As an agency owner for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to simplify operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Customer Experiences.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come to life on paper. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating blunders and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and job administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a brand-new device that will certainly transform your organization … The turf typically looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, yet a couple of more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching over platforms was going to require moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of just some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing lost productivity during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The issues started piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I encountered.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 totally pointless emails had been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. However the trouble persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, given that the errors continued happening each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my business. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing workflows involved excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage overall, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Customer Experiences
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the economical price for accessibility to so many features. However I quickly discovered this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged whenever you send out an e-mail through their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates drop nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing method, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Customer Experiences.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had awful interaction. The only point I might think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a big mistake. The cons significantly surpassed any advantages.
No software application is ideal, yet the large quantity of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software program commonly covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your work life less complicated, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Look for objective reviews. Happy support evaluates indicate much less if excessive issues imply bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary service can completely satisfy every unique service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I found out to be more unconvinced of “too good to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new things. The devices you utilize daily must gain trust fund via openness and performance, not slick advertising.