As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel Contact Source.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a dream come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business requirements, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin 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 job monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to use and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Usage site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for services looking to settle their technology stack.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will revolutionize your service … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire tech facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with shed performance during the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel offering a much better long-lasting service for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a big error. The issues began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Several Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to customers who must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the problem lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were to blame. But this description really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not work for my business. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Straightforward jobs like editing workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Contact Source
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the cost effective price for access to numerous features. But I quickly discovered this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced 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 final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or tried every fixing trick, I might barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Contact Source.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only point I could think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically outweighed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the large volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial functions competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life much easier, not much more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Seek objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance examines mean less if extreme issues imply bad general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I found out to be more unconvinced of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you make use of daily should gain depend on with transparency and performance, not slick advertising.