As a company owner for over a decade, I rely upon software and automation to streamline procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Realtors.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur always seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come to life theoretically. That would not desire a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of ideal CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Use web site and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can conserve 10 hours weekly and rise earnings by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive client relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client relationships with effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for companies wanting to settle their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned dependably with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The grass frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I ‘d learned to endure over the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a couple of even more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was going to call for moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech facilities from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s an introduction of just several of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing lost performance during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge blunder. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the horrible issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating penalty … until suddenly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 totally pointless emails had actually been sent out to customers that should NOT have obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals every day.
I desperately attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, since the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t help my business. I have countless contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, private, and item configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As somebody who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon understood the low price tag included expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Realtors
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the cost effective cost for access to a lot of features. But I quickly learned this low-cost base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. All of a sudden my charge card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email via their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet almost overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open price.
Despite how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Realtors.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only point I might assume that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, broken features, and horrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big blunder. The cons substantially outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, but the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to handle critical functions competently or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– even after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software application typically obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life much easier, not extra difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for unbiased testimonials. Delighted support reviews mean much less if extreme issues imply bad overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly meet every one-of-a-kind business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental improvements generally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions fine.
Simply put, I found out to be extra unconvinced of “as well good to be true” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new things. The devices you utilize daily need to earn trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.