As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Advanced Account Setup.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my service, it seemed like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Use website and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer connections with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with very little hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your business … The yard often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I would certainly learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a summary of simply some of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– and also handling shed performance during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a huge error. The concerns started accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t help my service. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle overall, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Advanced Account Setup
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the affordable price for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly learned this inexpensive base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core performance. Suddenly my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates drop nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Advanced Account Setup.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible engagement. The only thing I can think that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The disadvantages dramatically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software usually covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life much easier, not a lot more complex and messy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Happy assistance examines imply much less if excessive problems suggest bad overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely meet every special service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “also good to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the appeal of shiny new things. The devices you use daily need to make depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.