As a company owner for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to simplify procedures and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel For Wedding Planners.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution tools integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur always seeking to simplify and scale my service, it appeared like a dream happened theoretically. Who would not want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of trying (and stopping working) to change to this preferred brand-new software. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can learn from my unpleasant mistakes and inflated assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to aid small businesses keep their customers while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the correct time. Usage site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with simple visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and boost revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a thorough consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and supporting consumer relationships via effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one approach integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it especially attractive for organizations aiming to combine their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned dependably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your service … The turf typically looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower friction factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, yet a few more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was mosting likely to call for moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply several of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup job transitioning everything over– and also managing lost productivity throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-lasting option for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big error. The concerns started piling up quickly, till it got to a point I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion tips, managing membership expiries and a lot more.
Whatever appeared to be operating fine … until instantly it had not been. One morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had been sent out to customers that ought to NOT have obtained them. This took place three days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from square one. Yet the problem lingered.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they slightly asserted “web server problems” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any kind of sense, since the mistakes proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was entirely inappropriate and simply didn’t benefit my company. I have countless calls relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely unstable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Relocating in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I mean by speaking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of general, private, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel For Wedding Planners
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the inexpensive price for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly discovered this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get billed whenever you send an email with their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen costs.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing significantly MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, however 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 thoroughly nurtured email open rates drop nearly over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending practices or tried every fixing technique, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel For Wedding Planners.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had terrible involvement. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability problems, concealed charges, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is excellent, yet the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to depend on. If I can not trust it to deal with important functions properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. But in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application typically obscures larger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life much easier, not much more difficult and messy.
- Openness builds trust. Opaque pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins depend on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Delighted support reviews imply less if excessive concerns imply bad overall functionality.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary option can completely satisfy every distinct organization demand. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step renovations usually exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be more doubtful of “too excellent to be real” marketing claims and much less attracted by the appeal of shiny new objects. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain count on via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.