As a company proprietor for over a years, I count on software and automation to simplify operations and provide results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Inbound Calls.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management system with marketing, sales, and solution devices incorporated together. As an entrepreneur always looking to streamline and scale my company, it appeared like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t want a single service that does it all?
However in this extensive GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my devastating journey of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent brand-new software application. You’ll discover:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own company needs, with any luck you can pick up from my agonizing mistakes and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this list of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Switching Over from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you require context about my previous configuration. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to meet all my customer management and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled every little thing I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are made to aid small businesses maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, guaranteeing leads and clients obtain the right messages at the right time. Use website and social networks kinds to simplify lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple consultation organizing and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small companies can save 10 hours per week and rise revenue by 39%. Start with a 14-day free trial, no bank card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed consumer partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation service tailored for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s focus on simplifying sales processes and nurturing customer partnerships with powerful automation tools. The platform’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task management, making it particularly appealing for businesses looking to settle their tech stack.
Essentially, it just worked reliably with very little hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were great (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my entire functional foundation from a system that functioned to attempt something unproven and untested?
In knowledge I can confess I obtained seduced by the alarm phone call of “glossy item syndrome”. You know the sensation: when everyone’s discussing a new tool that will revolutionize your company … The turf often looks greener beyond, and I questioned whether GoHighLevel might reduce rubbing factors that I would certainly learned to tolerate throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a few even more aggravations led me to believe perhaps it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, investing substantially more than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew switching platforms was going to require migrating all my Keap information and basically rebuilding my entire technology facilities from the ground up using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of just a few of the initiative required:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Relocating client profiles, notes, and job data to the new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels around again
- Learning an entirely international UX and user interface layout
All in, I spent around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– as well as dealing with shed performance during the switch.
But inevitably, it was a calculated financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a better long-term solution for my business, Dripify. Oh just how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The problems started accumulating rapidly, up until it got to a factor I needed to cut my losses and change back to Keap completely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish issues I came across.
Safety Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These included sequences for onboarding brand-new email customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event tips, managing subscription expiries and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning penalty … until suddenly it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a various set of 160 individuals every day.
I anxiously attempted fixing and restoring the automation from scratch. But the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server concerns” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, since the errors proceeded occurring each early morning like clockwork unassociated to any downtime.
In my mind, this enormous failing was totally undesirable and simply really did not work for my service. I have countless contacts depending on my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was going to be entirely undependable, exactly how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only compounded these issues …
Aggravating UX
Coming from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour really felt steep and complex.
Easy tasks like editing workflows involved digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret setups were unexplainably scattered in entirely different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complex.
I’ll inform you what I imply by speaking about their funnel builder as an instance. There were 3 different setups panels to handle general, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane factor, the web links to access each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the display. What!?
As a person who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item ready for prime-time use. Their priorities appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature under the sun, with bad usability as a second thought.
And speaking of features, I quickly realized the small cost tag included expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Inbound Calls
One of GoHighLevel’s most significant marketing factors is the cost effective rate for access to many features. However I swiftly learned this economical base cost was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed users with erratic fees for core performance. Unexpectedly my charge card statements had obscure $10 costs from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you obtain charged each time you send an e-mail through their servers. So for high quantity users, this amounted to hundreds of bucks in unanticipated expenses.
In between these per-email costs and paying added for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “cost effective” GoHighLevel membership ended up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The low sticker price was alluring, however just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices plummet almost overnight after switching to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience involvement regularly struck 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I moved their documents over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked quickly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
No matter just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every repairing method, I can hardly nudge open prices back right into the teens– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous benchmarks GoHighLevel Inbound Calls.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had dreadful involvement. The only point I might believe that would be causing this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on e-mail marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, hidden costs, busted features, and terrible interface, I had ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after migrating my firm to GoHighLevel, I recognized I had made a huge mistake. The disadvantages considerably exceeded any advantages.
No software is ideal, but the sheer volume of troubles was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software boils down to depend on. If I can’t trust it to handle essential features competently or believe a vendor has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the hard contact us to turn around program and return back to Keap completely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s discover what I gained from this fiasco.
Trick Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Blunder
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a costly misadventure. However in knowledge, it instructed me a few key lessons:
- Stay with what works. Do not upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively far better across the board. Change brings risk.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software typically obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is vital.
- Select simpleness over features. Properly designed devices should make your work life less complicated, not more complicated and unpleasant.
- Transparency constructs trust. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade troubles destroys count on.
- Look for objective evaluations. Satisfied assistance reviews suggest less if excessive concerns imply poor overall usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can perfectly satisfy every distinct service demand. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over change. Step-by-step renovations normally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
In other words, I found out to be more doubtful of “also great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy new things. The tools you utilize daily must make trust with transparency and efficiency, not glossy advertising.