As an agency proprietor for over a years, I depend on software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel Facebook Lead Ads.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a dream come true on paper. That would not want a solitary solution that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business needs, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media types to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours per week and rise earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a thorough customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales processes and supporting client relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly appealing for businesses aiming to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new tool that will certainly transform your business … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a review of just some of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of shed performance throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems started piling up quickly, until it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the trouble continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server issues” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was entirely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my company. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle total, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the affordable price tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Facebook Lead Ads
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to many features. Yet I promptly discovered this affordable base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core performance. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed each time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured email open rates plummet practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Facebook Lead Ads.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages considerably surpassed any type of benefits.
No software is excellent, yet the large quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage critical features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. However in knowledge, it showed me a few vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software frequently obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your job life simpler, not much more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency develops count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages depend on.
- Seek objective reviews. Satisfied support reviews imply much less if excessive issues imply poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single remedy can perfectly satisfy every one-of-a-kind business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental renovations commonly surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be much more cynical of “too excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new items. The tools you utilize daily ought to earn trust via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.