As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software program and automation to simplify operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel 60 Day Free Trial.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. That would not desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my painful blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and supporting client relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for companies aiming to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a couple of more frustrations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood changing systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of simply some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– in addition to dealing with lost productivity during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge blunder. The issues began piling up rapidly, till it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless e-mails had been sent to users that must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the trouble continued.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were at fault. But this description really did not make any feeling, since the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complicated.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel 60 Day Free Trial
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the cost effective rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly discovered this affordable base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel 60 Day Free Trial.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, damaged features, and terrible 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 understood I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is ideal, yet the large quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to take care of vital features competently or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life less complicated, not more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys trust fund.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Delighted assistance evaluates imply much less if extreme concerns imply poor overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single service can flawlessly fulfill every special company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra skeptical of “too great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to earn count on through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.