As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software program and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel For Dummies.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a dream become a reality theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, with any luck you can gain from my excruciating blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing 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 happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business keep their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use web site and social media kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and boost revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for companies wanting to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked dependably with marginal hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “shiny item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial 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 dramatically more than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood changing platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my entire technology infrastructure from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s a review of simply several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– and also handling lost efficiency during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and far more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had been sent to individuals that need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly asserted “server concerns” were to blame. However this description really did not make any type of feeling, considering that the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally unacceptable and simply really did not help my service. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing workflows included digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely different sections. Moving between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the low cost tag featured pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Dummies
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to numerous features. However I promptly learned this economical base price was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an email via their web servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting method, I could hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Dummies.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had dreadful interaction. The only point I might assume that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The cons substantially exceeded any type of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to deal with critical features capably or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software program often covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not much more complicated and messy.
- Transparency builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Satisfied support evaluates mean much less if excessive problems suggest inadequate total use.
- Perfection is difficult. No single remedy can completely meet every distinct company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more doubtful of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily must earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.