As a firm owner for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to improve operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely caught my focus GoHighLevel Funnel AI.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always aiming to simplify and scale my business, it looked like a dream become a reality on paper. That would not desire a solitary service that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of attempting (and failing) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization requirements, ideally you can learn from my agonizing errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs rather. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job management option to GoHighLevel, then here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to utilize and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist local business keep their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, making sure leads and customers obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Usage web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with very easy appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours each week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides an extensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on enhancing sales procedures and supporting client connections through effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically appealing for services aiming to combine their technology pile.
Essentially, it simply functioned reliably with very little difficulty or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s talking about a new device that will revolutionize your service … The grass often looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might minimize rubbing factors that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood initially, but a couple of even more stress led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending dramatically greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching platforms was mosting likely to call for migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire tech facilities from scratch making use of all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s an overview of just a few of the effort needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and project information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– as well as handling shed efficiency during the button.
However inevitably, it was a computed investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel offering a better long-term option for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big blunder. The concerns started piling up swiftly, till it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, taking care of subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to locate 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to customers who should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days straight, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from the ground up. However the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely declared “server concerns” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any type of feeling, because the errors proceeded taking place each morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was completely inappropriate and simply really did not help my organization. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface just intensified these issues …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely various sections. Moving in between features felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of overall, individual, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress instead of a refined product prepared for prime-time usage. Their priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag featured costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Funnel AI
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the cost effective rate for access to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core capability. Suddenly my credit card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a worthless 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I optimized my sending practices or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Funnel AI.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial blunder. The cons considerably exceeded any benefits.
No software program is best, but the sheer volume of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage important functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey accident. But in hindsight, it taught me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t disturb what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing hype around new software application often covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life much easier, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust.
- Look for impartial testimonials. Satisfied assistance assesses indicate less if excessive issues suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No single service can completely fulfill every distinct business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental improvements usually surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already works penalty.
In short, I learned to be more hesitant of “as well excellent to be true” marketing cases and less lured by the attraction of shiny new things. The devices you make use of daily should earn depend on with openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.