As a firm owner for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel For Lead Generation.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly looking to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a solitary option that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch 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 pick up from my uncomfortable mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client administration and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to assist small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and boost income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly appealing for businesses seeking to settle their tech pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with very little hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The lawn often looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize rubbing factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a few even more aggravations led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I knew switching over platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire tech framework from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of simply some of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– as well as handling shed performance during the button.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term remedy for my service, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to realize I had made a large blunder. The concerns began accumulating rapidly, till it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … till suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent to customers who should NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the issue continued.
When I frantically connected to their support team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Easy tasks like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in completely different areas. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, private, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Lead Generation
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the cost effective price for access to so many features. However I rapidly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core functionality. Unexpectedly my credit card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an email via their servers. So for high quantity individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices drop nearly over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Lead Generation.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful involvement. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed fees, damaged features, and terrible interface, I had actually lastly 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 significant mistake. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software application is best, yet the sheer quantity of troubles was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of important features capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software frequently obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life easier, not more challenging and untidy.
- Transparency builds depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys depend on.
- Seek impartial reviews. Happy assistance assesses imply less if extreme issues imply inadequate total usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can perfectly satisfy every unique organization requirement. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements generally exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Basically, I found out to be more doubtful of “also excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of shiny new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to gain trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.