As a company proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to enhance operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel For Trainers.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to streamline and scale my service, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of trying (and falling short) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own company demands, with any luck you can gain from my painful blunders and blew up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I located Keap instinctive to utilize and it took care of everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist local business keep their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, ensuring leads and clients get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media forms to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with very easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses an extensive consumer connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on enhancing sales processes and nurturing consumer connections with effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for businesses looking to consolidate their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with marginal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to attempt something unverified and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will revolutionize your service … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could lower friction points that I ‘d discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a couple of even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending considerably more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I ignored. I understood switching systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promos, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– not to mention managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a calculated investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-lasting solution for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The issues started accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s walk through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, taking care of membership expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be working fine … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I anxiously tried fixing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they slightly claimed “server concerns” were to blame. However this explanation didn’t make any feeling, because the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was completely inappropriate and just didn’t benefit my business. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complex.
Straightforward jobs like modifying workflows included excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Moving in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to manage total, individual, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core setups were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a refined item prepared for prime-time use. Their concerns seemed focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with bad functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Trainers
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing factors is the cost effective price for accessibility to so many features. But I rapidly learned this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic charges for core performance. Suddenly my credit card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to thousands of bucks in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was tempting, yet just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open rates drop virtually overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open rate.
No matter how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I could barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Trainers.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had awful engagement. The only thing I could think that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, hidden costs, broken features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big blunder. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any benefits.
No software application is ideal, yet the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions capably or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and initiative moving.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Trick Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. Yet in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Veterinarian asserts thoroughly. Marketing hype around new software application frequently obscures larger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life less complicated, not extra complex and untidy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems destroys trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted assistance assesses imply much less if excessive issues indicate inadequate general usability.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can perfectly meet every distinct organization need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step enhancements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently functions penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be more cynical of “as well great to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny new things. The tools you utilize daily must earn count on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.