As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software program and automation to streamline operations and deliver results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel For SMMA.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t want a solitary service that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch to this preferred new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context about my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client monitoring and automation demands.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small businesses keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage internet site and social media forms to improve lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy consultation organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours per week and rise profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing consumer relationships through powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses seeking to settle their technology stack.
Essentially, it just functioned dependably with marginal fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the feeling: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will transform your service … The turf commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted in the beginning, yet a few more frustrations led me to assume possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my entire tech framework from square one utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a summary of just several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Relocating client accounts, notes, and job data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels around once again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as handling shed efficiency throughout the switch.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to recognize I had actually made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Security Issues & Lots of Vermin
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion reminders, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Everything appeared to be operating penalty … till all of a sudden it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 totally irrelevant emails had actually been sent out to users that should NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I frantically tried fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. But the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “web server concerns” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have thousands of calls relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive interface just worsened these issues …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and complex.
Easy tasks like modifying workflows involved excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in totally different areas. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, individual, and product arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to access each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful style, 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 concerns seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For SMMA
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the cost effective price for access to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this affordable base cost was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional charges for core capability. Suddenly my bank card declarations had vague $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged each time you send an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unexpected costs.
In between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open rates plunge almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or attempted every repairing method, I can barely nudge open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel For SMMA.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had dreadful engagement. The only point I can believe that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed fees, broken features, and awful user interface, I had ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages significantly exceeded any benefits.
No software program is excellent, however the large quantity of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with critical functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult call to reverse training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. However in knowledge, it educated me a few vital lessons:
- Stay with what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software often covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools should make your work life easier, not more complicated and messy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems destroys count on.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased support examines suggest much less if excessive issues suggest bad total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely meet every unique business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental renovations typically outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
In short, I discovered to be more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing insurance claims and much less attracted by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The tools you make use of daily ought to earn trust fund with transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.