As a company proprietor for over a years, I rely upon software program and automation to streamline procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel GHL-UI.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly wanting to streamline and scale my company, it seemed like a dream happened theoretically. That wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
But in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company demands, ideally you can gain from my agonizing blunders and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Changing 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 counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation demands.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small companies maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, guaranteeing leads and customers receive the right messages at the correct time. Usage website and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and payment processing, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and increase revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it specifically appealing for businesses looking to combine their tech stack.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran efficiently without concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s talking about a brand-new device that will reinvent your company … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I ‘d learned to endure for many years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a few even more irritations led me to think possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing considerably greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially rebuilding my whole technology infrastructure from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and task data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface style
Done in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– in addition to dealing with lost performance during the switch.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would settle with GoHighLevel providing a far better lasting service for my service, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a point I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Several Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new email customers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally irrelevant emails had been sent to customers who ought to NOT have obtained them. This happened 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people every day.
I desperately tried repairing and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “server issues” were to blame. Yet this explanation didn’t make any feeling, given that the mistakes continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally unacceptable and simply didn’t help my business. I have thousands of calls depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely undependable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these problems …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt steep and challenging.
Straightforward tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely different sections. Moving between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I indicate by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to manage general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously upset me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared focused on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon realized the low price tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel GHL-UI
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing points is the affordable cost for access to so many features. But I promptly learned this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional fees for core performance. All of a sudden my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged whenever you send out an email via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
Between these per-email costs and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was tempting, however simply not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully supported e-mail open rates plummet almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked promptly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending out techniques or tried every repairing trick, I might barely nudge open prices back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel GHL-UI.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only point I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so dependent on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, broken features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a huge blunder. The disadvantages drastically surpassed any type of benefits.
No software application is perfect, yet the large volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial features properly or think a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and effort migrating.
So I made the difficult phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey ill fortune. But in knowledge, it taught me a couple of essential lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Modification brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing buzz around new software program commonly obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simpleness over features. Well-designed tools must make your job life easier, not more difficult and messy.
- Transparency builds trust fund. Opaque pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade problems ruins trust.
- Look for honest testimonials. Happy assistance reviews indicate much less if excessive issues imply poor total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single option can perfectly fulfill every one-of-a-kind service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Incremental enhancements normally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In other words, I discovered to be much more hesitant of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the appeal of shiny new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to make trust fund via openness and performance, not glossy advertising.