As an agency proprietor for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to simplify operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it most definitely caught my interest GoHighLevel HubSpot Integration.
The concept was appealing– an all-in-one client administration system with marketing, sales, and service tools integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my company, it looked like a dream happened on paper. That wouldn’t desire a single 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 prominent new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re considering whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own organization needs, with any luck you can pick up from my excruciating blunders and blew up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT advise GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I utilize Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a few we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Switching Over from Keap
To recognize 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 on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to utilize and it managed whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to help small businesses maintain their clients while including brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and customers get the ideal messages at the right time. Usage website and social media sites forms to simplify lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies a detailed customer partnership monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for local business and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing consumer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one strategy incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically attractive for businesses looking to consolidate their technology stack.
Essentially, it simply functioned accurately with marginal difficulty or upkeep needed. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% wonderful). Automations ran efficiently without any issues.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my entire operational foundation from a system that functioned to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You know the feeling: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly discovered to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted at first, however a couple of even more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing substantially greater than the $97/month starter price.
This wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I recognized switching over systems was mosting likely to require migrating all my Keap data and basically restoring my whole tech infrastructure from scratch making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a summary of just several of the initiative needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving customer accounts, notes, and project information to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Setting up landing pages, coupons, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a totally international UX and user interface design
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of setup work transitioning everything over– not to mention taking care of lost efficiency throughout the switch.
However ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I was willing to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-term option for my organization, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It just took me about a month of hands-on usage to understand I had actually made a large blunder. The concerns started accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I encountered.
Safety Issues & Many Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to carefully recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event suggestions, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Whatever seemed to be functioning penalty … till unexpectedly it had not been. One morning, I awoke to find 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent to users who should NOT have obtained them. This took place three days in a row, with a various set of 160 people each day.
I hysterically tried troubleshooting and reconstructing the automation from scratch. However the issue persisted.
When I desperately reached out to their support team, they vaguely claimed “web server issues” were responsible. However this description didn’t make any type of sense, because the mistakes proceeded happening each morning like clockwork unconnected to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this large failure was totally inappropriate and just really did not help my service. I have hundreds of contacts relying on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be totally unreliable, exactly how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface only worsened these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt high and challenging.
Simple tasks like editing workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably spread in absolutely different sections. Relocating in between functions really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I suggest by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 separate settings panels to handle general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the links to access each of these core settings were spread out on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful design, this seriously irritated me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress rather than a polished product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the affordable price tag came with pricey concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel HubSpot Integration
Among GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing points is the cost effective cost for access to so many features. Yet I swiftly learned this low-cost base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic costs for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it turned out, you obtain charged every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high quantity customers, this amounted to numerous bucks in unanticipated prices.
In between these per-email charges and paying additional for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel registration ended up setting you back considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my very carefully nurtured e-mail open rates plunge almost over night after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I moved their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked promptly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I optimized my sending out practices or tried every fixing trick, I might barely push open rates back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel HubSpot Integration.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails instantly had dreadful involvement. The only thing I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was taking place behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability concerns, concealed fees, busted features, and horrible interface, I had finally reached my limit …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had actually made a substantial blunder. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any type of advantages.
No software application is perfect, but the sheer quantity of issues was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to depend on. If I can not trust it to manage vital features properly or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing substantial time, cash, and effort moving.
So I made the hard call to reverse program and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I learned from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. But in knowledge, it taught me a few vital lessons:
- Stick to what jobs. Do not upset what’s working unless something is definitively much better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian claims thoroughly. Marketing buzz around new software program usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Well-designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not much more difficult and untidy.
- Openness constructs trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to avert issues ruins count on.
- Seek impartial testimonials. Pleased support assesses mean less if extreme issues suggest poor overall use.
- Excellence is impossible. No solitary service can flawlessly fulfill every one-of-a-kind company need. Discover the least-bad fit.
- Evolution over transformation. Incremental improvements usually surpass risky wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I learned to be much more unconvinced of “also great to be real” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy new things. The devices you make use of daily must earn trust fund through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.