As a firm owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel Certified Lunch N Learn.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it felt like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, ideally you can pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task administration choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies keep their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use site and social media sites types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client partnerships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially eye-catching for companies wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned accurately with minimal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your company … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a few even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from scratch utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of simply some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues began piling up promptly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I ran into.
Protection Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to individuals that ought to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. But the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server concerns” were responsible. However this description really did not make any feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was completely unacceptable and just really did not help my service. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Straightforward jobs like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Certified Lunch N Learn
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the affordable cost for access to numerous features. However I promptly learned this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Instantly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, yet simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I can barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Certified Lunch N Learn.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only point I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a big mistake. The cons considerably outweighed any type of benefits.
No software program is best, however the large volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. However in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program commonly obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines mean much less if extreme concerns indicate bad total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every special service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “too good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily must make count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.