As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Automations.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream come to life on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, hopefully you can learn from my painful errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for companies looking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with minimal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your company … The yard frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, but a few even more disappointments led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
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, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I knew switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole technology infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of just a few of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– in addition to managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a big blunder. The issues began accumulating promptly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, managing subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had been sent to individuals that must NOT have actually received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Automations
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the cost effective rate for access to many features. However I rapidly discovered this economical base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send out an email through their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open rates plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or tried every fixing trick, I might hardly push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Automations.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only thing I might think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial error. The cons significantly exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is ideal, but the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software usually obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices must make your work life much easier, not much more complex and messy.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust fund.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Delighted assistance examines mean much less if extreme problems suggest bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step renovations usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be much more skeptical of “also great to be real” marketing cases and much less tempted by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you make use of daily must earn trust through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.