As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to streamline operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Calendar Sync.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner always wanting to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for companies wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when every person’s talking about a new device that will certainly reinvent your service … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a few even more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was going to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of simply a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– and also taking care of shed efficiency throughout the button.
However inevitably, 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 option for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started piling up swiftly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to individuals who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. However this description didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally inappropriate and just really did not help my organization. I have countless get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Simple tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Calendar Sync
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical cost for accessibility to a lot of features. But I quickly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed every single time you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Calendar Sync.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed fees, broken features, and terrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a massive blunder. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software program is perfect, yet the large quantity of issues was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can not trust it to handle important functions capably or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. But in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Happy assistance reviews indicate less if excessive concerns suggest inadequate general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can completely satisfy every special company need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of shiny new objects. The tools you use daily ought to gain trust via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.