As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel For B2B.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, ideally you can pick up from my agonizing blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for services aiming to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with marginal hassle or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass typically looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could decrease friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few more stress led me to believe perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially restoring my whole tech framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of simply some of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention managing lost performance throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had actually made a big mistake. The problems started piling up promptly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to meticulously recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion suggestions, handling subscription expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to locate 171 totally pointless e-mails had actually been sent out to individuals that must NOT have received them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue lingered.
When I desperately reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the errors proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to handle total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag featured pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For B2B
Among GoHighLevel’s largest selling points is the affordable rate for access to a lot of features. However I promptly learned this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send an email through their web servers. So for high quantity users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open prices drop virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every troubleshooting technique, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For B2B.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I can think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a significant blunder. The cons considerably outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software program is best, yet the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions competently or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not more complicated and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Satisfied support assesses imply much less if excessive issues imply bad total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every distinct service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental improvements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “also great to be true” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new things. The tools you make use of daily must gain trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.