As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I depend on software application and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel For SEO.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated together. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my service, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. Who would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, with any luck you can gain from my unpleasant mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task administration alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses maintain their clients while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting consumer relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly attractive for businesses aiming to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “shiny object syndrome”. You know the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new device that will transform your service … The turf usually looks greener on the other side, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might decrease friction factors that I ‘d found out to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of more stress led me to assume possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing dramatically greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching platforms was going to call for moving all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole technology framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed productivity during the switch.
But eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The concerns began piling up swiftly, up until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Allow’s walk through the horrible issues I ran into.
Protection Issues & Lots of Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event pointers, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be operating penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have actually obtained them. This took place 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from scratch. However the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. But this explanation didn’t make any sense, since the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was completely inappropriate and just really did not benefit my service. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing and enhancing workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to manage total, individual, and product setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product ready for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For SEO
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest selling points is the cost effective cost for accessibility to a lot of features. However I swiftly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. All of a sudden my bank card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send out an email through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to hundreds of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, yet simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet practically overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending out practices or attempted every repairing method, I can hardly nudge open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For SEO.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails instantly had awful engagement. The only point I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and awful interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive blunder. The cons drastically surpassed any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, however the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to take care of vital features capably or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. Yet in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing buzz around new software program frequently obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your job life less complicated, not much more difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs depend on. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues ruins depend on.
- Seek unbiased reviews. Delighted support examines mean much less if extreme problems suggest bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every one-of-a-kind business demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “also excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the appeal of shiny brand-new items. The devices you make use of daily should earn trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.