As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel Affiliate Manager.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream come to life on paper. That would not desire a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for companies looking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will change your service … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole tech facilities from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a summary of simply a few of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– in addition to handling lost efficiency during the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues started piling up rapidly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals who ought to NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were responsible. But this description really did not make any type of feeling, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Affiliate Manager
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the economical rate for access to many features. But I rapidly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send an email via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plummet almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every fixing technique, I might hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Affiliate Manager.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only thing I might assume that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial error. The cons substantially exceeded any advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions effectively or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. But in knowledge, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life simpler, not more challenging and messy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages count on.
- Look for honest testimonials. Delighted support examines mean less if excessive issues suggest bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely fulfill every unique company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I learned to be more cynical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The devices you utilize daily must make count on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.