As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my focus GoHighLevel FAQs.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always looking to simplify and scale my company, it felt like a desire happened theoretically. That would not want a single service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, ideally you can gain from my excruciating blunders and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making certain leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting customer connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially eye-catching for businesses wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with very little difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly reinvent your business … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost productivity throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems started piling up promptly, until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Provided 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 series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be operating fine … until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that should NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the trouble lingered.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally inappropriate and simply really did not help my company. I have thousands of contacts counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these problems …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in completely various sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel FAQs
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the cost effective rate for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, but simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending techniques or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel FAQs.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had horrible interaction. The only point I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, yet the large quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around brand-new software often obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your work life simpler, not extra challenging and untidy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance examines suggest less if too much issues suggest poor overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Basically, I found out to be extra hesitant of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new items. The devices you use daily ought to earn trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.