As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Blog Post Importer.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, hopefully you can pick up from my excruciating errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly transform your company … The lawn commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few even more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire technology framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an overview of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed performance throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge mistake. The issues started piling up quickly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to users that ought to NOT have received them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not work for my service. I have countless get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Blog Post Importer
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the inexpensive rate for access to numerous features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open rates plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every troubleshooting technique, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Blog Post Importer.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software program is ideal, however the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of important features properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life less complicated, not much more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness develops trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems destroys depend on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Delighted support assesses indicate less if excessive issues suggest inadequate overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements usually exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I discovered to be extra cynical of “also great to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily must gain trust with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.