As a company owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to enhance procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel Email Verification.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. Who would not want a solitary option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to change to this prominent new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, hopefully you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use web site and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Begin 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 solution customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and supporting consumer relationships via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially appealing for businesses wanting to consolidate their technology stack.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will transform your company … The yard usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few even more frustrations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a review of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention dealing with shed performance throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be working penalty … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had been sent to users that must NOT have received them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I desperately tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the problem continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and just really did not help my business. I have hundreds of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Email Verification
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to many features. However I promptly discovered this economical base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Email Verification.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had horrible involvement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden charges, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons dramatically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with important functions capably or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. But in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application often covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Pleased assistance assesses imply less if extreme problems indicate bad overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single solution can flawlessly satisfy every distinct business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I learned to be more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you use daily must make trust through openness and performance, not slick advertising.