As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software application and automation to improve operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel emerged on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Headline Font.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur constantly looking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a solitary remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my disastrous journey of attempting (and failing) to switch to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can pick up from my uncomfortable blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this listing of finest CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, after that here 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 concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my client administration and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to make use of and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small businesses maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the appropriate messages at the correct time. Use website and social media types to improve lead follow-up, and manage your growth with easy consultation scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing quote, invoicing, and settlement processing, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and rise income by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales processes and nurturing customer relationships with effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job management, making it specifically eye-catching for services looking to settle their technology pile.
Essentially, it just functioned reliably with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% fantastic). Automations ran smoothly with no concerns.
So why on earth was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I obtained attracted by the siren phone call of “shiny things syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everybody’s speaking about a new tool that will reinvent your service … The grass often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly found out to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I stood up to at first, but a few even more disappointments led me to think perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Agency to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I made a decision to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing significantly more than the $97/month starter price.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I recognized switching over platforms was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology facilities from the ground up making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Here’s an introduction of just several of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning whatever over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency throughout the switch.
However eventually, it was a computed investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better lasting remedy for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me about a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns began accumulating swiftly, up until it reached a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I ran into.
Safety And Security Issues & Many Vermin
Offered GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to diligently recreate every workflow from my old Keap account.
These included series for onboarding brand-new email subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out occasion tips, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing seemed to be operating penalty … till suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I awoke to locate 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to users that need to NOT have gotten them. This happened 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and rebuilding the automation from square one. However the issue persisted.
When I seriously connected to their support group, they vaguely claimed “web server concerns” were responsible. But this explanation really did not make any type of sense, since the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was entirely undesirable and just didn’t work for my company. I have countless calls depending on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely unstable, how could I delegate mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only intensified these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and difficult.
Simple tasks like editing workflows involved digging through menu systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely various areas. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to take care of total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some insane factor, the links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone that values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a sleek product ready for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with poor use as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the small cost tag included costly concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Headline Font
Among GoHighLevel’s biggest marketing points is the budget-friendly cost for accessibility to numerous features. Yet I promptly discovered this inexpensive base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with sporadic fees for core functionality. Suddenly my bank card declarations had unclear $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail via their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this added up to numerous bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “affordable” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported e-mail open rates plunge virtually overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market engagement constantly hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a worthless 9% open price.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending methods or tried every fixing trick, I can hardly nudge open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Headline Font.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and e-mails suddenly had terrible involvement. The only thing I might think that would be creating this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, broken features, and terrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a big blunder. The cons significantly outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software application is perfect, yet the large volume of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software program comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to handle important features effectively or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to leave– also after investing considerable time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the hard phone call to turn around program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Gained from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not distress what’s functioning unless something is definitively much better across the board. Adjustment brings danger.
- Vet claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program often covers larger underlying imperfections. Deep due diligence is important.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life simpler, not much more challenging and untidy.
- Openness develops trust fund. Opaque pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape problems ruins trust fund.
- Look for objective testimonials. Happy assistance examines suggest much less if too much problems suggest poor total usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can completely fulfill every distinct service requirement. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over revolution. Step-by-step enhancements normally surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be more unconvinced of “as well great to be real” marketing cases and much less attracted by the allure of shiny new items. The devices you make use of daily ought to gain trust through transparency and efficiency, not slick advertising.