As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to enhance operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my attention GoHighLevel Funnels.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and service tools incorporated together. As a business owner always looking to streamline and scale my business, it felt like a dream become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and failing) to change to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation demands.
I located Keap intuitive to use and it took care of everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients receive the best messages at the correct time. Use website and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed client relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting customer connections through effective automation devices. The platform’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly attractive for services wanting to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply functioned reliably with marginal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when everybody’s speaking about a new device that will certainly reinvent your company … The grass frequently looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, however a few even more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I decided to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap data and basically rebuilding my whole technology facilities from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the effort called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail 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, promotions, and sales funnels all over again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to managing shed productivity throughout the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh how wrong I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The concerns began piling up rapidly, up until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Numerous Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating fine … up until instantly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 entirely irrelevant emails had been sent out to users that should NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a different set of 160 individuals daily.
I hysterically attempted repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the issue continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server issues” were responsible. But this explanation didn’t make any feeling, given that the errors continued taking place each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failure was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not work for my service. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unreliable, how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate customer data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these problems …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included digging with menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in totally various sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle overall, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared focused on packing in every feature under the sun, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly realized the low cost tag came with costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Funnels
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the affordable cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I quickly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with sporadic costs for core performance. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 costs 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 quantity individuals, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open prices drop practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience interaction constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I optimized my sending out methods or tried every repairing method, I could hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Funnels.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be creating 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 issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a substantial error. The cons considerably outweighed any advantages.
No software application is best, however the sheer quantity of problems was beyond acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. But in hindsight, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet declares extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software application frequently covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is important.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life easier, not a lot more challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages trust fund.
- Look for objective evaluations. Pleased assistance evaluates suggest much less if extreme concerns imply inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can completely fulfill every distinct company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Step-by-step improvements commonly exceed dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I found out to be much more hesitant of “also great to be real” marketing claims and less tempted by the attraction of shiny new things. The tools you make use of daily ought to make trust fund via openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.