As a company owner for over a years, I rely on software program and automation to improve procedures and deliver outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it most definitely captured my attention GoHighLevel House Cleaning Playbook.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one customer monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated together. As a business owner always looking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t want a single solution that does it all?
However in this comprehensive GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and failing) to switch to this prominent new software program. You’ll discover:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service needs, hopefully you can pick up from my painful errors and blew up assumptions.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and job monitoring alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To recognize what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been gladly counting on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to assist small companies keep their clients while adding new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and customers receive the ideal messages at the right time. Use internet site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your growth with very easy visit organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement processing, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and increase profits by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no charge card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive client relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation remedy tailored for local business and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on improving sales processes and nurturing consumer relationships via powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one technique integrates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it specifically eye-catching for companies wanting to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it just worked accurately with very little difficulty or upkeep called for. My open and click-through rates were wonderful (like 35% great). Automations ran efficiently without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my entire functional structure from a system that functioned to try something unverified and untried?
In hindsight I can admit I got attracted by the alarm phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You understand the sensation: when everybody’s talking about a new device that will revolutionize your organization … The turf frequently looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel could minimize friction points that I ‘d discovered to endure for many years with Keap.
I withstood initially, however a couple of more stress led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I made a decision to start. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending substantially greater than the $97/month starter cost.
This wasn’t a decision I ignored. I recognized changing systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap information and essentially restoring my entire technology framework from the ground up utilizing all of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Below’s an overview of simply a few of the effort required:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and job information to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and interface layout
All in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of configuration work transitioning everything over– and also taking care of lost productivity throughout the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some short-term discomfort would certainly repay with GoHighLevel giving a better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how incorrect I was …
It just took me regarding a month of hands-on use to realize I had made a big blunder. The issues began piling up quickly, up until it got to a point I had to cut my losses and switch over back to Keap totally.
Let’s walk through the horrible problems I experienced.
Protection Issues & Several Vermin
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail clients, onboarding new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending out event pointers, taking care of membership expiries and much more.
Every little thing seemed to be functioning penalty … up until suddenly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unimportant emails had been sent out to customers that need to NOT have received them. This took place 3 days in a row, with a various batch of 160 individuals each day.
I hysterically tried fixing and restoring the automation from square one. But the trouble persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance group, they vaguely asserted “web server problems” were to blame. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, considering that the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failing was completely inappropriate and just really did not work for my service. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely undependable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer data to their innovation?
The unintuitive user interface only compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Originating from Keap where everything was smooth and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complicated.
Straightforward tasks like editing workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably scattered in completely different areas. Relocating between features felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by talking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different settings panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As a person that values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined item all set for prime-time usage. Their priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature under the sun, with bad use as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon recognized the small cost tag included expensive compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel House Cleaning Playbook
One of GoHighLevel’s biggest selling factors is the economical rate for access to a lot of features. However I rapidly discovered this low-cost base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with occasional costs for core functionality. Suddenly my credit card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain billed each time you send an e-mail with their servers. So for high volume users, this amounted to numerous bucks in unexpected costs.
Between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel subscription wound up costing dramatically MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was alluring, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open prices plummet nearly overnight after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market involvement continually hit 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open price.
No matter how much I optimized my sending out techniques or tried every fixing technique, I can hardly push open prices back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel House Cleaning Playbook.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails suddenly had horrible involvement. The only thing I can assume that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so based on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, hidden fees, damaged features, and horrible interface, I had actually ultimately reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my agency to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a huge error. The disadvantages dramatically exceeded any kind of benefits.
No software application is ideal, however the sheer quantity of problems was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can not trust it to manage important functions properly or think a vendor has my benefits in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after investing significant time, money, and effort moving.
So I made the tough call to turn around training course and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I picked up from this ordeal.
Secret Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive accident. However in hindsight, it instructed me a few essential lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Vet claims completely. Marketing hype around new software often covers bigger underlying defects. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Choose simplicity over features. Properly designed tools should make your work life simpler, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Openness builds trust. Nontransparent pricing, questionable reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues destroys trust fund.
- Seek objective testimonials. Delighted support evaluates indicate less if extreme problems indicate inadequate overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly fulfill every distinct service requirement. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step improvements normally outweigh high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I discovered to be a lot more doubtful of “also great to be real” marketing claims and much less tempted by the allure of glossy new items. The tools you use daily need to gain count on via transparency and performance, not slick advertising.