As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel Agency Snapshot.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting customer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for organizations wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it just worked reliably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will revolutionize your company … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of more aggravations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost performance throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The concerns began accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, because the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and challenging.
Basic jobs like editing workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Agency Snapshot
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly discovered this inexpensive base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every repairing method, I might hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Agency Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I might assume that would be triggering 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 concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons dramatically exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, however the large volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with vital features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your job life simpler, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys depend on.
- Seek impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance assesses suggest much less if excessive issues imply bad general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can completely meet every one-of-a-kind service requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Simply put, I found out to be extra hesitant of “as well excellent to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of shiny new items. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.