As a company owner for over a decade, I count on software application and automation to improve procedures and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it definitely caught my focus GoHighLevel Insurance Snapshot.
The idea was attractive– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner always aiming to streamline and scale my business, it seemed like a desire happened theoretically. Who wouldn’t desire a single service that does it all?
But in this thorough GoHighLevel testimonial, I’ll take you inside my tragic journey of attempting (and stopping working) to switch to this preferred new software application. You’ll find out:
If you’re taking into consideration whether GoHighLevel is right for your very own business demands, ideally you can learn from my excruciating errors and inflated expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you need a CRM, start with this listing of ideal CRMs instead. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re looking for a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, then right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Considered Switching Over from Keap
To understand what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous setup. For over 5 years I had actually been happily relying on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer administration and automation demands.
I located Keap instinctive to use and it handled whatever I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to aid small companies maintain their customers while including new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and texts, making sure leads and clients obtain the best messages at the correct time. Usage web site and social networks forms to enhance lead follow-up, and manage your growth with very easy appointment organizing and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated quoting, invoicing, and repayment handling, maximizing your time. With Keap, local business can save 10 hours each week and rise income by 39%. Beginning with a 14-day free trial, no bank card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a comprehensive client connection monitoring (CRM) and marketing automation service customized for small companies and entrepreneurs. We appreciate Keap’s focus on simplifying sales procedures and nurturing customer connections via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it particularly appealing for services looking to combine their technology stack.
Generally, it just functioned accurately with very little fuss or upkeep called for. My open and click-through prices were excellent (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly with no problems.
So why on earth was I tempted to uproot my whole operational foundation from a system that worked to try something unproven and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I got seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy things syndrome”. You know the feeling: when every person’s discussing a new tool that will certainly change your service … The grass usually looks greener on the other side, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may decrease friction factors that I would certainly discovered to tolerate over the years with Keap.
I stood up to in the beginning, however a couple of more disappointments led me to assume maybe it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Moving My Company to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I decided to take the plunge. I enrolled in HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, spending significantly more than the $97/month starter expense.
This wasn’t a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching over platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap information and essentially reconstructing my entire tech framework from square one using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Right here’s a summary of simply a few of the effort needed:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ e-mail client documents
- Recreating loads of automations and workflows
- Relocating customer profiles, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe payment integration
- Setting up landing pages, promos, and sales funnels all over once again
- Learning a completely international UX and user interface style
All in, I invested around 30-40 laborious hours of configuration work transitioning whatever over– and also dealing with shed efficiency during the button.
Yet eventually, it was a calculated investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would repay with GoHighLevel supplying a far better long-lasting option for my business, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a huge error. The concerns started piling up quickly, until it got to a factor I had to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Allow’s go through the nightmarish troubles I encountered.
Protection Issues & Lots of Bugs
Given GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to carefully recreate every single 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 event suggestions, handling membership expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … until instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I woke up to discover 171 completely unnecessary emails had actually been sent out to individuals that should NOT have gotten them. This took place 3 days straight, with a different batch of 160 people daily.
I hysterically attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from the ground up. However the trouble continued.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they vaguely asserted “web server concerns” were responsible. Yet this explanation really did not make any sense, given that the mistakes proceeded occurring each morning like clockwork unrelated to any type of downtime.
In my mind, this massive failure was totally inappropriate and simply didn’t work for my organization. I have countless get in touches with counting on my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unreliable, exactly how could I leave mission-critical workflows and sensitive customer information to their innovation?
The unintuitive interface only intensified these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Coming from Keap where every little thing was seamless and intuitive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and challenging.
Simple jobs like editing workflows entailed digging with food selection systems that were all over the place. Trick setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely different areas. Moving between functions felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll tell you what I imply by discussing their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate settings panels to take care of general, specific, and item configurations. Yet for some crazy reason, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were spread out on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values tidy, thoughtful layout, this seriously annoyed me.
It reinforced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities appeared concentrated on cramming in every feature imaginable, with poor usability as an afterthought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low cost tag came with expensive concessions …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Insurance Snapshot
One of GoHighLevel’s largest selling factors is the economical rate for accessibility to so many features. But I quickly learned this economical base price was deceitful.
They nickle-and-dimed customers with erratic charges for core functionality. Instantly my charge card statements had vague $10 fees from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain billed whenever you send an email through their servers. So for high quantity customers, this added up to thousands of bucks in unexpected prices.
In between these per-email fees and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing substantially MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced price tag was appealing, but just not realistic in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my carefully supported email open rates plunge nearly overnight after changing to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my target market interaction consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantaneously to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Despite just how much I enhanced my sending practices or tried every fixing method, I might barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel Insurance Snapshot.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and emails unexpectedly had terrible engagement. The only point I could assume that would certainly be triggering this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the debilitating deliverability issues, concealed costs, busted features, and terrible user interface, I had actually finally reached my limit …
Why I Quit GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Simply 45 days after moving my company to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a big error. The disadvantages drastically exceeded any advantages.
No software program is excellent, however the sheer quantity of problems was past acceptable.
At the end of the day, software boils down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage essential functions properly or believe a supplier has my benefits in mind, after that it’s time to walk away– also after investing substantial time, cash, and initiative migrating.
So I made the challenging contact us to turn around training course and return back to Keap totally simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Allow’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Error
My time with HighLevel can be summed up as a pricey misadventure. Yet in knowledge, it educated me a few crucial lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively better across the board. Adjustment brings threat.
- Vet claims extensively. Marketing hype around brand-new software program frequently covers larger underlying flaws. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed devices need to make your work life much easier, not more complex and messy.
- Transparency constructs trust fund. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to escape issues damages trust fund.
- Seek impartial reviews. Pleased assistance reviews indicate less if too much problems suggest bad overall functionality.
- Perfection is impossible. No solitary remedy can perfectly satisfy every distinct service need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over revolution. Step-by-step improvements commonly outweigh dangerous wholesale reinvention of what already works fine.
In short, I learned to be a lot more skeptical of “as well good to be real” marketing claims and much less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new items. The tools you use daily need to gain trust fund with openness and performance, not glossy advertising.