As an agency owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to enhance procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus Frank Kern GoHighLevel.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always wanting to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream happened theoretically. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project administration option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the best messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically appealing for companies aiming to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it just functioned dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your business … The turf frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of even more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole tech infrastructure from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The issues started accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless emails had been sent to users who must NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any feeling, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like editing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing Frank Kern GoHighLevel
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I swiftly discovered this cheap base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an email via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every repairing trick, I might barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards Frank Kern GoHighLevel.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any advantages.
No software application is best, but the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage crucial functions properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life less complicated, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Openness builds count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy support examines indicate much less if extreme problems indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can completely satisfy every distinct company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily should gain count on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.