As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel 30-Day Free Trial.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it looked like a desire come to life theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Use web site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for services wanting to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will transform your business … The yard commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of more stress led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood switching systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole tech facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling lost productivity during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, managing membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers who ought to NOT have obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly declared “server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, because the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complex.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag featured pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel 30-Day Free Trial
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to many features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core functionality. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel 30-Day Free Trial.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible interaction. The only thing I could think 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 awful interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, but the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle vital functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned 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. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not a lot more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust.
- Look for honest reviews. Delighted assistance evaluates suggest less if excessive concerns suggest poor overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step renovations usually exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily ought to earn trust via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.