As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel For Salons.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to simplify and scale my business, it felt like a desire become a reality theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and failing) to change to this popular new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my unpleasant errors and inflated assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses keep their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the ideal messages at the correct time. Use site and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple appointment 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 each week and increase earnings by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting client relationships through powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it specifically attractive for organizations looking to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply worked accurately with minimal fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through prices were terrific (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently with no concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire operational structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the siren telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everyone’s talking about a brand-new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may decrease rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a couple of more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching systems was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my whole technology framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s a summary of just a few of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of arrangement work transitioning everything over– as well as taking care of shed efficiency throughout the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-term service for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a huge mistake. The issues began piling up swiftly, till it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event pointers, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … up until all of a sudden it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unimportant e-mails had actually been sent out to customers who must NOT have actually obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a different set of 160 people daily.
I anxiously attempted troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the issue lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance group, they slightly claimed “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any kind of sense, considering that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was totally inappropriate and just didn’t work for my organization. I have countless calls counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included excavating with food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely various sections. Relocating in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, 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 appeared focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly understood the affordable price tag featured expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Salons
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget-friendly rate for accessibility to many features. But I promptly learned this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic charges for core performance. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up setting you back significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices plummet practically overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter how much I enhanced my sending out methods or attempted every repairing method, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Salons.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had terrible interaction. The only thing I could believe that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and awful interface, I had finally reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a significant mistake. The cons considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, yet the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle essential functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. However in hindsight, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings risk.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application commonly obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Properly designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not extra complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops count on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins trust.
- Seek objective reviews. Happy assistance reviews indicate less if extreme issues indicate bad total functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary solution can completely meet every special organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Incremental enhancements usually surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In short, I discovered to be a lot more cynical of “also great to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain count on via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.