As a firm proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to streamline procedures and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Calendar Setup.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. Who would not want a solitary service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use website and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly appealing for services aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will reinvent your company … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, however a few more irritations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a review of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large blunder. The issues started piling up promptly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion pointers, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent out to users who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my company. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage overall, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Calendar Setup
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget-friendly rate for access to numerous features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get billed every single time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, but just 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 nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Calendar Setup.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only point I might think that would certainly 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.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a massive blunder. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software is best, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of essential features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. But in hindsight, it educated me a few essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application frequently covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life much easier, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages trust.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Happy assistance reviews indicate much less if too much concerns suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every distinct organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step improvements typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “as well excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you use daily should gain count on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.