As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Course Creators Playbook.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That would not want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, with any luck you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting client partnerships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “shiny item syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will transform your service … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction points that I would certainly discovered to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more irritations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– as well as taking care of lost productivity throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The concerns started accumulating quickly, till it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered 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 included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expirations and much more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals who must NOT have gotten them. This took place three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server issues” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely undesirable and simply really did not benefit my business. I have thousands of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, specific, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Course Creators Playbook
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic charges for core capability. All of a sudden my credit card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing trick, I could hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Course Creators Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a big mistake. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle important functions properly or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software usually obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed devices should make your job life less complicated, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates indicate less if excessive issues suggest bad overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be more doubtful of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily ought to gain depend on through openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.