As a company proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software program and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel For Mortgage Lenders.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my company, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, ideally you can learn from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled everything I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage website and social media sites types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and boost revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and nurturing client partnerships via effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained attracted by the alarm call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new tool that will transform your organization … The lawn usually looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a few more frustrations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap information and essentially rebuilding my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a completely international UX and interface style
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to taking care of lost efficiency during the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The concerns started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible troubles I came across.
Safety Issues & Many Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event suggestions, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be functioning fine … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 completely unimportant emails had actually been sent to users who need to NOT have received them. This took place three days straight, with a different set of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were at fault. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t help my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these problems …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various areas. Moving between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to access each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Mortgage Lenders
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the economical rate for accessibility to many features. Yet I swiftly discovered this inexpensive base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic fees for core performance. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send out an email with their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open prices plummet almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every troubleshooting method, I can barely nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Mortgage Lenders.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a significant error. The disadvantages substantially exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the sheer volume of troubles was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial features properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap completely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your job life easier, not more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues destroys trust.
- Seek objective reviews. Pleased assistance reviews indicate less if too much concerns imply poor overall usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely satisfy every special business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be extra hesitant of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny new objects. The devices you utilize daily need to earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.