As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to streamline operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel For Solar Companies.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated together. As a business owner always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That would not want a single service that does it all?
But in this extensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch to this popular new software. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can gain from my painful errors and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and job administration choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer management and automation demands.
I found Keap instinctive to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies maintain their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and increase income by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive consumer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting client connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially appealing for companies aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned dependably with marginal difficulty or maintenance called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the siren call of “glossy things syndrome”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a brand-new device that will certainly revolutionize your business … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of simply several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning an entirely foreign UX and user interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with lost productivity throughout the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large error. The concerns began accumulating promptly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap totally.
Allow’s walk through the horrible problems I ran into.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending event pointers, handling membership expirations and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be operating fine … until all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that must NOT have obtained them. This occurred 3 days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. But the issue lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they vaguely claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this description didn’t make any kind of feeling, given that the mistakes proceeded taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was completely unacceptable and simply didn’t work for my company. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these problems …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included excavating via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, private, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time use. Their priorities seemed focused on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel For Solar Companies
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the economical price for access to so many features. But I quickly learned this inexpensive base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed whenever you send an email through their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, yet simply not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open rates plummet virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every repairing technique, I might hardly push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Solar Companies.
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 dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, hidden fees, busted features, and awful user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big mistake. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any benefits.
No software is perfect, however the large volume of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can not trust it to manage crucial functions properly or believe a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after investing considerable time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the challenging call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive ill fortune. Yet in knowledge, it instructed me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet declares thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application frequently obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is important.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools must make your job life simpler, not much more complex and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust.
- Seek unbiased testimonials. Delighted support reviews suggest much less if excessive issues indicate poor general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly meet every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Incremental improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be extra skeptical of “as well excellent to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the appeal of shiny brand-new objects. The devices you make use of daily need to make trust fund through openness and performance, not slick advertising.