As a company proprietor for over a years, I depend on software and automation to improve operations and provide outcomes. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene few years back, it absolutely captured my interest GoHighLevel Internal Notification.
The idea was enticing– an all-in-one client monitoring platform with marketing, sales, and service devices incorporated with each other. As an entrepreneur constantly seeking to simplify and scale my business, it seemed like a desire become a reality on paper. That wouldn’t want a single remedy that does it all?
However in this thorough GoHighLevel evaluation, I’ll take you inside my disastrous trip of trying (and stopping working) to switch over to this prominent new software program. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business requirements, ideally you can learn from my uncomfortable blunders and pumped up expectations.
Spoiler: I do NOT recommend GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, begin with this checklist of best CRMs instead. I make use of Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re seeking a sales, marketing, and task monitoring option to GoHighLevel, after that right here are a couple of we recommend.
Backstory: Why I Thought About Changing from Keap
To comprehend what attracted me to GoHighLevel to begin with, you need context concerning my previous arrangement. For over 5 years I had actually been gladly depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to fulfill all my customer monitoring and automation needs.
I located Keap user-friendly to use and it dealt with whatever I required– CRM, email marketing, sales funnels, membership sites, and client assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are created to help small businesses maintain their clients while adding new ones easily. Automate follow-ups with emails and messages, making sure leads and customers obtain the right messages at the right time. Usage internet site and social media sites forms to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with simple appointment scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated estimating, invoicing, and settlement handling, liberating your time. With Keap, small businesses can save 10 hours weekly and increase revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Why we like Keap
Keap provides a thorough client connection management (CRM) and marketing automation remedy customized for small businesses and business owners. We appreciate Keap’s focus on streamlining sales procedures and nurturing customer relationships via powerful automation tools. The system’s all-in-one technique combines CRM, e-mail marketing, invoicing, and task monitoring, making it specifically appealing for businesses seeking to settle their tech pile.
Generally, it just functioned reliably with marginal fuss or upkeep needed. My open and click-through rates were terrific (like 35% terrific). Automations ran efficiently without problems.
So why on earth was I lured to uproot my whole operational structure from a system that worked to attempt something unproven and untested?
In hindsight I can confess I got attracted by the siren phone call of “glossy item disorder”. You recognize the sensation: when every person’s speaking about a new tool that will certainly change your service … The lawn frequently looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel might reduce friction factors that I ‘d learned to tolerate for many years with Keap.
I withstood at first, but a few more disappointments led me to assume perhaps it was time for a change.
The Financial investment: Migrating My Firm to GoHighLevel
Earlier this year I determined to take the plunge. I signed up for HighLevel’s Agency plan at $297/month, investing considerably more than the $97/month starter cost.
This had not been a decision I took lightly. I knew changing platforms was mosting likely to require moving all my Keap data and basically restoring my entire technology framework from scratch using every one of the GoHighLevel integrations readily available.
Right here’s a review of just some of the initiative called for:
- By hand exporting 20,000+ email customer records
- Recreating dozens of automations and workflows
- Moving client profiles, notes, and task data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe billing integration
- Setting up landing pages, discounts, and sales funnels throughout again
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface design
Done in, I invested around 30-40 tedious hours of setup job transitioning every little thing over– as well as managing lost efficiency during the button.
Yet inevitably, it was a computed financial investment I wanted to make. I figured some short-term pain would certainly pay off with GoHighLevel supplying a much better long-term remedy for my company, Dripify. Oh just how incorrect I was …
It only took me regarding a month of hands-on use to recognize I had actually made a huge error. The concerns started piling up quickly, until it reached a factor I needed to reduce my losses and switch over back to Keap entirely.
Let’s walk through the nightmarish troubles I ran into.
Security Issues & Many Vermin
Provided GoHighLevel positioned itself as an all-in-one automation system, I took care to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of series for onboarding brand-new e-mail subscribers, onboarding new clients, automating follow-ups for webinar registrations, sending occasion tips, taking care of subscription expiries and far more.
Everything seemed to be functioning penalty … till instantly it wasn’t. One early morning, I awoke to discover 171 totally pointless emails had been sent out to customers that should NOT have received them. This occurred 3 days in a row, with a different batch of 160 individuals daily.
I desperately attempted fixing and reconstructing the automation from square one. Yet the problem persisted.
When I seriously reached out to their assistance team, they slightly asserted “server problems” were responsible. Yet this description didn’t make any sense, given that the errors continued taking place each morning like clockwork unrelated to any downtime.
In my mind, this huge failing was completely undesirable and just didn’t benefit my organization. I have thousands of get in touches with relying upon my automated campaigns running smoothly.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be completely unstable, how could I entrust mission-critical workflows and delicate client data to their modern technology?
The unintuitive user interface just worsened these concerns …
Aggravating UX
Originating from Keap where whatever was seamless and instinctive, GoHighLevel’s learning contour felt steep and difficult.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included digging through food selection systems that were all over the place. Secret settings were unexplainably spread in completely different sections. Relocating between functions really felt disjointed or confusing.
I’ll inform you what I suggest by talking about their funnel builder as an example. There were 3 separate setups panels to manage overall, specific, and product setups. Yet for some insane reason, the web links to accessibility each of these core settings were expanded on contrary sides of the display. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful layout, this seriously upset me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still seemed like a work-in-progress rather than a refined product all set for prime-time use. Their top priorities seemed focused on cramming in every feature imaginable, with bad usability as a second thought.
And talking features, I soon understood the low price tag came with costly compromises …
Misleading Pricing GoHighLevel Internal Notification
Among GoHighLevel’s largest marketing factors is the budget-friendly price for accessibility to numerous features. But I rapidly discovered this cheap base cost was deceptive.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with erratic charges for core capability. Unexpectedly my bank card statements had unclear $10 costs from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you obtain charged every time you send an email through their servers. So for high volume users, this added up to hundreds of dollars in unanticipated costs.
Between these per-email charges and paying extra for deliverability attachments like Mailgun, my “inexpensive” GoHighLevel membership wound up costing considerably MORE than my Keap plan.
The reduced sticker price was appealing, but just not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a bad preference in my mouth.
Email Fees Suffered
The last dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured email open prices drop nearly over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Formerly, my audience engagement regularly struck 35-40% open prices in Keap month after month. But once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pitiful 9% open price.
No matter how much I maximized my sending out methods or tried every troubleshooting method, I could barely push open rates back into the teenagers– still a 50%+ decrease from my previous standards GoHighLevel Internal Notification.
Let me repeat: my exact same target market and e-mails all of a sudden had dreadful engagement. The only thing I could believe that would certainly be causing this was whatever was occurring behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For a firm so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
In between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed charges, damaged features, and terrible user interface, I had finally reached my limitation …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after migrating my company to GoHighLevel, I knew I had made a big mistake. The cons considerably surpassed any kind of advantages.
No software application is excellent, however the large quantity of troubles was beyond appropriate.
At the end of the day, software application boils down to trust fund. If I can’t trust it to handle vital functions competently 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 tough phone call to turn around course and return back to Keap entirely just weeks after going all in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I learned from this debacle.
Key Takeaways: What I Learned From My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as an expensive misadventure. But in hindsight, it instructed me a couple of essential lessons:
- Adhere to what works. Don’t disturb what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Modification brings danger.
- Veterinarian declares completely. Marketing hype around new software application usually covers bigger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is essential.
- Pick simplicity over features. Properly designed tools need to make your work life much easier, not a lot more complex and untidy.
- Transparency constructs count on. Nontransparent pricing, unethical reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues damages trust.
- Look for honest evaluations. Happy support evaluates mean less if excessive problems imply poor general use.
- Excellence is impossible. No single service can perfectly fulfill every unique company need. Find the least-bad fit.
- Advancement over transformation. Incremental enhancements generally surpass dangerous wholesale reinvention of what currently works fine.
Simply put, I discovered to be much more skeptical of “also excellent to be true” marketing insurance claims and less lured by the appeal of glossy brand-new things. The tools you use daily need to make trust fund through openness and efficiency, not slick advertising.