As an agency proprietor for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance operations and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Google Ads.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my company, it seemed like a dream come true theoretically. Who would not desire a single solution that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and project monitoring choice to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my client management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to help small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Use website and social networks types to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours weekly and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a comprehensive consumer partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing client relationships via powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it particularly eye-catching for businesses aiming to consolidate their tech pile.
For the most part, it just functioned reliably with minimal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without any concerns.
So why in the world was I tempted to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got seduced by the siren call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a brand-new device that will change your organization … The lawn usually looks greener on the other side, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may reduce rubbing points that I would certainly found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a few more irritations led me to believe possibly it was time for a change.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized changing platforms was mosting likely to need migrating all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of just some of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail subscriber documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– not to mention handling shed efficiency throughout the button.
But eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The problems began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a factor I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Security Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion reminders, taking care of membership expirations and much more.
Everything seemed to be working penalty … up until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 completely pointless e-mails had been sent to users that need to NOT have actually received them. This happened three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people every day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the issue persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were to blame. But this description didn’t make any kind of sense, given that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my business. I have countless calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and complicated.
Easy jobs like editing workflows included excavating through menu systems that were all over the place. Trick settings were unexplainably spread in entirely various areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to manage total, specific, and product arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to gain access to each of these core setups 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 seemed like a work-in-progress as opposed to a polished product ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities seemed concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the affordable price tag featured expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google Ads
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. However I quickly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Suddenly my charge card declarations had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every time you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to numerous dollars in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, however simply not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly supported email open prices drop practically over night after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a useless 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I maximized my sending techniques or attempted every fixing technique, I could barely push open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Google Ads.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had awful interaction. The only thing I could believe that would be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden fees, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had actually lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a substantial error. The disadvantages substantially surpassed any type of advantages.
No software is best, but the sheer quantity of issues was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage vital functions competently or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– even after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard phone call to reverse course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. However in knowledge, it taught me a couple of vital lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet declares completely. Marketing hype around new software program often obscures larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Choose simpleness over features. Properly designed tools should make your job life simpler, not much more complex and messy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, dubious reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Seek honest evaluations. Happy assistance reviews mean less if too much issues imply poor overall functionality.
- Perfection is difficult. No solitary remedy can flawlessly satisfy every special business demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over change. Step-by-step improvements generally outweigh risky wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In short, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “as well great to be true” marketing claims and less lured by the attraction of glossy new items. The devices you make use of daily need to earn trust fund through transparency and performance, not slick advertising.