As a firm owner for over a decade, I rely upon software application and automation to enhance operations and supply outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it certainly captured my attention GoHighLevel Inbound Webhook.
The idea was appealing– an all-in-one client monitoring system with marketing, sales, and solution devices integrated with each other. As a business owner constantly seeking to simplify and scale my service, it seemed like a desire come true on paper. Who wouldn’t want a single option that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and falling short) to change to this popular new software program. You’ll find out:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own service requirements, hopefully you can gain from my agonizing mistakes and pumped up expectations.
Looter: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, begin with this listing of best CRMs rather. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and job management alternative to GoHighLevel, then here are a few we advise.
Backstory: Why I Took Into Consideration Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel in the first place, you need context regarding my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily counting on Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) to satisfy all my client monitoring and automation needs.
I found Keap intuitive to make use of and it took care of whatever I needed– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, subscription websites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help local business maintain their clients while adding brand-new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making certain leads and clients receive the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social networks types to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your development with easy consultation scheduling and lead tracking. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, small businesses can conserve 10 hours each week and rise profits by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no charge card needed.
Why we like Keap
Keap supplies an extensive consumer relationship administration (CRM) and marketing automation option customized for small businesses and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing client relationships through powerful automation devices. The system’s all-in-one strategy combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task administration, making it especially attractive for organizations wanting to settle their tech stack.
For the most part, it just worked accurately with marginal hassle or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were excellent (like 35% excellent). Automations ran smoothly without concerns.
So why in the world was I lured to uproot my whole functional foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can admit I obtained seduced by the siren phone call of “shiny things disorder”. You recognize the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new device that will transform your business … The grass commonly looks greener beyond, and I asked yourself whether GoHighLevel may minimize friction factors that I would certainly learned to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, yet a couple of more frustrations led me to believe maybe it was time for a modification.
The Financial investment: Moving My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I chose to start. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Company plan at $297/month, spending dramatically more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a choice I ignored. I understood changing systems was going to call for migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole technology framework from square one making use of every one of the GoHighLevel integrations offered.
Right here’s a summary of just some of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email subscriber documents
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tiresome hours of setup work transitioning everything over– and also managing shed productivity throughout the button.
Yet ultimately, it was a computed financial investment I agreed to make. I figured some temporary pain would certainly settle with GoHighLevel giving a much better long-lasting remedy for my business, Dripify. Oh how incorrect I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had actually made a large mistake. The issues began accumulating swiftly, until it reached a factor I needed to cut my losses and switch back to Keap entirely.
Let’s go through the nightmarish problems I came across.
Safety And Security Issues & Lots of Bugs
Offered GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I took care to carefully recreate each and every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail customers, onboarding brand-new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending event reminders, handling subscription expiries and a lot more.
Every little thing appeared to be functioning fine … until unexpectedly it wasn’t. One morning, I woke up to find 171 entirely unnecessary e-mails had actually been sent to customers that need to NOT have actually received them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 individuals each day.
I desperately tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from scratch. But the problem lingered.
When I frantically connected to their assistance team, they slightly declared “server problems” were at fault. But this explanation didn’t make any type of feeling, given that the errors proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unconnected to any downtime.
In my mind, this substantial failure was totally undesirable and simply didn’t work for my service. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, just how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and sensitive client information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface just compounded these issues …
Irritating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was smooth and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning curve felt steep and difficult.
Easy jobs like modifying workflows entailed digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Key settings were unexplainably scattered in absolutely different areas. Moving in between features really felt disjointed or complicated.
I’ll tell you what I mean by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 different settings panels to handle total, specific, and item setups. Yet for some crazy reason, the links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on opposite sides of the screen. What!?
As someone that values tidy, thoughtful style, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek item prepared for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on stuffing in every feature imaginable, with poor functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I quickly recognized the small cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel Inbound Webhook
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the cost effective price for access to numerous features. But I swiftly discovered this economical base price was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with occasional fees for core capability. Unexpectedly my credit card declarations had obscure $10 charges from GoHighLevel here and there.
As it ended up, you get charged whenever you send out an email via their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to numerous dollars in unforeseen expenses.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel subscription ended up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was alluring, however just not practical in practice. This bait-and-switch left a poor preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open prices drop virtually over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their documents over to GoHighLevel, efficiency tanked immediately to a useless 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending out practices or attempted every fixing method, I could barely nudge open rates back right into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous standards GoHighLevel Inbound Webhook.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails all of a sudden had awful involvement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be creating this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a company so dependent on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability problems, concealed costs, busted features, and dreadful user interface, I had lastly reached my limit …
Why I Give up GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had actually made a massive error. The cons considerably outweighed any kind of advantages.
No software program is ideal, however the sheer quantity of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software program boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial functions effectively or believe a supplier has my best interests in mind, then it’s time to leave– also after spending considerable time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this fiasco.
Secret Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a pricey ill fortune. However in hindsight, it taught me a few crucial lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t upset what’s functioning unless something is definitively better across the board. Change brings threat.
- Vet asserts extensively. Marketing buzz around new software typically covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is necessary.
- Select simplicity over features. Well-designed tools ought to make your work life easier, not a lot more difficult and untidy.
- Transparency constructs trust. Nontransparent pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape troubles destroys depend on.
- Look for impartial reviews. Satisfied support reviews mean much less if excessive issues suggest bad general usability.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary service can completely meet every special company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works penalty.
In short, I found out to be a lot more hesitant of “also good to be true” marketing insurance claims and less tempted by the allure of shiny brand-new objects. The tools you utilize daily must earn trust fund through openness and performance, not glossy advertising.