As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel ChatGPT.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses keep their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social networks types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting customer relationships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for businesses looking to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly revolutionize your company … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a couple of even more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood changing platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my entire technology facilities from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an overview of just some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– and also handling shed performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge error. The issues began piling up promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent out to customers who need to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem continued.
When I seriously reached out to their support group, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. However this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my service. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low price tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel ChatGPT
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the cost effective price for access to a lot of features. Yet I rapidly learned this affordable base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every time you send an email through their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plunge almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every fixing technique, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel ChatGPT.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had awful involvement. The only thing I could think that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant blunder. The cons considerably outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, however the sheer volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software commonly covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life less complicated, not a lot more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines imply less if excessive issues imply poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely satisfy every unique company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental renovations generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more hesitant of “too good to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you utilize daily must earn depend on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.