As an agency owner for over a decade, I depend on software and automation to streamline procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel GoKollab.com.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my organization, it felt like a dream come true theoretically. That wouldn’t desire a single solution that does it all?
Yet in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your own service requirements, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable errors and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of finest CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task management alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been happily counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client management and automation demands.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it managed every little thing I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and texts, ensuring leads and clients obtain the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and payment processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive consumer relationship monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and supporting consumer partnerships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially eye-catching for services seeking to settle their technology pile.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with minimal difficulty or maintenance needed. My open and click-through prices were wonderful (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object syndrome”. You recognize the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will certainly reinvent your business … The yard frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, but a couple of more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech framework from scratch utilizing every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s an introduction of just a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and job information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of arrangement work transitioning every little thing over– as well as taking care of shed productivity during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It only took me concerning a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a big mistake. The issues began accumulating promptly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the horrible issues I encountered.
Safety And Security Issues & Several Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new email clients, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion suggestions, managing subscription expirations and far more.
Whatever seemed to be working penalty … up until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 totally unimportant emails had been sent out to customers that must NOT have obtained them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I desperately tried repairing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble lingered.
When I frantically reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were responsible. Yet this description really did not make any kind of feeling, because the mistakes continued occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not benefit my service. I have thousands of get in touches with relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be completely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and complicated.
Simple jobs like editing and enhancing workflows entailed excavating with menu systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage general, individual, and item setups. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As somebody that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek item ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with pricey compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel GoKollab.com
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the inexpensive rate for accessibility to numerous features. However I swiftly discovered this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my charge card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every single time you send out an email through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel membership wound up setting you back substantially greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured e-mail open prices drop almost over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my target market engagement continually struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of just how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every repairing technique, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous criteria GoHighLevel GoKollab.com.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails unexpectedly had dreadful interaction. The only thing I could think that would be causing this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed charges, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a substantial error. The cons drastically outweighed any type of advantages.
No software is ideal, however the large volume of issues was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to take care of crucial functions effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative moving.
So I made the tough contact us to reverse course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. Yet in hindsight, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what works. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims completely. Marketing buzz around new software program often obscures bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed devices must make your job life less complicated, not extra complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency builds depend on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert problems damages trust fund.
- Seek objective reviews. Satisfied assistance assesses mean much less if too much problems imply inadequate overall use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly meet every special service demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
Basically, I discovered to be more doubtful of “also excellent to be real” marketing cases and less attracted by the attraction of shiny brand-new things. The devices you use daily should gain trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.