As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software and automation to enhance procedures and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely captured my focus GoHighLevel Google Analytics.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one customer management platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As a business owner constantly seeking to streamline and scale my business, it appeared like a desire happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating trip of attempting (and falling short) to switch over to this popular brand-new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can learn from my painful mistakes and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context regarding my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer management and automation needs.
I discovered Keap intuitive to utilize and it handled everything I needed– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to assist small companies maintain their clients while including brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making certain leads and clients get the right messages at the correct time. Usage site and social networks kinds to improve lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple visit scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment processing, liberating your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a thorough customer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for local business and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and supporting customer relationships via effective automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one method integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job administration, making it especially attractive for services aiming to consolidate their tech stack.
For the most part, it simply functioned reliably with minimal fuss or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the alarm phone call of “shiny object syndrome”. You recognize the sensation: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly transform your organization … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, but a few even more stress led me to believe possibly it was time for an adjustment.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, spending considerably greater than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I understood changing platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically reconstructing my whole tech framework from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s an introduction of simply several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once again
- Learning a completely foreign UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with shed efficiency during the button.
However ultimately, it was a calculated financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly repay with GoHighLevel providing a far better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The problems began accumulating swiftly, up until it got to a point I had to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Let’s go through the horrible problems I encountered.
Protection Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning fine … up until suddenly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent out to users who need to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals daily.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and restoring the automation from the ground up. Yet the trouble persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any type of feeling, considering that the mistakes continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failing was completely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my company. I have hundreds of get in touches with depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be absolutely unreliable, just how could I leave mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt high and complex.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Moving in between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle overall, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It strengthened that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item ready for prime-time usage. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on packing in every feature under the sun, with inadequate use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the affordable price tag came with pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google Analytics
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the budget friendly price for accessibility to a lot of features. However I rapidly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core functionality. Unexpectedly my charge card declarations had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain billed every time you send out an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous dollars in unforeseen prices.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my thoroughly nurtured email open prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement consistently hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked quickly to a pitiful 9% open price.
Despite just how much I maximized my sending out practices or tried every troubleshooting method, I can barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Google Analytics.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails instantly had terrible involvement. The only thing I can believe that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The cons significantly outweighed any type of benefits.
No software application is ideal, however the large quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to deal with crucial features effectively or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after spending significant time, money, and effort migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey misadventure. However in knowledge, it showed me a few key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due persistance is essential.
- Pick simpleness over features. Properly designed tools need to make your job life much easier, not extra difficult and unpleasant.
- Transparency develops trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles ruins trust fund.
- Look for impartial evaluations. Pleased assistance examines imply less if extreme issues indicate bad general use.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary service can flawlessly fulfill every special company demand. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over revolution. Step-by-step renovations typically surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
Simply put, I discovered to be a lot more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing cases and less lured by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you use daily need to make depend on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.