As an agency owner for over a years, I count on software application and automation to streamline procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly caught my interest GoHighLevel For Recruitment Firms.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my business, it appeared like a desire come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a solitary option that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization requirements, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable errors and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it dealt with whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid local business maintain their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and clients receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and boost earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed customer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships through powerful automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies looking to settle their technology pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm call of “glossy object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new tool that will reinvent your organization … The grass commonly looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction points that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, yet a few more irritations led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I knew switching systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my entire tech facilities from square one using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of just several of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning every little thing over– and also dealing with shed productivity throughout the button.
However inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge blunder. The issues started accumulating quickly, up until it got to a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event suggestions, handling membership expirations and much more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 entirely pointless emails had actually been sent to individuals who need to NOT have actually obtained them. This happened three days straight, with a various set of 160 people daily.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any type of sense, given that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and just really did not help my organization. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unreliable, just how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Simple tasks like editing workflows entailed digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating between features really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the small cost tag featured costly concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Recruitment Firms
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the inexpensive price for access to numerous features. Yet I quickly learned this cheap base expense was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core performance. Instantly my credit card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume users, this added up to thousands of bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open prices plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience engagement consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing method, I could hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel For Recruitment Firms.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had dreadful interaction. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and horrible user interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a substantial blunder. The cons dramatically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is excellent, however the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of critical functions competently or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it taught me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application usually obscures bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life less complicated, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased evaluations. Pleased assistance examines indicate much less if too much concerns imply poor overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary solution can completely meet every special service need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step enhancements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I learned to be more doubtful of “also excellent to be true” marketing claims and less tempted by the appeal of glossy new things. The tools you make use of daily must earn trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.