As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to enhance procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel For Freight Brokers.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a desire come to life on paper. Who would not want a single service that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to change to this preferred new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service needs, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring 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 require context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to use and it managed everything I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and boost earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and supporting client partnerships through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies wanting to combine their technology pile.
For the most part, it just functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without any problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will reinvent your company … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, however a few even more irritations led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology infrastructure from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an overview of just some of the effort required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– and also handling lost efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet eventually, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel offering a far better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a point I had to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I ran into.
Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new email clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely unnecessary emails had been sent to individuals that must NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. Yet the problem continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly declared “server problems” were responsible. Yet this explanation didn’t make any sense, because the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have hundreds of calls counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating via menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag included pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Freight Brokers
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the economical rate for accessibility to many features. But I quickly discovered this affordable base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core functionality. Suddenly my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send out an email via their servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates drop virtually overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement consistently struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter just how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing technique, I could hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Freight Brokers.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only point I can think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The cons dramatically surpassed any advantages.
No software is perfect, however the sheer quantity of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial functions capably or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application usually obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is vital.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages depend on.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Satisfied support assesses suggest less if too much problems suggest inadequate total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind organization demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Incremental enhancements typically outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be a lot more cynical of “also excellent to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to earn count on via openness and performance, not slick advertising.