As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Ad Manager.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this preferred new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client relationships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially eye-catching for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s discussing a new device that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a few more aggravations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology facilities from the ground up utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of simply several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– and also managing lost productivity throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a large blunder. The problems started piling up swiftly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who must NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I desperately attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the trouble continued.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t work for my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Ad Manager
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can barely push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Ad Manager.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only point I could assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial mistake. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage critical features competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek honest evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines suggest much less if extreme issues suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely fulfill every special organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step renovations generally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be much more cynical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the attraction of glossy new objects. The devices you make use of daily ought to gain depend on through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.