As a company owner for over a years, I count on software program and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel For Advertising Agencies.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch over to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, ideally you can gain from my agonizing errors and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business keep their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Use web site and social networks types to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing customer connections through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it especially attractive for businesses seeking to consolidate their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with very little hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will transform your organization … The yard often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction points that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted at first, yet a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole tech framework from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– and also dealing with shed performance throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a big error. The problems began accumulating quickly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent out to users who should NOT have received them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “server concerns” were responsible. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, since the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not help my service. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Basic tasks like editing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Advertising Agencies
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the budget-friendly rate for access to so many features. But I swiftly discovered this low-cost base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with sporadic fees for core performance. Instantly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send out an email via their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pitiful 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Advertising Agencies.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I might think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons dramatically outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software is excellent, yet the sheer volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to take care of essential functions competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application usually obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust.
- Look for unbiased reviews. Delighted support reviews indicate much less if extreme issues indicate bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can completely fulfill every special business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental renovations normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more doubtful of “also good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less lured by the allure of glossy new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to gain trust via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.