As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Recruitment Agencies.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come true on paper. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business needs, ideally you can learn from my unpleasant errors and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management choice to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I found Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small companies keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social media sites types to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations wanting to combine their technology stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% great). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm call of “shiny item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a brand-new tool that will certainly change your organization … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might minimize friction points that I ‘d found out to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood in the beginning, but a couple of even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from square one making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of just several of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost performance during the button.
But ultimately, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-term option for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible troubles I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event tips, managing subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be working fine … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 totally unimportant e-mails had been sent out to individuals that must NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from square one. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this description really did not make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and just really did not help my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Straightforward tasks like modifying workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined item prepared for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Recruitment Agencies
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the cost effective rate for access to numerous features. However I quickly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. Instantly my bank card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription ended up setting you back dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates drop practically over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending methods or attempted every fixing method, I could barely push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Recruitment Agencies.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had awful interaction. The only thing I can believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any advantages.
No software application is best, but the sheer volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage crucial functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your job life much easier, not a lot more complicated and messy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems ruins trust.
- Look for honest reviews. Satisfied assistance reviews suggest less if extreme concerns suggest bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary option can flawlessly fulfill every distinct business need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements commonly outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be much more cynical of “also great to be real” marketing cases and less tempted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily should earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.