As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Loan Officers.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my service, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel review, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of attempting (and failing) to switch over to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, ideally you can gain from my painful blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small companies maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and customers get the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and boost profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing client connections through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it especially attractive for businesses seeking to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s talking about a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech framework from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of just several of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning whatever over– not to mention dealing with shed performance throughout the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel providing a much better lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a big error. The issues started accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish troubles I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be working fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. But the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation really did not make any kind of feeling, since the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally unacceptable and just really did not benefit my organization. I have countless contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate customer information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing workflows involved excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Moving between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, private, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As a person who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly recognized the affordable price tag came with costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Loan Officers
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical price for access to many features. However I promptly discovered this affordable base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my bank card declarations had obscure $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully nurtured email open rates plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending practices or tried every fixing technique, I could barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Loan Officers.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, hidden costs, damaged features, and awful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any type of benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the large quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to deal with important features properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse training course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it educated me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not a lot more difficult and unpleasant.
- Openness develops count on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins count on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Pleased support assesses imply less if excessive problems indicate bad general usability.
- Perfection is difficult. No single option can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind company demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be more cynical of “also great to be true” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny new objects. The tools you utilize daily ought to make trust with openness and efficiency, not glossy advertising.