As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software program and automation to simplify procedures and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it most definitely caught my attention GoHighLevel Google Sheets.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one customer administration platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated with each other. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic trip of trying (and falling short) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization demands, hopefully you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up assumptions.
Spoiler: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task management option to GoHighLevel, after that below are a few we suggest.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you require context concerning my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I discovered Keap instinctive to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer support.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are designed to help local business maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use site and social media forms to streamline lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy visit organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and settlement handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and boost profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap uses a comprehensive client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small companies and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and supporting client connections through effective automation devices. The system’s all-in-one method incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly eye-catching for companies looking to combine their tech pile.
Generally, it simply worked accurately with marginal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently with no problems.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny item disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will reinvent your business … The yard commonly looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could lower rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few even more irritations led me to think maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I signed up for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I understood switching over systems was going to require moving all my Keap data and basically reconstructing my whole technology framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of simply several of the effort called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail customer documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Moving customer profiles, notes, and task information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally international UX and interface design
All in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning whatever over– not to mention managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
Yet eventually, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would pay off with GoHighLevel offering a far better long-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 made a large error. The concerns started piling up swiftly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish issues I experienced.
Safety Issues & Numerous Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, managing membership expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be operating fine … till unexpectedly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users that need to NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the problem lingered.
When I seriously connected to their assistance team, they slightly claimed “web server concerns” were to blame. Yet this description didn’t make any feeling, since the mistakes continued happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was entirely unacceptable and simply really did not benefit my organization. I have hundreds of calls relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, exactly how could I hand over mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these concerns …
Discouraging UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt high and difficult.
Simple jobs like modifying workflows included digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in entirely various sections. Relocating in between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I indicate by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different setups panels to take care of general, individual, and item arrangements. Yet for some insane reason, the links to accessibility each of these core setups were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values clean, thoughtful design, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress instead of a sleek product ready for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the low cost tag came with expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Google Sheets
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the inexpensive price for accessibility to so many features. Yet I quickly learned this affordable base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core capability. Instantly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it turned out, you obtain billed every single time you send out an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume customers, this added up to thousands of dollars in unexpected expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was alluring, yet just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices plummet nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience interaction regularly hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked instantaneously to a pitiful 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I maximized my sending methods or tried every fixing trick, I could barely nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Google Sheets.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only thing I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually lastly reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big error. The cons significantly outweighed any advantages.
No software program is perfect, however the large quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to take care of critical functions properly or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after spending significant time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the difficult phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly ill fortune. Yet in hindsight, it showed me a couple of crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t distress what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around brand-new software frequently covers bigger underlying imperfections. Deep due persistance is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life easier, not much more complicated and untidy.
- Transparency develops trust fund. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert troubles ruins trust.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased assistance evaluates suggest less if excessive concerns imply poor general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements normally exceed high-risk wholesale reinvention of what already functions penalty.
In short, I found out to be much more doubtful of “as well good to be true” marketing insurance claims and much less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new items. The tools you make use of daily ought to gain trust fund via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.