As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my attention GoHighLevel For Fitness Trainers.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a desire happened theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, ideally you can gain from my unpleasant blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it dealt with every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the right time. Use internet site and social networks kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a detailed consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer partnerships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply worked dependably with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will certainly change your company … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, however a couple of more irritations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I understood switching over platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my whole technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of simply some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to taking care of shed efficiency throughout the switch.
However inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-lasting option for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had made a huge blunder. The problems began piling up rapidly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Security Issues & Numerous Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion pointers, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted repairing and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they slightly claimed “server issues” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not work for my organization. I have hundreds of contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows involved digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, private, and product setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Fitness Trainers
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the inexpensive cost for accessibility to many features. However I swiftly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Instantly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an email with their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plunge virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I maximized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing method, I can barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Fitness Trainers.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful engagement. The only point I might believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and terrible interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, however the sheer volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle important functions capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it instructed me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software program commonly covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your job life less complicated, not more complex and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins trust fund.
- Seek impartial reviews. Satisfied assistance examines indicate less if extreme problems indicate poor total functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No single solution can flawlessly satisfy every distinct business requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental renovations typically exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Basically, I discovered to be much more doubtful of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily should gain trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.