As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel For Franchise Sales.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my organization, it seemed like a desire become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service demands, ideally you can gain from my agonizing errors and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer administration and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social media sites kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and nurturing client relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially appealing for companies looking to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with very little hassle or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your business … The turf often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might lower rubbing factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a few more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole tech infrastructure from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an overview of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– not to mention handling shed efficiency during the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel offering a better lasting solution for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge mistake. The problems began piling up promptly, till it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, handling subscription expiries and much more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … up until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to individuals that ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were responsible. However this description really did not make any feeling, given that the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not help my business. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and challenging.
Easy tasks like editing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in totally various areas. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle total, private, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included pricey compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Franchise Sales
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling factors is the budget-friendly cost for access to numerous features. However I quickly discovered this affordable base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices plunge almost overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing technique, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Franchise Sales.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I could think that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software program is ideal, but the large quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle critical features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. However in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software application typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life simpler, not a lot more challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages count on.
- Look for honest testimonials. Happy assistance reviews mean less if excessive problems indicate bad overall usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every one-of-a-kind company demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental improvements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “as well great to be true” marketing cases and much less tempted by the allure of shiny new items. The devices you use daily must earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.