As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to streamline operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Affiliate Commission.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, hopefully you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting customer partnerships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for services seeking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of more aggravations led me to assume possibly 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 signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of simply several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as managing shed productivity during the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a huge mistake. The issues began piling up rapidly, until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion reminders, handling membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to users that should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the problem persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server problems” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely inappropriate and just really did not help my service. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on 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 technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Affiliate Commission
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the affordable rate for access to many features. However I rapidly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core performance. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Affiliate Commission.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I could assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages significantly outweighed any advantages.
No software is perfect, but the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with vital features capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life less complicated, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues damages depend on.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Pleased assistance evaluates indicate less if extreme concerns suggest poor total usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single solution can completely fulfill every distinct business demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements typically outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In other words, I learned to be a lot more hesitant of “also great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily should make trust fund via transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.