As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel Business Card Scanner.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses wanting to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your service … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a review of simply a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed performance during the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns started piling up quickly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to users that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any type of feeling, because the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t benefit my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in completely different sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Business Card Scanner
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the cost effective cost for access to many features. Yet I quickly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. All of a sudden my credit card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could barely push open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Business Card Scanner.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful interaction. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, busted features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with essential features effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Happy support examines imply much less if too much issues indicate inadequate total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can perfectly fulfill every unique organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental enhancements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too excellent to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn depend on through openness and performance, not slick advertising.