with Google Ads
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I swiftly discovered this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices drop virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every fixing method, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria Does GoHighLevel Work with Google Ads.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had horrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The cons considerably exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, yet the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage essential functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around new software commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles damages trust.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance assesses suggest much less if too much concerns indicate inadequate overall use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single service can completely satisfy every special company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be much more hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you use daily need to gain depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.