As a firm owner for over a years, I depend on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Cleaning Businesses.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not want a single remedy that does it all?
Yet in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can learn from my excruciating mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers obtain the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours weekly and boost earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales processes and nurturing client connections via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for services aiming to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply worked accurately with minimal hassle or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly reinvent your service … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a couple of even more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose 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 took lightly. I recognized switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech infrastructure from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– as well as handling lost efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The problems began piling up rapidly, till it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed 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 subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event reminders, handling membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be working fine … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to customers that need to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server issues” were at fault. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t work for my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows involved digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the low cost tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Cleaning Businesses
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged every single time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction continually struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting trick, I could hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Cleaning Businesses.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only point I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge blunder. The cons considerably exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is best, but the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to deal with vital functions effectively or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it showed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program usually covers larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins trust fund.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy support reviews indicate much less if too much issues imply bad total use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I learned to be extra cynical of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of shiny new items. The tools you make use of daily should make trust fund via openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.