As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel Cyber Week Promotion.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company needs, ideally you can gain from my agonizing errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the right messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough customer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly attractive for organizations looking to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will revolutionize your organization … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I would certainly discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of more frustrations led me to think perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew changing systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, 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 setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems started accumulating quickly, until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have actually received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were responsible. However this explanation really did not make any sense, because the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t help my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the small cost tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Cyber Week Promotion
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the economical price for accessibility to many features. However I quickly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open rates drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every fixing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Cyber Week Promotion.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had terrible interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant blunder. The disadvantages dramatically surpassed any benefits.
No software application is excellent, however the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software application often covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life much easier, not much more complicated and messy.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins depend on.
- Seek honest reviews. Pleased support assesses mean less if excessive concerns imply bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental enhancements normally exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “too good to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The tools you utilize daily must earn trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.