As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel Cold Email Outreach.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a dream come to life on paper. That would not want a solitary service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email 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 new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and customers receive the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales processes and supporting consumer connections through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with very little hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your business … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few more disappointments led me to believe maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire technology infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to handling shed efficiency throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-term service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a large error. The concerns began piling up quickly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals every day.
I hysterically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were at fault. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, given that the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was entirely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complicated.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle general, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Cold Email Outreach
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the affordable rate for accessibility to a lot of features. But I quickly learned this cheap base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core functionality. Instantly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every single time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every repairing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Cold Email Outreach.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can think that would be causing 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 crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant mistake. The cons drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application frequently covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues destroys trust fund.
- Look for objective reviews. Satisfied support assesses imply much less if too much issues imply inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly fulfill every unique service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Simply put, I learned to be more unconvinced of “too great to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny new items. The devices you make use of daily need to make count on with transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.