As a firm proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software and automation to enhance procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel For Hotels.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, with any luck you can gain from my painful mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Use web site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with simple appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer relationships via effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially appealing for organizations aiming to settle their tech pile.
For the most part, it simply worked reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new device that will certainly revolutionize your organization … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a couple of more frustrations led me to assume perhaps it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my entire tech framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– not to mention dealing with lost efficiency during the button.
However eventually, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term service for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a huge blunder. The problems began accumulating quickly, till it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event tips, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to customers who ought to NOT have gotten them. This happened three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I frantically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this description really did not make any kind of feeling, since the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was completely undesirable and simply really did not help my business. I have thousands of get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complicated.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of general, individual, 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 display. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Hotels
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant selling points is the budget friendly cost for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly learned this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unanticipated costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending practices or attempted every troubleshooting method, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For Hotels.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had awful engagement. The only thing I could think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a significant error. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software is perfect, but the sheer volume of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this fiasco.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey accident. However in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of vital lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not extra difficult and messy.
- Openness builds trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles damages trust fund.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support evaluates suggest less if excessive concerns suggest poor total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can flawlessly satisfy every special company requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental renovations usually outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I learned to be extra unconvinced of “too great to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy new objects. The devices you use daily ought to earn trust through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.