As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Clone WordPress Sites.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can pick up from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it managed everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small companies maintain their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client relationships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for organizations seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren telephone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your company … The grass typically looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more aggravations led me to think maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of just several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling lost efficiency during the switch.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had made a big mistake. The concerns started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided 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 series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to individuals that need to NOT have gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description really did not make any feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and simply really did not help my company. I have hundreds of calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Clone WordPress Sites
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for access to many features. But I quickly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates drop nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly push open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Clone WordPress Sites.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful interaction. The only point I could assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and terrible interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big error. The cons considerably surpassed any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, but the large quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle vital features effectively or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software typically obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life easier, not more difficult and messy.
- Transparency develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems damages trust fund.
- Look for impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews mean less if excessive problems indicate inadequate general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can completely satisfy every distinct service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be extra cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny new items. The tools you utilize daily should make trust fund with openness and performance, not slick advertising.