As an agency owner for over a years, I rely on software application and automation to enhance operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Google LSA Booking Integration.
The concept was attractive– an all-in-one client administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur always wanting to simplify and scale my organization, it looked like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary solution that does it all?
However in this in-depth GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this popular brand-new software. You’ll learn:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your own organization demands, with any luck you can gain from my uncomfortable mistakes and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this list of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and project management choice to GoHighLevel, after that here are a couple of we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation requirements.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid local business keep their clients while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, ensuring leads and clients get the right messages at the right time. Usage site and social media sites kinds to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a comprehensive client partnership administration (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales procedures and supporting consumer connections with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for organizations looking to combine their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked accurately with very little fuss or upkeep required. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy things disorder”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s speaking about a new device that will reinvent your company … The yard usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, however a couple of even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I knew switching over platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap information and basically restoring my entire tech infrastructure from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Here’s a summary of just some of the initiative required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of arrangement job transitioning whatever over– as well as dealing with lost productivity during the button.
But ultimately, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary pain would repay with GoHighLevel offering a much better lasting service for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large blunder. The problems began accumulating promptly, up until it reached a point I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the horrible troubles I experienced.
Security Issues & Several Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to meticulously recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, taking care of subscription expirations and a lot more.
Everything appeared to be functioning penalty … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to customers who ought to NOT have actually obtained them. This occurred three days straight, with a various batch of 160 people daily.
I anxiously tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they vaguely declared “web server issues” were at fault. Yet this description didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the mistakes continued happening each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally inappropriate and simply really did not benefit my company. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing and enhancing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in entirely various sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage general, specific, and item arrangements. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with poor use as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon realized the affordable price tag included costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google LSA Booking Integration
One of GoHighLevel’s largest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to so many features. But I promptly learned this low-cost base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core functionality. All of a sudden my credit card statements had unclear $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an e-mail via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unforeseen prices.
In between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget-friendly” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing considerably greater than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, but just not reasonable in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously supported email open prices plunge virtually over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement constantly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantly to a useless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending techniques or tried every troubleshooting trick, I might hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Google LSA Booking Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only point I can think that would be causing 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 problems, concealed charges, busted features, and horrible interface, I had actually finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a massive error. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of advantages.
No software program is perfect, but the large volume of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to trust. If I can’t trust it to handle crucial functions properly or think a supplier has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to turn around course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it educated me a few key lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Do not distress what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts completely. Marketing buzz around brand-new software application frequently obscures bigger underlying flaws. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Pick simpleness over features. Well-designed devices must make your job life easier, not much more difficult and messy.
- Openness builds count on. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles damages trust.
- Seek objective evaluations. Delighted support assesses mean much less if excessive issues suggest inadequate overall usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can flawlessly fulfill every special company requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over change. Step-by-step improvements typically exceed risky wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In other words, I found out to be more doubtful of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the attraction of glossy brand-new things. The devices you use daily should earn depend on via transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.