As a firm owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Email Automation.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated 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 here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing consumer connections via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly attractive for businesses seeking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with minimal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new device that will revolutionize your business … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my entire tech facilities from the ground up using all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– not to mention managing lost efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a big blunder. The problems began accumulating rapidly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had been sent to users that ought to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Email Automation
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget friendly rate for accessibility to so many features. However I quickly discovered this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported email open prices plunge nearly overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
Despite how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Email Automation.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful interaction. The only thing I can assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed charges, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive mistake. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer volume of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application frequently covers larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not extra complicated and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins count on.
- Look for objective testimonials. Satisfied support examines mean less if excessive problems indicate bad overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single option can completely meet every unique company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Basically, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The devices you use daily must gain count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.