As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Calculator.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come to life theoretically. That would not want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and falling short) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist local business keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting client relationships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for companies wanting to combine their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I ‘d discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more frustrations led me to think maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole technology facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply several of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– and also managing lost productivity during the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big error. The problems began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unnecessary emails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have actually gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their support team, they slightly asserted “server issues” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any type of sense, because the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Calculator
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for access to so many features. However I promptly discovered this low-cost base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I might barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Calculator.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had awful interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email 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 Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big mistake. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage critical features properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult call to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life simpler, not more complex and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Satisfied assistance evaluates imply less if extreme problems suggest inadequate general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every special service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental enhancements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be more hesitant of “too good to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily need to earn depend on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.