As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Calendly Integration UI.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin 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 task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers receive the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use internet site and social media sites kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations aiming to combine their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked accurately with minimal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce friction factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire tech framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term solution for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big blunder. The problems began piling up rapidly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to customers who must NOT have obtained them. This happened three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. However the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Calendly Integration UI
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the affordable rate for accessibility to a lot of features. However I promptly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed every time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I can hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Calendly Integration UI.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a massive mistake. The cons substantially surpassed any advantages.
No software program is excellent, but the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of essential features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life simpler, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Happy assistance examines imply less if extreme issues indicate bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can completely satisfy every one-of-a-kind service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental renovations normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be extra cynical of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily must gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.