As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to improve procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely caught my interest GoHighLevel For Dentists.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it looked like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and failing) to change to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, hopefully you can learn from my agonizing mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it dealt with every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client connections with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it particularly attractive for companies aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply functioned dependably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “glossy things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your service … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might decrease rubbing points that I would certainly found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of even more aggravations led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of simply a few of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also taking care of shed productivity throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a huge error. The issues started piling up promptly, until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion suggestions, handling membership expirations and far more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my organization. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Basic jobs like modifying workflows entailed excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the low price tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Dentists
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the inexpensive cost for access to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every single time you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I optimized my sending techniques or tried every fixing method, I might hardly nudge open prices back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Dentists.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial error. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any benefits.
No software application is best, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage critical features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to reverse program and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application often covers bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life less complicated, not more difficult and messy.
- Transparency builds count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Happy assistance evaluates suggest less if too much concerns indicate poor general functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can completely fulfill every unique service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I learned to be more doubtful of “also great to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you use daily ought to earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.