As a company proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel Certified Admin.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a desire come to life on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, with any luck you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially eye-catching for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will change your organization … The lawn commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, yet a couple of more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing shed performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge mistake. The issues started piling up swiftly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Security Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating penalty … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to individuals who must NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their support group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and just really did not benefit my company. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely undependable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Certified Admin
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical cost for access to numerous features. However I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I enhanced my sending out methods or tried every fixing technique, I can barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Certified Admin.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring 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 costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The disadvantages substantially outweighed any benefits.
No software is best, however the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with essential features properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software usually covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines imply much less if too much concerns suggest inadequate general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly satisfy every unique company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step renovations commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be more skeptical of “too good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The devices you make use of daily ought to gain trust through transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.