As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Custom CSS.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream happened on paper. Who wouldn’t want a solitary option that does it all?
Yet in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for organizations wanting to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned accurately with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny object disorder”. You know the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will change your company … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may lower rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood changing systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole tech framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to handling shed performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started piling up quickly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely pointless emails had been sent to users who must NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I anxiously tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the trouble lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation really did not make any feeling, considering that the errors proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely unacceptable and just really did not work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying 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 information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of overall, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Custom CSS
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the cost effective price for accessibility to a lot of features. Yet I swiftly learned this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic costs for core capability. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plummet practically overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every fixing method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Custom CSS.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only point I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The cons significantly surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is best, however the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Pleased assistance reviews suggest less if too much concerns imply bad general functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly fulfill every unique company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be more cynical of “as well good to be true” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of shiny new objects. The tools you utilize daily should earn count on with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.