As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software application and automation to streamline operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my interest GoHighLevel For Franchising.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can gain from my excruciating mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small businesses keep their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client relationships through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it especially attractive for companies seeking to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a new device that will reinvent your service … The lawn often looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of even more aggravations led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a review of just several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to dealing with shed productivity during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large error. The issues began accumulating rapidly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible troubles I came across.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, handling membership expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be working penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users that should NOT have actually gotten them. This happened three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals every day.
I frantically attempted troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of sense, considering that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and just didn’t work for my business. I have thousands of calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely undependable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Franchising
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the budget friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this economical base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, yet simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices drop nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending methods or attempted every troubleshooting trick, I might barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Franchising.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only point I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a massive mistake. The cons significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial functions competently or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after spending considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it educated me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Openness develops depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for objective reviews. Delighted support examines imply much less if excessive issues imply bad overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can perfectly meet every unique business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I learned to be more unconvinced of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and much less lured by the attraction of glossy brand-new objects. The devices you use daily need to make trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.