As a firm proprietor for over a decade, I rely on software and automation to enhance operations and supply results. So when GoHighLevel arised on the scene couple of years back, it absolutely captured my focus GoHighLevel IP Protected Snapshots.
The concept was enticing– an all-in-one client management platform with marketing, sales, and solution tools incorporated together. As a business owner constantly aiming to simplify and scale my company, it appeared like a dream become a reality theoretically. That would not desire a single remedy 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 prominent brand-new software application. You’ll learn:
If you’re thinking about whether GoHighLevel is right for your own business demands, hopefully you can gain from my uncomfortable blunders and inflated expectations.
Looter: I do NOT suggest GoHighLevel. If you require a CRM, start with this checklist of finest CRMs rather. I use Keap.
Some GoHighLevel Alternatives
If you’re trying to find a sales, marketing, and task management choice to GoHighLevel, after that 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 require context about my previous setup. For over 5 years I had been happily depending on Keap (previously Infusionsoft) to meet all my client monitoring and automation requirements.
I found Keap user-friendly to make use of and it dealt with everything I required– CRM, e-mail marketing, sales funnels, membership websites, and customer assistance.
Keap’s CRM and sales and marketing automation are developed to aid local business maintain their customers while including new ones effortlessly. Automate follow-ups with e-mails and messages, making sure leads and clients get the best messages at the right time. Usage site and social media types to streamline lead follow-up, and handle your development with easy visit scheduling and lead monitoring. Boost sales with automated pricing estimate, invoicing, and payment handling, freeing up your time. With Keap, small companies can conserve 10 hours each week and rise revenue by 39%. Begin with a 14-day free trial, no credit card called for.
Why we like Keap
Keap offers a detailed client partnership management (CRM) and marketing automation solution tailored for small companies and business owners. We value Keap’s concentrate on enhancing sales procedures and nurturing client connections through effective automation tools. The system’s all-in-one approach incorporates CRM, email marketing, invoicing, and job monitoring, making it specifically appealing for services looking to settle their tech stack.
Generally, it simply worked dependably with minimal difficulty or maintenance required. My open and click-through prices were fantastic (like 35% terrific). Automations ran smoothly without issues.
So why in the world was I attracted to uproot my whole functional structure from a system that worked to try something unverified and untried?
In knowledge I can admit I obtained seduced by the alarm telephone call of “glossy object disorder”. You understand the feeling: when everybody’s discussing a new tool that will certainly reinvent your business … The grass usually looks greener beyond, and I wondered whether GoHighLevel may reduce friction factors that I ‘d found out to endure throughout the years with Keap.
I resisted initially, but a couple of even more frustrations led me to assume maybe it was time for a modification.
The Investment: Migrating My Company to GoHighLevel
Previously this year I determined to take the plunge. I registered for HighLevel’s Firm plan at $297/month, investing significantly greater than the $97/month starter expense.
This had not been a choice I took lightly. I recognized switching platforms was going to need migrating all my Keap data and essentially reconstructing my whole technology infrastructure from scratch using all of the GoHighLevel integrations available.
Below’s a review of simply a few of the initiative called for:
- Manually exporting 20,000+ email client records
- Recreating lots of automations and workflows
- Moving client accounts, notes, and project data to the brand-new CRM
- Reconfiguring my Stripe invoicing integration
- Establishing landing pages, promotions, and sales funnels throughout once more
- Learning a totally foreign UX and interface layout
Done in, I spent around 30-40 tedious hours of configuration job transitioning everything over– as well as managing shed efficiency throughout the button.
But inevitably, it was a computed investment I wanted to make. I figured some temporary discomfort would pay off with GoHighLevel giving a far better long-lasting solution for my company, Dripify. Oh exactly how wrong I was …
It just took me concerning a month of hands-on use to understand I had made a large mistake. The concerns started accumulating quickly, up until it got to a point I needed to reduce my losses and change back to Keap totally.
Allow’s go through the horrible problems I came across.
Protection Issues & Several Bugs
Provided GoHighLevel placed itself as an all-in-one automation platform, I made sure to thoroughly recreate every single workflow from my old Keap account.
These consisted of sequences for onboarding new e-mail subscribers, onboarding brand-new customers, automating follow-ups for webinar enrollments, sending out event reminders, handling subscription expirations and far more.
Every little thing appeared to be working penalty … till all of a sudden it had not been. One early morning, I woke up to find 171 completely irrelevant e-mails had actually been sent to individuals who should NOT have actually gotten them. This occurred three days in a row, with a various batch of 160 people each day.
I frantically tried troubleshooting and rebuilding the automation from the ground up. Yet the issue persisted.
When I desperately connected to their support group, they slightly declared “server problems” were at fault. Yet this explanation really did not make any type of sense, because the errors continued occurring each early morning like clockwork unconnected to any kind of downtime.
In my mind, this huge failure was entirely undesirable and simply didn’t benefit my organization. I have thousands of contacts relying upon my automated campaigns running efficiently.
So if GoHighLevel was mosting likely to be absolutely undependable, just how could I turn over mission-critical workflows and delicate client information to their technology?
The unintuitive user interface just compounded these concerns …
Frustrating UX
Originating from Keap where every little thing was seamless and user-friendly, GoHighLevel’s learning curve really felt high and complex.
Basic tasks like modifying workflows included digging via food selection systems that were all over the place. Key setups were unexplainably spread in absolutely various sections. Relocating in between features 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 take care of total, specific, and product configurations. Yet for some crazy factor, the web links to gain access to each of these core setups were expanded on contrary sides of the screen. What!?
As someone who values clean, thoughtful style, this seriously frustrated me.
It enhanced that GoHighLevel still felt like a work-in-progress as opposed to a sleek product all set for prime-time usage. Their concerns appeared concentrated on packing in every feature imaginable, with inadequate functionality as an afterthought.
And speaking of features, I soon realized the low price tag featured costly compromises …
Deceptive Pricing GoHighLevel IP Protected Snapshots
One of GoHighLevel’s greatest selling factors is the affordable cost for access to many features. However I rapidly discovered this cheap base expense was misleading.
They nickle-and-dimed individuals with occasional fees for core performance. Suddenly my credit card declarations had vague $10 charges from GoHighLevel occasionally.
As it ended up, you get charged every time you send out an e-mail through their web servers. So for high volume individuals, this amounted to thousands of dollars in unforeseen costs.
Between these per-email costs and paying extra for deliverability add-ons like Mailgun, my “budget friendly” GoHighLevel registration ended up costing significantly greater than my Keap plan.
The low price tag was appealing, but simply not sensible in practice. This bait-and-switch left a negative taste in my mouth.
Email Rates Suffered
The final dealbreaker was seeing my meticulously nurtured e-mail open rates drop almost over night after switching over to GoHighLevel.
Previously, my audience involvement consistently hit 35-40% open rates in Keap month after month. Once I migrated their records over to GoHighLevel, performance tanked instantly to a pathetic 9% open rate.
Regardless of how much I enhanced my sending techniques or attempted every fixing trick, I might hardly push open rates back into the teens– still a 50%+ decline from my previous criteria GoHighLevel IP Protected Snapshots.
Let me repeat: my exact same audience and emails all of a sudden had terrible involvement. The only thing I could believe that would be triggering this was whatever was happening behind the scenes at GoHighLevel. For an agency so depending on email marketing, this was a big deal.
Between the crippling deliverability issues, concealed costs, damaged features, and dreadful interface, I had actually ultimately reached my restriction …
Why I Stop GoHighLevel after 37 Days
Just 45 days after moving my firm to GoHighLevel, I understood I had made a significant error. The cons drastically surpassed any kind of benefits.
No software is perfect, yet the sheer volume of problems was past appropriate.
At the end of the day, software comes down to count on. If I can’t trust it to manage crucial features capably or think a supplier has my best interests in mind, after that it’s time to leave– even after investing significant time, money, and initiative migrating.
So I made the tough phone call to turn around training course and return back to Keap entirely simply weeks after going done in on GoHighLevel. Let’s explore what I gained from this ordeal.
Trick Takeaways: What I Picked up from My GoHighLevel Mistake
My time with HighLevel can be summarized as a costly accident. However in knowledge, it showed me a couple of key lessons:
- Stick to what works. Don’t upset what’s working unless something is definitively far better across the board. Adjustment brings risk.
- Veterinarian claims extensively. Marketing buzz around brand-new software often obscures larger underlying problems. Deep due diligence is crucial.
- Choose simplicity over features. Well-designed devices ought to make your work life much easier, not extra challenging and messy.
- Openness builds depend on. Opaque pricing, shady reseller terms, and finger-pointing to evade issues ruins depend on.
- Seek impartial evaluations. Delighted support assesses indicate less if extreme concerns suggest bad general usability.
- Excellence is impossible. No single remedy can perfectly meet every one-of-a-kind business need. Locate the least-bad fit.
- Development over transformation. Incremental renovations normally surpass high-risk wholesale reinvention of what currently functions fine.
In other words, I found out to be a lot more skeptical of “too great to be true” marketing insurance claims and less attracted by the allure of glossy brand-new things. The devices you make use of daily should make trust fund through transparency and performance, not glossy advertising.