As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel For Agency Owners.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a desire come true on paper. Who would not desire a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company requirements, ideally you can pick up from my unpleasant blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it handled every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, ensuring leads and customers get the best messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client connections via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for services wanting to consolidate their technology pile.
Generally, it just worked dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new tool that will reinvent your service … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I ‘d learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of more aggravations led me to assume possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech facilities from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an overview of simply several of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of lost efficiency throughout the button.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting solution for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big blunder. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed 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 brand-new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event tips, handling subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent out to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically attempted repairing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, because the errors continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not work for my company. I have thousands of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be entirely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing workflows entailed excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle overall, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated 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 seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Agency Owners
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the economical rate for access to many features. However I quickly learned this affordable base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic fees for core capability. Suddenly my bank card statements had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a useless 9% open price.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing trick, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Agency Owners.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful engagement. The only thing I might think 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 debilitating deliverability problems, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant mistake. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer volume of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it showed me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices need to make your job life much easier, not much more complex and untidy.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins trust.
- Seek honest testimonials. Happy support assesses mean less if too much problems indicate bad total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single option can completely meet every distinct business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I found out to be more unconvinced of “too excellent to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily need to make trust fund via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.