As an agency owner for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to simplify procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly caught my focus GoHighLevel Google My Business (GMB).
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my organization, it appeared like a desire come to life on paper. That wouldn’t want a solitary remedy that does it all?
But in this in-depth GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my dreadful trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re searching for a sales, marketing, and project monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly relying upon Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to make use of and it took care of every little thing I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to assist small businesses maintain their customers while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Usage site and social networks kinds to enhance lead follow-up, and handle your growth with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and repayment handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and increase earnings by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a detailed client connection administration (CRM) and marketing automation option tailored for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method combines CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it particularly eye-catching for companies aiming to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with minimal hassle or maintenance needed. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran smoothly without any concerns.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy object disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will certainly transform your service … The turf commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might lower friction factors that I ‘d discovered to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to initially, however a few even more stress led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I chose to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I ignored. I knew changing systems was mosting likely to need moving all my Keap information and basically restoring my whole technology facilities from square one utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Here’s a summary of simply several of the initiative needed:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer accounts, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around once more
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface design
All in, I spent around 30-40 laborious hours of setup work transitioning every little thing over– in addition to dealing with lost efficiency during the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on usage to realize I had actually made a huge blunder. The issues began piling up quickly, till it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I made sure to carefully recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail customers, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out occasion pointers, managing subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning fine … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to find 171 entirely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to users that need to NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried repairing and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue continued.
When I seriously connected to their support team, they vaguely declared “web server problems” were responsible. But this description didn’t make any sense, considering that the errors proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failing was totally undesirable and just didn’t work for my business. I have hundreds of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface only worsened these issues …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included digging via menu systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably spread in totally different areas. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to take care of total, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some insane reason, the links to access each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I quickly understood the small cost tag included pricey concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google My Business (GMB)
Among GoHighLevel’s greatest marketing factors is the cost effective rate for access to a lot of features. However I rapidly learned this affordable base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic costs for core performance. Suddenly my bank card statements had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you get charged whenever you send an e-mail with their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to hundreds of dollars in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “economical” GoHighLevel registration wound up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was tempting, however simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plummet virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked immediately to a worthless 9% open price.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending out techniques or tried every troubleshooting technique, I could barely nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Google My Business (GMB).
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible interaction. The only thing I might believe that would certainly be creating this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed charges, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had actually made a huge mistake. The cons substantially exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software is ideal, yet the large quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to take care of crucial functions capably or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– even after spending significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the difficult call to reverse course and return back to Keap totally just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this debacle.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. But in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not disturb what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings danger.
- Vet asserts thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software application typically covers larger underlying defects. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed tools need to make your job life easier, not extra challenging and unpleasant.
- Openness constructs depend on. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems damages trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Happy assistance examines mean less if excessive issues indicate inadequate overall functionality.
- Excellence is difficult. No solitary option can flawlessly satisfy every unique organization need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Step-by-step improvements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more unconvinced of “also excellent to be true” marketing cases and less attracted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The devices you utilize daily ought to earn count on with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.