As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software and automation to simplify procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Digital Agency.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a dream come true theoretically. That would not want a solitary option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, ideally you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help local business maintain their customers while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media sites types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for organizations aiming to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a brand-new tool that will transform your company … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to think possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole tech infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an overview of just a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed productivity during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big blunder. The problems started accumulating quickly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned 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 sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to customers that ought to NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the issue persisted.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in totally various sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage total, private, and item setups. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag included expensive compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Digital Agency
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to many features. However I swiftly learned this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional costs for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed every time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending techniques or tried every fixing technique, I can barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Digital Agency.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had horrible engagement. The only point I could think that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden charges, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages drastically outweighed any kind of benefits.
No software application is perfect, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital functions effectively or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly misadventure. However in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around new software usually covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your work life simpler, not a lot more complex and messy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Satisfied assistance assesses indicate less if too much issues suggest bad total use.
- Perfection is impossible. No single solution can completely meet every special company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Incremental enhancements typically outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more hesitant of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and much less lured by the allure of glossy new items. The tools you utilize daily should make count on via transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.