As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to streamline procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel For HVAC.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner always seeking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to switch over to this preferred brand-new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company requirements, hopefully you can learn from my unpleasant blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, then below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use web site and social media sites forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client connections via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for organizations looking to consolidate their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a brand-new tool that will certainly change your service … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing points that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching systems was going to need moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech infrastructure from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Below’s a review of just some of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning whatever over– as well as managing shed efficiency during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had made a big mistake. The concerns began piling up rapidly, till it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, managing membership expirations and far more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately attempted repairing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem continued.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they slightly declared “web server problems” were at fault. Yet this description really did not make any type of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my business. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and difficult.
Basic jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For HVAC
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the economical price for access to so many features. However I quickly learned this cheap base expense was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core capability. Instantly my charge card statements had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported e-mail open rates plummet practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing trick, I can hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For HVAC.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had horrible interaction. The only point I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a significant blunder. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is ideal, but the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Veterinarian asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application typically covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life easier, not extra challenging and messy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys depend on.
- Seek objective reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews imply less if excessive problems imply bad general use.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can completely meet every unique service demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Incremental improvements normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more cynical of “as well great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The tools you use daily must make count on through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.